Grindelwald's first written acknowledgement came in 1146, in a document giving part of the town to the monastery of Interlacus. Unlike Interlaken, Grindelwald only has one name, but that name is of obscure origins. Wald means "woods," but speculation over Old Germanic Grindel most probably narrows the meaning down to either "fence" or "shelf." Hence we can conjure up some pretty powerful imagery, such as "Wooded Shelf" or maybe even "Barricade Forest" (as in a barricade against avalanches), but what it all comes down to is that nobody really knows.

For centuries, Grindelwald was nothing but a small farming community; you could count its major historical events prior to the nineteenth century on the fingers of one hand (while using the other to stifle a yawn). They were, in chronological order, the "Baron's War," in April of 1191, when the barons of the Oberland lost to Duke Berchtold von Zähringen, and the little skirmish in 1528, when the peasants of Grindelwald unsuccessfully fought Bern to try to preserve their Catholicism. Whew!

Things changed in the eighteen hundreds. The mountains, which had previously been considered threatening and inhospitable forces of nature (teeming with dragons, gnomes and spectres), experienced an unexpected surge of popularity. This was brought about by the writers and artists of the time, who, with little actual alteration of that age-old image, suddenly made the Alps seem wildly romantic. When these romantics finally arrived in Grindelwald, it wasn't solely to admire those massive chunks of rock that form its southern ridge. Nor was it primarily to study the flora and fauna of an area that was for so long shrouded in mystery. Instead, the main focus of attention was those glistening rivers of ice, the glaciers. Grindelwald has two glaciers, simply called the "Upper" and the "Lower," practically right in its back yard. During the tail end of the 1700's, the Lower Glacier did its part in Europe's "Little Ice Age" with its last big forward push. By the end of its advancement, in 1850 or so, it had covered up the local marble quarry. This was a bit of a worry, as it was getting rather close to the lower reaches of the village. Nowadays, however, the quarry is again exposed, the glacier having retreated more than a mile back up into its gorge. In 1918, a general forward movement was recorded in most alpine glaciers; in Grindelwald specifically, this was noted between the years of 1913 and 1924, when the Upper Glacier was moving forward at a rate of up to forty centimeters a day.

In the subsequent years, most alpine glaciers have been getting smaller. It was an Australian named Sandy (and not any member of the Rubi or Kaufmann families which have dominated in Grindelwald for centuries) who explained to me that the Upper Glacier is no longer one of the few exceptions. Since 1965, it's advanced almost seven hundred meters, with the most rapid movement taking place around 1981-1982, but in the last few years, it's turned tail and run. Daily progress of its retreat can be followed with the glacier "clock" that stands by the entrance to the ice caves.

Grindelwald's first guesthouse was opened in 1910, which is unimportant other than to signify the abrupt change in attitude about those formerly fearsome Alps. It wasn't long before man graduated from the passive study of glaciers to the active challenge of actual mountaineering. And the history of climbing in the Grindelwald area is no less complicated than that of the Oberland town names. For starters, the Finsteraarhorn, coming in at 4,273 meters as the tallest of the Berner Oberland's peaks, was first climbed in 1812. Maybe. Then again, they (the people who record such things) are not quite sure it wasn't until 1829.

The Wetterhörner were all climbed between 1844 and 1845, amid much confusion over which of the three peaks, all within a twenty meter altitude difference of one another, was being climbed at any given time. The tallest of the three, the 3,704 meter Mittelhorn, was first conquered by S.T. Speer, a Scotsman, no doubt to the annoyance of the ample Swiss competition.

The bigger of the two Schreckhörner (4,078 meters) was firstclimbed in 1861. I'm surprised that the "Fear" horns were climbed at all, sticking straight up the way they do, like a serrated knifeblade cutting into the sky. Legend has it that the two "dots" of snow eternally capping the Gross Schreckhorn imprison the souls of two nuns who broke their vows, way back in the Middle Ages. More likely they're the souls of two unfortunate climbers who made it up and never made it back down again.

The Eiger, which means "Ogre," was not named such because it was a nice, gentle hill. This 3,970 meter sliver of rock was firstclimbed in 1858, but that was via its least threatening west flank. The infamous north face was only even attempted in 1934, when three Germans had to be rescued, à la Clint Eastwood, through one of the Jungfrau train's tunnel "windows." A four man "rope" did the first successful climb in the summer of 1938, led by a German, Anderl Heckmair, one of the few climbers of his caliber still around today to talk about his sport. The first successful winter climb wasn't until 1961. Forty some people have died on the face so far, and, though it's been conquered by more than that, the lives it continues to claim maintain its status as one of the three most challenging climbs in the Alps. (The other two are the northface of the Matterhorn and the Walker Spur of the Grandes Jorasses, near Mont Blanc).

The major peaks having been conquered, for the most part, by the late eighteen hundreds, the Grindelwaldners and their ever increasing number of visitors, spurred onward by the British, turned their attention to winter sports. The year 1888 was when they were officially ushered in, and it seems like the locals have been on skis ever since.

In 1892, a fire, augmented by the Föhn wind, destroyed the entire western part of the town. You can pick out the older surviving buildings not just by location but by the fact that they're made out of wood; the townsfolk broke tradition by building the new ones out of stone.

In 1908, the Wetterhorn cable car, first of its kind in the world, opened for business. They closed it down only six years later, though, in order to redirect revenues to the brand new and very costly Jungfrau train. If you stand out in front of the Hotel Wetterhorn and look up, you can still see the Station "Enge", eerily clinging to the rock face high above. One cable car remains as a monument, this too found in front of the Hotel Wetterhorn.

Short-lived as it was, the Wetterhorn cable car heralded an age of mountain transportation geared to remove all remaining challenges. Aside from the countless small scale mechanisms designed to haul skiers up the hillsides, Grindelwald is currently serviced by two railway lines and three cable cars. The cable car to First, new in 1992, was preceded by a chairlift that was for many years known to be the longest in Europe.