Perched on the edge of a vertical cliff, Mürren (canton of Berne) is a base-jumping mecca boasting the steepest cable car in the world. What is it like to live there?
There is a spot in the middle of Mürren where tourists like to stop and take photos. Today is no exception. A young woman tosses her hair forward and then back, before smiling in front of the imposing backdrop. Her friend lines up a shot. Approaching from the side is a mother with her little boy. “Careful,” she says, “there’s no handrail.”
She is a little overcautious, because there is no danger here. Or at least not yet. From this viewing point, there is a path that leads down a steep grassy slope. Go 100 metres down and you reach a fence with a gate.
This is the edge of the cliff – and the gate is open. On the other side is a small platform for adrenaline-seeking base jumpers, who leap from here off the mountain before parachuting onto the valley floor.
Hold on to the fence with one hand, strain your head forward, and you can get a glimpse of the sheer drop below. Your heart will skip a beat. At the bottom: the cable car station, parked cars, roads, houses. Everything improbably small yet frighteningly close.
Mürren is perched on a high plateau in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, not far from Interlaken. Below is a vertical rock face that is overhanging in places. There is probably no other village that clings as much to the edge of a mountain – in Switzerland at least.
The new cable car connecting Mürren with the valley floor underlines what an extraordinary location this is. It is the steepest cable car in the world. Riding it feels like being pulled up by the hair. Cable cars normally leave the bottom station moving forward. This one more or less departs through the roof of the building.
Its support cables point upward like an hour hand that has almost reached 11 o’clock. The cabins have to cope with a maximum gradient of 159.4 per cent. You are glued to the window all the way up, staring at the sheer rock. Water sprays out of the cliff here and there. The cable car climbs 775 metres in four minutes.
There are some beautiful old posters celebrating Mürren’s spectacular location. But what else does this sunny place have to offer?
For the people who live there, Mürren’s teetering clifftop position is maybe a little less scary. “Their” Mürren is the loveliest place on Earth – a peaceful car-free village with a glorious tourism heritage. It sits at the foot of one of 007’s old haunts, the Schilthorn mountain: the revolving restaurant at the summit, Piz Gloria, featured in the James Bond film “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”, making Mürren more famous. None of the locals talk about the cliff edge. You need to ask them first.
Kurt Huggler, 81, grew up in Mürren. He is a former ski racer, tourism director, and hotelier. “Yes, of course,” he says, “we ventured down there a lot when we were boys.” They would mess around and throw things, pick rare flowers, or just sit by the edge and peer down. They didn’t tell their parents about everything they did. Huggler tells the story of a dare that involved hanging upside down from a tree trunk over the edge. Just the thought is enough to make you feel queasy.
He plays it down. Nothing bad ever happened, he insists. Maybe this was also thanks to their parents, who told them that there was a little fellow with a hook dwelling in the rock face who pulled children down and ate them.
Listen to Huggler and you begin to understand that he relates to risk in a way that only people born in the mountains can. He has climbed peaks all his life. “I would never negotiate a difficult route without safety gear.” What he thinks of base jumping goes without saying. You have to judge danger when you live in the mountains. Families need each other. “No one can afford their next of kin dying.”
Huggler laughs about another aspect of living near the rock face. “We used to simply tip our rubbish over the edge.” Hardly any of it was plastic, at least back then. There was no green waste either. “We fed that to the pigs.” It was mainly empty food tins and all sorts of large items. Once they even threw half an ice-cream maker down the cliff. It originally belonged to a hotel. “That was a sight to behold!” The rubbish never tumbled all the way to the bottom; it would come to a standstill on a ledge and was later filled in. “They should dig the pile up – then you really would learn a lot about Mürren,” he grins.
Sven von Arx, 30, a building services technician and a member of the local council, was in awe of the place when he moved into the village six years ago. “I am still amazed by Mürren’s beauty and location.” At first, he genuinely wondered how anyone could have thought of settling in such a precarious spot.
He has now got more used to that aspect at least. Paragliding, which he did for a while, gave him a similar feeling. He was petrified when he first floated out over the edge and saw the huge drop between his feet and the valley floor. “But it was nothing special 40 flights later.”
Likewise, the new cable car. He says the ride is spectacular, but it is a good while since he last stood by the window. “Only visitors do that.”
Nevertheless, he is fascinated by the actual rock face. Whenever friends are visiting, he likes to take them on the Via Ferrata – a cabled traverse down the cliff on which you are secured at all times. “You have to see it to believe it,” he says. The route goes past a base-jumping platform. Von Arx’s views on base jumping are similar to Huggler’s. “When I see them leap, I wonder how on earth anyone could do it.”
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