Of all the ways to take on the Swiss Alps, from hobnobbing at the Suvretta House in St. Moritz to scrambling up the Matterhorn with crampons and grit, one of the best is a two-week hiking tour with a Manhattan mountain man named Fred Jacobson.
From the first bloom of the alpen rose to the yellowing of the larch trees at the end of September, only about 150 people-20 to 25 on each trip-get to see Switzerland Jacobson`s way. They eat well, stay in comfortable inns and hotels, learn the lore of the Alps at Jacobson`s heels, curse him all the way to the top of 11,000-foot peaks, and come back the next year, or the year after, for more.
Switzerland happens to be just about the best venue around for high-mountain hiking. Of the many choice mountain resorts, it would be hard to top the region of Engadine, a broad, Alp-topped valley in southeast Switzerland perhaps best known for the stylish St. Moritz resort.
Jacobson`s Engadine tours pointedly avoid St. Moritz. Instead, they are based for one week in Pontresina and for another week in nearby Sils-Maria. As our Wanderfuhrer (hiking leader), never one for understatement, explained at dinner the night I arrived in Pontresina: ”One of the most pointless comments I make each year is that the group should pass up St. Moritz. They all go, and they hate it.”
DROPOUT HIKERS
I picked up the tour a few days into the first week, and on this brisk evening the usually optimistic Jacobson was fretting. A California customer had canceled because of complications with her pregnancy; so had a Tennessee doctor and his wife when their son had fallen out of a tree and broken both arms; a Denver ophthalmologist had sprained an ankle on the second day of hiking-he was wearing low-cut shoes, a Jacobson no-no-and was talking of flying home with his girlfriend for emergency treatment. And several of the group were showing signs of not keeping up. The able bodies were down to eight or nine.
On the other hand, we were staying at one of Jacobson`s favorite mountain hotels, La Collina, in an area he likes perhaps better than any in Switzerland, and the weather, an important ally, was bright and cool.
The next morning, we strolled out of Pontresina behind this man who makes his living literally walking to work. Until you`ve been on the trail for a couple of days and sampled this special brand of no-nonsense (I didn`t say no- fun) hiking, you have no idea how you`ll measure up.
In his brochure, Jacobson seeks to eliminate lollygaggers. He warns that his trips are strenuous workouts for experienced hikers, or at least those in ”excellent” condition. There is no need for ropes, but the terrain is rough, steep, and-as Jacobson puts it-”somewhat airy.” You walk 6 to 8 hours a day and climb at least one peak of 10,000 to 11,000 feet. However, there are concurrent gentler hikes with a second leader-in our case a vacationing nurse from Holt, Mich., Kathleen Theroux, one of Jacobson`s most trusted aides.
THE FIRST DAY
More scenic than strenuous, the day`s main (”A”) hike was perhaps a 5 on a difficulty scale of 1 to 10, good news for one jetlagged soul. We wended upwards through larch forests, paralleling the tracks of the Bernina Railway, one of Europe`s most spectacular train rides, which heads down to the Italian border at Tirano on a little red tooter.
Meanwhile, the ”B” team caught the train in Pontresina to cut off part of the day`s climb. (For this purpose, each hiker is provided with a one-month Swiss Holiday Pass, a corner-cutting device useful not only on standard trains but also on cog-rail lines, aerial tramways, buses and even steamers.)
Jacobson, leading the ”A” team, stopped to point out the tiny blue lungwort and the just-arrived relative of the rhododendron, the alpen rose, which grew along the path we followed. ”I`m not a botanist, but I love flowers,” he said, loping along in his signature knickers and high socks.
”I`m no geologist either, though I can admire glaciers and I know the danger of big crevasses.”
Seven or eight of us were spread out on the trail, walking and talking at different paces, but already a pattern was evident. Someone would stop to admire a flower or reach for a flask, and Jacobson would urge us to push on.
IS IT SOUP YET?
At 12:30 p.m. sharp, the Jacobson Express emerged from a steep rocky path onto a sun-washed mountain terrace. Lunch, at wooden tables outside a Swiss Alpine Club hut (one of 200 in the country), consisted of cream of vegetable soup, sausages and rosti, Swiss home fries. The hut has a spotless dormitory room for hikers and climbers staying overnight. The sight of the sleeping quarters, half a dozen mattresses laid side by side under a single sheet, may touch your sense of adventure, but it made me glad for the Collina with its eiderdown-covered beds and twice-a-day phantom maid service.
It would be all downhill the rest of the day.
