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Switzerland · Family trip · October 2026
A week with the caravan in the Lauterbrunnen Valley. My wife, the children and our dogs Winston and Erna are all with me. We take the Jeep up the Susten Pass, visit the Aare Gorge and finally find the snow Theo keeps asking about in Mürren.
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Thorsten-Voice, Sprecher Thorsten Müller. Stimmaufnahmen unter CC0. Thorsten-Voice.
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Alba / Piper. Voice dataset: Alba speech corpus (2019), Cassia Valentini-Botinhao and Junichi Yamagishi, University of Edinburgh. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. The recordings were used to train a synthetic voice model. This credit refers to the voice dataset; the travel story is by The Adventure Beyond.
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Mountains at last, after eleven hours
Lake Thun is on our left. The water is emerald green, with mountains rising behind it. After a good eleven hours of driving through the night, it is a welcome sight. I have spent long enough at the wheel staring at the dark strip of road ahead. At last there is something to look at again.
Near Interlaken, the children in the back slowly wake up too. Theo has slept through the lake. When he sees the snow-covered peaks, all we hear from the back is a quiet ‘Wow’. I know how he feels. Green meadows below, white mountains above, and sunlight breaking through the clouds. This is what I have been looking forward to.
We turn into the Lauterbrunnen Valley. The Weisse Lütschine runs alongside the road, with cliffs rising on either side. On the climbs, the Jeep changes down. The revs rise and, with the caravan behind us, we make our way through the last few kilometres of the valley.
Progress slows in Lauterbrunnen itself. People stop at the roadside, cross over or look for the best angle for a photo. With the caravan in tow, I take an extra look before moving on. Beyond the village it gets quieter. We are heading for Camping Breithorn.
Parking takes a few helping hands
My wife checks us in at reception. We get a friendly welcome, are shown our pitch and have help with manoeuvring straight away. We appreciate it: our caravan has no motor mover. We chose air conditioning instead when we bought it, so parking still takes a few helping hands.
With some help, it is soon in place on the gravel. Level it, set up, settle in. Normally I want to get this part done as quickly as possible. Here I keep stopping to look up. Cliffs, waterfalls and snow-covered peaks beyond. It is a good place to be setting up camp.
Winston and Erna start exploring the pitch. Theo heads off on his scooter and soon comes back excited. There are cows on the other side of the stream. ‘Dad, they’ve got bells and horns.’ His first holiday discovery is made.
We are lucky with the weather during this autumn week. Most days are sunny. One day it rains from morning to evening, and we spend it in the caravan. At night, though, there is no mistaking that we are in the Alps. We need the heating. If you bring a caravan here in autumn, plan your gas supply accordingly.
Nutella, mayonnaise and a bus ticket for Winston
Our first walk has a very definite destination: the supermarket in Lauterbrunnen. We have forgotten Nutella and mayonnaise. As far as the children are concerned, that is reason enough to walk around 3.8 kilometres.
Along the way I take a closer look at the valley. I was here in 2009 for my HEMS Crew Member training at Air-Glaciers. I remember a different side of Lauterbrunnen from that visit. Now, seventeen years later, I am back with my family. I do not remember anywhere near this many visitors back then. The closer we get to the village, the busier it becomes.
We take the bus back. Our guest card covers this route, so the family can travel on it. The driver makes a distinction between the dogs: Erna rides free, while Winston needs his own ticket. His explanation is wonderfully matter-of-fact: the big one does not pay the tourist tax, after all. So we buy Winston a ticket and enjoy the ride back to the campsite.
Those are the things that stay with us from a trip. A waterfall is impressive. But I will probably remember the conversation about Winston’s bus ticket for just as long.
A few hairpins in search of snow
Theo wants to see snow. After breakfast we leave the caravan on the campsite and get into the Jeep. We had worked out the cost of a trip to the Jungfraujoch beforehand. For our family it came to almost €600. That was more than we wanted to spend on this outing, so we try our luck on the Susten Pass.
After about forty minutes we reach the climb. The first hairpins take us through woodland, then the landscape opens out. Different peaks keep coming into view. For me, the drive is already part of the outing. My wife would have been happy with a few fewer bends. We pull into a lay-by so she can get some fresh air.
At the top, the dogs and the boys are soon exploring the stony paths. Before long, light rain starts, clouds move across the peaks and the wind picks up. We have something to eat and drink by the Jeep. Winston and Erna get water and a treat, then we head back down.
This is the sort of drive I enjoy taking the Jeep on. We follow the pass road, stop for the views and shape the day around what suits us at the time.
Between the rock walls
On the way back, we stop at the Aare Gorge. After the open mountain scenery, we suddenly find ourselves between tall rock walls standing close together. The Aare flows below us, while the path follows narrow walkways fixed to the rock face.
Here I get a real sense of what water can do to rock. I look up, then back down at the river. In between, we make our way carefully along the walkway and feel rather small. For us, the gorge is well worth this second stop of the day.
Snowballs and cappuccino
Mürren sits high above the valley on a terrace along the steep cliffs. We take the cable car up. This time both dogs can come without an extra charge, Winston included. He gets his free ride up the mountain after all.
From up here, the valley looks quite different. Only now do I really see how far the cliffs drop beneath the village. Then there is the view of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau. I could keep stopping to take photographs.
Theo has something else in mind. In the shade of the fir trees, he finally finds a patch of snow. Soon the first little snowballs are flying. Winston is interested too, mainly as a possible snack. Erna would rather investigate what the cows have left behind.
There are plenty of visitors in Mürren as well. After our walk, we still manage to find a table at a café. The chairs are lined with sheepskins, there is a cappuccino in front of us and the mountains beyond. I am happy to stay a little longer.
Getting to Mürren without a car
Mürren is car-free. One way up is from Stechelberg on the Schilthorn cableway. Another route takes the cable car from Lauterbrunnen to Grütschalp, followed by the train to Mürren. You can find routes and connections on the official Mürren website.
Showing my boys where I trained in 2009
Before we leave, I want to go back to the Air-Glaciers base. I take the boys along to see what has changed since my training. Much of it feels familiar straight away. The helicopters have changed in the meantime.
We get talking. A pilot invites us to take a closer look at the aircraft. My wife is not going to miss that either. What starts as a brief visit turns into a tour, with plenty of explanations and almost half an hour of conversation.
For the boys, standing so close to the helicopters is exciting. The visit means something else to me as well: I can show them a place that is part of my own story. Back then, I was here to train. Now I am outside the hangar with my children. That makes me very happy.
Our look behind the scenes came about during a personal visit, by invitation on the day.
We will be back
At the end of the week, it is time to pack up again. We head home the following morning. The caravan has worked well as our base: we go out in the Jeep, on foot or by bus, then return to our pitch in the evening.
We have enjoyed being here in autumn. The trees in the valley still have their colour, while there is already snow higher up. Some nights the snowline drops to just a few hundred metres above the campsite. By morning, slopes and roofs that were green or dark the evening before are white.
Then there is the sudden sound of a parachute opening above us. From time to time in the valley, we see BASE jumpers’ parachutes against the cliffs. We stop and watch them. That too is something we will remember from this week.
Lauterbrunnen is known as the valley of 72 waterfalls. We have not counted them. We have seen enough to know that we will be back. Theo would be happy with a little more snow next time.