5 Best Hikes in Grindelwald

Trail No. 36 runs along the foot of the Eiger north face, and from a Grindelwald base it is a door-to-door morning. Grindelwald Terminal on Grundstrasse 54 has its own railway stop, and the Eiger Express tricable gondola covers the 6,483 m to Eigergletscher at 2,320 m in 15 minutes, running 44 cabins of 26 seats at a capacity of 2,200 people per hour. That capacity matters in August, when it is the difference between walking on and waiting an hour.

The trail itself is 6.1 km, signposted 2 hours, with 78 m of ascent and 779 m of descent as it falls from a high point of 2,346 m to Alpiglen at 1,615 m. It is graded T2, moderate, and there are rope-secured sections where the path crosses steep ground, so this is a walk that wants proper boots rather than trainers. The season is July to October. Nothing about the route is technically hard, but the exposure is real and the surface is loose in places.

You finish at Alpiglen, which is a Wengernalpbahn halt rather than a village, and the train takes you down to Grindelwald Grund. Because the return uses a different line from the one you rode up on, this is a point-to-point walk and not a loop. The Jungfrau Travel Pass covers both the Eiger Express and the Wengernalpbahn leg; the Swiss Travel Pass, Half-Fare Card and Berner Oberland Pass give 50 percent on the Eiger Express. Jungfrau Railways lists a reduced "from" price for the gondola rather than a clear walk-up adult single, so ask at the Terminal desk.

Pro Tip: Buy a one-way Eiger Express ticket to Eigergletscher, not a return. You come back on the Wengernalpbahn from Alpiglen to Grindelwald Grund, so the second half of a return ticket is money you will never use.

Männlichen gives you two walks off one lift and they are not the same proposition, so decide which you want before you board. The 10-seat gondola from Grindelwald Terminal on Grundstrasse 54 reaches the Männlichen station at about 2,225 m in 19 minutes; from the Lauterbrunnen side, the Wengen aerial cableway does it in 5 to 10 minutes. The Royal Walk is the short option: 2 km there and back along the ridge to the Tuftgrat summit at 2,343 m, signposted 25 minutes up and 15 minutes down, open May to October. The operator publishes no ascent figure, but the station and summit elevations put it at a little over 100 m of climbing on an easy graded path.

The Panorama Trail, trail No. 33, is the better walk and the easiest route in this guide. It covers 4.3 km from Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg in a signposted 1 h 10, with zero ascent and 151 m of descent, dropping from 2,220 m to 2,068 m, and 98 percent of it runs on dirt road. Grindelwald Tourismus grades it T1. Snow-free June to October, it is then groomed as a winter walking trail. The Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau sit on your left the whole way, which is why walkers who cannot face a climb still come up here.

The Männlichen summer season runs 23 May to 25 October 2026, and the winter season ran 13 December 2025 to 6 April 2026. Jungfrau Travel Pass and Berner Oberland Pass holders travel free, while the Swiss Travel Pass and Swiss Half-Fare Card give 50 percent. Fares need a caveat: maennlichen.ch publishes its tariff only in PDFs that are closed to indexing, so the 2026 figures in circulation, around CHF 68 return from Grindelwald Terminal and around CHF 58 return from Wengen, come from a secondary source and should be confirmed at the ticket window. The Royal Ride, the open-air balcony on the front of the gondola, adds a CHF 5 surcharge.

Pro Tip: Walk the Panorama Trail in the Männlichen to Kleine Scheidegg direction only. All 151 m of the height difference goes your way, and Kleine Scheidegg drops you straight onto the Wengernalpbahn back to Grindelwald Grund with nothing to retrace.

Calling the First Cliff Walk by Tissot a hike would be dishonest, so here is what it actually is: a steel walkway bolted to the cliff beside the First top station at 2,167 m, finishing in a viewing platform that cantilevers 45 m out over the drop towards Grindelwald. That 45 m projection is the only length Jungfrau Railways publishes. Total walkway lengths and walking times circulate widely on aggregator sites and appear on no official page, so ignore them.

It costs nothing extra. Entry is included with any Firstbahn ticket, which is exactly why it belongs in the same half day as the Bachalpsee walk rather than in a plan of its own. Both start from the same gondola and you will already have paid for the lift, so the only question is whether you step onto the platform before you set off for the lake or after you get back. It is open year-round whenever the Firstbahn is running, winter included, and closes only during the maintenance window from 26 October to 27 November 2026.

The floor sections are grated, so the valley is visible straight down through your boots, and the structure hangs close enough to the rock that the exposure hits you in stages rather than all at once. Allow fifteen to twenty minutes to walk out, stand at the end and come back, bearing in mind that the operator publishes no official timing. Anyone genuinely uneasy about heights should know that the final section is the worst of it and that there is no way round, only back.

Pro Tip: Do the Cliff Walk after Bachalpsee, not before. Everyone stepping off a morning gondola turns onto the platform first, so the crush at the far end is at its worst between 10:00 and noon.

The Pfingstegg cable car is the one lift in Grindelwald that Jungfrau Railways does not run, and anyone holding a pass needs to hear the consequence plainly: the Jungfrau Travel Pass does not cover it. Adult return is CHF 32, paid at the valley station on Rybigassli 25, about ten minutes on foot from Grindelwald railway station or a short ride on GrindelwaldBus line 121 to the stop named Pfingstegg. The operator publishes no pass discounts at all, so budget the full CHF 32 and treat any reduction you are offered as a surprise.

From the Pfingstegg station at 1,368 m, UNESCO Theme Trail No. 24 climbs to the Bäregghütte, the mountain inn at 1,774 m. The round trip measures 5.6 km with a signposted time of 2 h 25, 428 m of ascent and 405 m of descent. The operator's own estimate is looser at 1.5 hours each way, or 2.5 to 3 hours there and back. Grindelwald Tourismus grades the route easy, which undersells it: the middle section is a sustained climb on a narrowing path, and T2 is the honest grade.

What the climb buys is the view the crowds at First never see: a direct line into the trench the Lower Grindelwald Glacier gouged out, with the scoured walls of the gorge falling away below the hut terrace. The whole basin sits inside the Swiss Alps Jungfrau-Aletsch World Heritage Site. The cable car season runs 25 April to 25 October 2026, which makes this the first of the five routes to open each year and the only one on the list you can reliably walk in spring.

Pro Tip: Pfingstegg opens on 25 April 2026, roughly six weeks before the Bachalpsee path is reliably clear of snow. If you are in Grindelwald in May, this is the CHF 32 you should spend, because the First trails will still be under snow.