The next day would be different, Jacobson promised. The ”A” squad had the Alp Languard to climb, with loads of deep snow to negotiate. It would be the toughest challenge of the Pontresina-Sils-Maria fortnight.
Late in the afternoon, still an hour`s hike from Pontresina, we stopped for beers in a cafe outside the tiny Morteratsch train station, and Jacobson put it to a vote: Do we walk the rest of the way or catch the Bernina Express? It was unanimous: the train.
SWISSER THAN THE SWISS?
Who is this 50-year-old man described by an American expatriate living in Sil-Maria as ”Swisser than the Swiss?” Fred Jacobson, Yale class of 1960, a bachelor, first saw Switzerland on the old Grand Tour in 1959, fell for Zermatt, and has gone back to the Swiss Alps every summer since. He has hiked all over the country and climbed every important peak without, he says, ever becoming proficient at the high-wire act. ”In golfing parlance, I suppose I`m a low-80s climber.” But he is quick to add, ”I`m a scratch hiker.”
Jacobson dislikes the mystique attached to mountain climbing, and he finds most serious climbers colossal bores-points he makes in his book, ”The Meek Mountaineer.” Fifteen years ago, on vacation from his Wall Street brokerage job, he started taking small groups to Zermatt. Gradually he expanded the groups and extended his tours to other Alpine resorts, then added winter cross-country ski trips. He eventually quit Wall Street and made Switzerland a full-time job.
THE GANG`S ALL HERE
Who were his charges, his brood, on this particular fortnight? We were a small, motley bunch, probably feistier and more independent than most. There was the injured Denver eye surgeon; another ophthalmologist from Boston who had trained by climbing flights of hospital stairs with a pack full of rocks; an insurance executive; a sometime gardening columnist; a medical technician; a business adviser; and an advertising production manager and screenwriter. Not necessarily bringing up the rear were two gray-haired Mainers.
Friday`s big goal was the 11,000-foot, snow-capped Alp Languard. Only a handful volunteered.
We left the hotel at 7:40 a.m., hopped a local bus to the Punt Muragl rack rail-station, and ascended in the little cage about 2,500 feet above Pontresina. Cheating? Without the lift, said Jacobson, we would never make it to the top of Languard and back in a day. We walked a narrow winding ridge high above Pontresina, where one could see the three lovely clay tennis courts of the Hotel Walther, burnt-sienna patches at this distance.
Early summer hikers will encounter not only the prettiest wildflowers, but also lingering snowfields, which make for slow, mushy going as the day wears on. With your own Wanderfuhrer, though, you have a lead dog to test the snow and cut a trail. Still, we found there was no avoiding the occasional plunge to mid-thigh.
High on Alp Languard by late morning, we traversed through snow and rock, finally scrambling onto the deck at Hut Georgy at 1 o`clock. We slung off our packs and dropped to the deck, ready for lunch and recovery. But Jacobson said: ”Come on, we`re not there yet. It`s another 200 meters to the summit. We`ll come back down and eat.”
We all clambered upward, sometimes dropping to all fours, sometimes dislodging rocks, sometimes pulling each other over a ledge by the hand. I`m not sure I fully appreciated the triumph, or the grand view all the way to Italy and Austria, until we were back down on the deck eating our pack lunches and Jacobson was saying, ”Without actually being on a rope, that was the closest thing to a real high-mountain climb.”
SLIPPING AND SLIDING
We came down in a fraction of the time it took to get up, but it wasn`t a snap. Descents never are. It`s easy to lose your balance on the steep, snowy flanks of the mountain, the constant downward views can stop your breath and the whole act is rough on your legs-especially the knees and quadriceps. There were slips and falls and curses up and down the line from everyone but Jacobson. He yodeled and trilled snatches of Gilbert and Sullivan, and when we came to a snowy slope, he giggled and took off 100 yards down the mountain with only his pickax for support-a mountain trick called glissading.
At 4 p.m. we collapsed on the valley floor beside a stream and looked up at the damage we`d done-the whitened Alp Languard and the hut jutting out just below, only an hour away but already part of a distant, cutoff world. It was coffee-break time as sure as in any office building. Jacobson led us to another heavenly hut, the Paradis, that will forever color my view of outdoor cafes. Of carrot cake, too: nobody does rueblitorte like Pia of the Paradis.
