Explorer | Switzerland: Hiking the Alps of Goethe and James Bond

Joshua Hammer for The New York Times

Andrew Purvis, the author's friend, hiking to Mürren, in the Bernese Overland.

We were hiking in fog and drizzle up the barren slopes of Mount Schilthorn, a 9,748-foot-high peak overlooking the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Switzerland. As I inched along a narrow trail, the mist cleared to reveal a long drop on either side into a boulder-strewn abyss. My legs wobbled; my feet slithered over the soggy ground. I reached out to grasp what seemed like a taut rope line, only to feel it sag beneath my trembling fist. Then the trail widened, I steadied myself, and continued my arduous climb toward the summit.

During the winter season, the Lauterbrunnen Valley ranks among the most popular ski destinations in the Bernese Overland, a region in the German-speaking part of Switzerland that encompasses four high-altitude valleys and three of the highest peaks in the Alps: the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, all rising to more than 13,000 feet. But I had come here with a Geneva-based friend at the height of the summer to experience the region in a different guise.

From May through October, the Bernese Overland becomes one of Western Europe's most challenging and beautiful hiking circuits. Snowy pistes morph into meadows speckled with wildflowers. Ski lodges turn into trekkers' retreats, and the swoosh of skis and snowboards gives way to the rush of water from dozens of cascades and the tinkle of cowbells. In 1779 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe hiked through the Lauterbrunnen, describing its splendors in his poem, "Spirit Song Over the Waters": "Down from the lofty rocky wall/ Streams the bright flood,/Then spreadeth gently in cloudy billows/ O'er the smooth rock." One can spend days, or even weeks, following in Goethe's footsteps through the Lauterbrunnen and adjacent valleys, hiking 120 miles of well-marked trails and crossing mountain passes that remain encrusted in snow year round. Along the way, rustic huts provide meals and hostel-like accommodation, and the opportunity to mingle with hikers from around the world.

My friend, Andrew Purvis, and I began our weekend trek in late July, traveling by train three hours east from Geneva to the town of Lauterbrunnen, then by narrow-gauge railway and aerial tram straight up from the valley floor to Mürren. Situated on a plateau at 5,400 feet above sea level, this former farming settlement today is a hiking and skiing center, with 450 year-round residents and dozens of hotels and B&Bs. During the summer, day-trippers by the thousands also come for staggering views of the Mönch, Jungfrau and Eiger — the latter immortalized in the 1975 Clint Eastwood thriller "The Eiger Sanction," which climaxes with a fatal climb on the avalanche-prone north face.

When we pulled into town, however, Mürren was deserted. An icy fog and heavy rain had socked in the town for two days. And the previous morning the Mürren-Schilthorn cable car had broken down near the summit of Schilthorn, forcing dozens of tourists to make a treacherous descent on foot back to the village. The weather, combined with that incident, had almost emptied the town.

After spending the night at the Hotel Jungfrau, a pleasant if nondescript lodge, we awoke to another morning of souplike weather. A funicular took us a few hundred feet higher to the start of the North Face Trail, a popular route since the earliest days of Alpine trekking. The early 19th century saw the first influx of foreign mountaineers to the Swiss Alps — most of them British soldiers — who scaled several high Alpine peaks, including the Jungfrau, with the help of local guides. The British invasion gave rise to hotels and mountain huts, and an Alpine tourism industry that today brings Switzerland billions of tourist dollars annually. The high-altitude walks during those early years could be perilous, as a plaque along the snow-dappled trail reminded us. "In Memory of Alice Charlotte, Wife of Capt. M. Arbuthnot, XIV Hussars," it read. "Killed by Lightning on the Schilthorn Alp 21 June 1865, Age 23."

Beyond the plaque, the trail diverged, one route descending around an aquamarine glacial lake, the other climbing steeply to the Schilthorn summit. We opted for the latter. The deserted trail wound above the tree line, crossing tundra, scree slopes and bare black and gray rock. The path became more precipitous, requiring us to pull ourselves up by hand in several places. After two arduous hours, we could see Schilthorn's summit peeking through the mist, marked by the cable-car terminus and a revolving restaurant, Piz Gloria.

The makers of the 1969 James Bond movie "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" used this restaurant, then under construction, as the mountaintop lair of the arch villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, played by Telly Savalas. (It was the film crew that came up with the name for the establishment, using a word for "peak" in a Swiss dialect that, in fact, is not spoken in the region.) The slopes below the summit were the scene of one of the most spectacular chases in cinematic history, with Agent 007, played by George Lazenby, Australian used car salesman turned actor, making his escape on skis from Blofeld's gunmen, into the valley below. Piz Gloria is still exploiting its bygone cinematic glory. Through the windows of the gift shop we spied commemorative plates, coffee mugs, ski vests, T-shirts and other Bond-related kitsch.

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