Mountain adventure day.

Ooh. First off I found better pictures of the big room we were in at the Auberg'Inn.

Zita's alcove is on the right next to the bar. Dunc and Clara are in the
foreground in this pic and Alex and I have the master bedroom over on
the left!

Detail of the ceiling beams and the crazy patterns on them.

For our first full day in Switzerland we decided we simply weren't high enough in Neuchâtel. We headed deeper into the mountains to a place called Le Châtelard. As it turns out, "deeper into the mountains" put us back out right next to the border with France, not far from Chamonix. In Le Châtelard there is a newly redeveloped attraction that involves a funicular, a train, then another funicular to get you up nice and high for a beautiful view of Mont Blanc.

Dunc patiently waiting for his sisters to get to the funicular station.

Seems steep says Dunc. Apparently the steepest
funicular in the world.

87% grade. Yup, it's steep.

Zita agrees. Steep.

Once you get off the first funicular, there is a small train that takes you part way around the mountain to the base of the mini funicular for the last leg of the trip. Before you get on the train you can take in the small railway museum and check out some bits of small mountain railway detritus. There is also a part-way café in case you are hungry from the first leg, and a small playground which we took advantage of on the way back down.

#1

#2

#3. I guess I could have put them all in at once.

The manual method to get around the mountain. 

The train from the big funicular around the mountain to the little funicular.

Clara takes it all in.

The little funicular for the last leg up. I neglected to
take a picture myself.  Thanks internet.

At the top there is a fully decked out restaurant where we ate lunch. What did I have? Baguette with jambon et fromage of course. Not up the snuff compared to France, but the Swiss cheese was good.

At the top there is also a sizable dam called Émosson that holds back a fairly large reservoir (Lac d'Émosson). The lake is partly fed from another reservoir higher up (that we did not walk to) that is in turn held back by another, smaller, dam. I think there is a small hydro-electric generator between the upper and lower reservoirs, and the lower reservoir also feeds a fairly large generating station downstream. 

We also saw a big parking lot. It turns out you can drive the switchbacks all the way up, saving yourself the cost of the funiculars, but missing out on the good times.

Dunc and Clara check out the dinosaur at the top. There are dinosaur prints
back in the mountains but it is a 5 hour round trip hike. Dunc was game to
go he said. So what if we got back at 8pm???

Dam! As in wow, there's the Emosson dam.

Dam! There are people out walking on it!

Somehow it was more scary hanging over and looking down than it
appears in the picture. 

Dunc and Clara with an old turbine from the generating station. 

I kept trying to figure out what this was for. It looks like a really bad idea for
 joy riding down funicular rails, perhaps thought up at a frat party or something.
Unfortunately there was no one around to ask. 

Once we'd had our fill of the lovely views (and lunch) we headed back down.

The big funicular rails again. Doesn't look
any less steep going down.

The drive back to Neuchâtel was uneventful. However I will say that driving in the Alps is lovely. It was particularly exciting driving the last half hour up to and down from the base of the funicular. Really good switchback roads with steep and breathtaking drops. Alex loved it too...almost as much as she loved the twisty roads in France except here there were no trees to block the view. Just a whole lot of nothing to block the view really. Sometimes not even a guardrail.