The highest railway station in Europe.
A private tour to the Jungfraujoch from Zurich, timed hour by hour.
The Jungfraujoch is the highest railway station in Europe, at 3,454 metres, reached through a tunnel cut inside the Eiger. From Zurich it is a ten to eleven hour day by private car and mountain railway. All of it turns on what time you are standing where, so we leave early and the Sphinx terrace is yours before the trains behind you arrive.
- Duration
- Ten to eleven hours. Zurich and back.
- Pickup
- Zurich, early. Roughly two hours to Grindelwald Terminal.
- Group size
- Private car, private guide. Rail seats held for your party.
- Languages
- English, German, Turkish.
- Season
- Cloud decides this one, not the calendar. We read the summit webcams the night before.
The Jungfraujoch sits at 3,454 metres, at a saddle between the Jungfrau and the Monch, and the railway that reaches it was cut through the inside of the Eiger between 1896 and 1912. Sixteen years, by hand and dynamite, to build a station in a place with no reason to have one.
It is the most visited high place in Switzerland, which means the difference between a good day and a long queue is entirely a question of what time you are standing where. Here is how we time it.
THE DAY
Early, from Zurich. A private car, roughly two hours to Grindelwald. Leaving early is not a preference here, it is the whole strategy.
Grindelwald Terminal. The Eiger Express gondola opened in 2020 and cuts the old approach to fifteen minutes, lifting you to the foot of the north face. Most day visitors still come the long way round from Interlaken. We do not.
Eigergletscher, then the tunnel. The train enters the mountain and climbs inside it for the better part of half an hour. There is a stop where windows are cut into the north face itself, and you look out of the Eiger at the valley you drove through an hour ago.
At the top, first hour. Go straight to the Sphinx terrace at 3,571 metres before the trains behind you arrive. Below is the Aletsch, the longest glacier in the Alps, running twenty-three kilometres south and holding more ice than anything else in western Europe. In the first hour you will often have the rail to yourself.
Second hour. The Ice Palace, cut into the glacier itself, and the plateau outside where you can walk on snow in August. Then lunch, before everyone else has the same idea.
Down, and the part people skip. Get off at Kleine Scheidegg and spend an hour there rather than connecting straight through. It sits directly under the Eiger north face, it is where the climbers were watched from in the thirties, and almost nobody stops because their ticket says otherwise.
Back in Zurich for dinner, ten to eleven hours after leaving.
WORTH KNOWING
The altitude is real. You go from roughly four hundred metres in Zurich to three and a half thousand in a morning, and people feel it. Walk slowly at the top for the first ten minutes and it passes.
The other thing worth saying plainly: if the summit is in cloud, the view is a white wall and the day is wasted. We watch the mountain webcams the evening before and the morning of, and we will tell you to swap to the valley day rather than sell you a ticket into fog.
One car, one driver who guides, all rail and gondola tickets held in advance, and a timing plan built around the weather rather than a brochure.
THE THINGS THAT DECIDE THE DAY
Will the altitude be a problem?
You go from four hundred metres to three and a half thousand in a morning and you will feel it for the first ten minutes. Walk slowly and it passes. Anyone with a heart or lung condition should ask their doctor rather than us.
Is the Eiger Express worth it over the old route?
It cuts the approach from Grindelwald to fifteen minutes and lifts you past the foot of the north face on the way up. The long way round from Interlaken takes most of a morning. There is no argument to have here.
What is worth doing on the way down?
Kleine Scheidegg. Get off there and stay an hour. It sits directly under the north face, it is where the climbers of the thirties were watched from, and almost nobody stops, because their ticket routes them straight through.
Written about this day
Below the snow line the same valley is the Bernese Oberland, which is this day without the railway. The rest of the days we arrange are listed together. The other summit day out of the city, longer and better with a night in it, is Zermatt.