Jacobson, our eyes and ears to the Engadine, introduced us to his friends, identified flora and fauna, and passed on cultural and historic tidbits culled from almost 30 years in the Alps. He pointed out the Engadine`s customary sgraffito, the carved illustrations on housefronts. He had us saying ”Viva,” the local toast, over wine, beer and the cooling Skiwasser (a mixture of red raspberry nectar and lemonade), and he recommended the piano player, Alex Robert, at the Hotel Walther, the coed sauna at the Pontresina recreation hall and the Engadinertorte, a sort of Swiss pecan pie, at the Kochendorfer bakery. He taught us Swiss manners, the worst violation of which is putting a backpack on a table, even a metal-topped table in a mountain cafe (”People eat off them, you know”), and perhaps most important, he taught us how to hike: short strides, flat soles, soft landings. ”A Swiss guide once told me, `Don`t hurt the rocks,` ” he said.
PICTURE PERFECT
We had one more day of hiking out of Pontresina before the Sunday trek to Sils-Maria, and I used it to cover by car some of the ground the others would see on foot-particularly the enchanting village of Soglio down near the Italian border. On the drive you take the Maloja Pass and descend steeply to a green valley dotted with log houses with slate roofs. I passed a stone bridge on which two farmers paused to chat, one holding a pair of scythes, the other a huge satanic pitchfork, as if they had stepped out of some Italian-Swiss fairy tale.
Soglio, a cluster of ancient stone buildings huddled at mountain`s edge, is all the more stunning when you drop in on foot, said Jacobson. On a small plaza stands the Palazzo Salis Hotel, as much a palace as a hotel, full of antiques and echoing corridors, with a dozen cool, high-ceilinged guest rooms. Behind the hotel is a cloistered rose garden that doubles as an outdoor cafe, run by a young Italian couple. Hikers drop in all day; amid the mingled scent of wood smoke and roses they dine on lasagna, risotto with mushrooms and charcoaled sausages.
Each Pontresina week ends on Saturday night with the Collina`s much-touted fondue chinoise, a curious Swiss culinary fixture that borrows more from the Indonesian rijstafel and the Japanese sukiyaki table than anything Chinese.
A HIKER`S BUGABOO
On Sunday morning, primed for the midtour switch to Sils-Maria, we awoke to the hiker`s bugaboo: rain. Jacobson lives by the axiom that if he can see the end of his nose, he`ll hike. Looking turtlelike under a green poncho, Jacobson and his aide led a quartet out of town and up the mountainside. The others begged off.
On longer Sunday transfers-Kandersteg to Pontresina, for instance-the group travels by train, but there is something romantic about approaching the second resort on foot. You feel like an army on the move, or a band of explorers-a somewhat driven band with Jacobson at the whip for seven hours.
Under a brightening sky we skirted Samedan, Celerina, St. Moritz, Champfer, keeping them at a healthy distance far below, and in late afternoon we dropped down to Lake Silvaplana and walked the south shores of that wind-surfer`s domain into little Sils-Maria. We could have made the trip by car in 15 minutes, and yet Sils seemed as removed from Pontresina as our new roost, the Edelweiss Hotel, was from La Collina. Harried hikers enjoy their comforts, but if anything, the Edelweiss was too large and commodious.
Sils-Maria, nestled between lakes Silvaplana and Sils at the mouth of the Fex Valley, looks the perfect mountain hiking headquarters; pairs and groups of backpackers pass through the village all day. Friedrich Nietzsche spent six summers at Sils taking gentle hikes and developing his theory of the Ubermensch, or Superman, in ”Thus Spake Zarathustra.” His restored house is next to the Edelweiss, and a commemorative rock stands on a lovely promontory of Lake Sils a few miles from town.
AN AMERICAN IN SWITZERLAND
What makes Sils so desirable as a hiking center is its appeal not to Superman but to everyman. Thus spoke, in so many words, a Peekskill, N.Y., native named Rich Weiner, who married a local, settled in Sils, and quietly became the village`s sports and recreation czar. ”The tracks are not that steep around here, so you can get to the beautiful vistas without being a climber,” said Weiner, 40, who owns two outdoor shops, runs a windsurfing school on Silvaplana, and helps with the maintenance and improvement of the trails.
In fact, you can get to the beautiful vistas in horse-drawn taxis, which is what I chose to do on our last morning in the Engadine while the others hiked to Soglio and its toothsome rose garden. They covered the first leg on a bus that left Sils at 8:40 a.m. The whole group was there at the bus stop, the ”A” and ”B” teams and of course the Wanderfuhrer himself, checking his watch, gathering his brood, planning another glorious and toilsome day on the trail. –
