Meidpass · Switzerland · Europe
The day the language changes: Gruben to Grimentz
German at breakfast, French at lunch – the language switches on a 2,789 m pass.
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Gruben to Grimentz: A 2-Day Alpine Passes Trail Hike
See the guide →The day the language changes
Everyone spoke German at breakfast. By lunch, everyone spoke French.
The switch happens on the Meidpass at 2,789 metres, and it is abrupt enough to feel staged. Not a bilingual blur, not a slow drift. A line drawn across one ridge, with grüezi on one side and bonjour on the other.
You leave from the Turtmanntal, which empties completely every winter and runs four buses a day in summer, booked by telephone the evening before. The climb out is honest rather than hard: forest, then high pasture, then the tarn at Meidsee below the crest, then a stretch of loose rock to the pass. Nothing exposed, nothing chained. It is the reason this weekend grades T2 and the reason it is the one to hand somebody walking their first pass.
Standing alone on the far side is the Hotel Weisshorn: white, 1882, at 2,337 metres, visible for an hour before you reach it. Half the people on its terrace walked up from the valley purely to eat, which tells you what the kitchen is worth. The menu du jour runs to four courses and finishes with blueberry cake.
