Giessbach Falls in spate

It seems, somehow, as if the beginning of summer here isn’t just rung in by sudden warm sunshine, but also by heavy rain. The Bernese Oberland is occasionally hit by a few days of continuous, heavy rain, and the topography of the canton means that all of the rain falling on the north side of the alpine chain in this region gets funnelled down from the mountains into the rivers leading to the lakes of Brienz and Thun.

One of the routes which water takes down from the mountains at Tschingelfeld, on the north-facing slopes between Grindelwald and Lake Brienz, is the Giessbach. The name translates literally as “pouring stream”, and pour it does, magnificently and powerfully, when there is a lot of rain.