This is Jungfrau Circuit #4 post.
Jungfraujoch is an under-mountain railway station where the mountain train terminates and one can use it as a starting point and take different routes to explore the area.
Click on the 2D topographical map below to access an interactive version on the Swiss government map site.
For the 100-year anniversary of the Jungfrau Railway, a 250-metre long adventure tour called Alpine Sensation was inaugurated in 2012. It describes the development of tourism in the Alps and Adolf Guyer-Zeller’s great idea (see photo below) and extreme efforts required to construct the Jungfrau Railway. There was a short light show with shaking floors – it was quite amusing as we were not expecting it.
There were indoor fast food and fine dining restaurants, and quite a few shops – especially watches -Tissot has a big presence here to show off its Touch series of watches which can measure altitude and atmospheric pressure among other geeky functions. I guess it could be fun to see the altitude number changes as one goes up/down the mountain.
Switzerland is famous for these two things – watches and cows.
This tour viewable on an escalator creates a direct connection from the Sphinx Hall to the Ice Palace – it’s not much of a palace, more a series of inter-connecting ice caverns beneath the glacier.
Cutesy ice sculpture decorates numerous alcoves.
The floor was a bit slippery but it was dry inside despite the shiny surfaces.
The walls of the glacier tunnel looked like marble from a distance. The veins represented certain geological/climatic events in the past when something covered the snow which was later overlaid with the following season’s snowfall.
We thought this might be Sherlock Holmes (smoking a pipe) or the king of the palace.
There are numerous caves and dark passages for you to explore. The Ice Palace here is bigger than the Mer de Glace ice caves near Chamonix – see our earlier post here.
The Ice Palace is a touristy site so all the diversions get you safely back to the exit.
What’s that directly below the viewing area ?
Zooming in reveals the structure as an “escalator” serving a sledding area. There is no need to pull the sled back up the hill for another go. They made it so easy.
There is really so much winter sporty things to do up here even in the summer when we visited.
But it was time to go down hill and head home. See our next post on Grindelwald.
Originally posted on April 17, 2014. Last updated in November 2022.