Grindelwald Glacier Gorge

Behind the village of Grindelwald, the Lower Grindelwald Glacier has cut a gorge with walls up to 300 metres high. A walkway runs about a kilometre into it, through tunnels and galleries. Three things are worth settling before you go: the admission is not the price advertised, the operator states its season twice and differently, and there is a second glacier gorge in the region that search results keep mixing in.

The advertised price is the group price

The operator — Outdoor Switzerland AG, which also runs the site itself — advertises the visit as «Ab CHF 19.- / Gast». The price block on the same page then lists:

• Adults: CHF 21.00
• Children under 16: CHF 11.00 — under 6 free
• Groups of 10 or more: CHF 19.00
• School groups of 10 or more: CHF 9.00
• Guest card reduction: CHF 3.00 per person

So the headline quotes the group rate without the group condition. Travelling alone or as a couple, you pay CHF 21.00, not CHF 19.00. This matters more for visitors than it first looks: most hotels and many guesthouses in the region issue a guest card to people staying overnight, and it takes CHF 3.00 off — bringing the admission to CHF 18.00, below the advertised figure. If you are staying locally, ask your accommodation for the card before you set off. Tickets are bought on site.

The season is stated twice, differently

The gorge is a summer operation; the walkway does not run in winter. Exactly when it opens is the least certain figure on this page, and the uncertainty is not ours — the operator's own page gives two different starting points.

• In the body text: «Geöffnet von Ende April bis November» — open from the end of April to November
• In the box beside it: «Saison: Mai November» — season: May to November

Directly below that sits the caveat «Dates may vary due to weather conditions.» No exact 2026 dates are published. Our table therefore reads April–November, the wider of the two — and the honest addition is this: if you are planning for late April or for November, ask before you travel. For the months in between the question does not arise.

There are two glacier gorges

This distinction is missing from most search results, and getting it wrong costs a whole day of a trip:

• Grindelwald Glacier Gorge — this one, behind the village of Grindelwald at about 1,014 m, run by Outdoor Switzerland AG.
• Rosenlaui Glacier Gorge — in the Reichenbach valley behind Meiringen, some 11 kilometres away as the crow flies, in a different valley, with its own operator and its own admission. It appears in our overview of destinations further out with journey time and price.

Both are gorges carved by a glacier, both have walkways and tunnels, both are summer operations. They are not connected, and they do not combine sensibly into one day from Interlaken — one lies in the Lütschine valley, the other in the Haslital.

Getting there: 53 minutes, and the bus is half-hourly

From Interlaken Ost it is 53 minutes with one change, measured as the daily minimum across eight departures on Thursday 20 August 2026. The chain is short and frequent:

• Train Interlaken Ost → Grindelwald, 36 minutes
• Bus 122 from Grindelwald Bahnhof to the stop «Grindelwald, Gletscherschlucht» right at the entrance, 11 minutes — every half hour, from 07:16 on the day measured

Bus 122 alternates along the same line between Gletscherschlucht and Klusi or Bodmi, so every second departure is the one you want. The last usable connection back leaves the stop at 18:30 and reaches Interlaken Ost at 19:24 — later than the gorge itself closes, so the timetable does not constrain the visit. That is unusual for this region: at destinations such as Saxeten or Isenfluh the bus schedule is what decides the day.

What it is good for — and what it is not

The glacier gorge is a short, dense visit: the operator itself gives 1 to 2 hours for about two kilometres there and back. It works in any weather, which makes it one of the region's few rainy-day options that is nonetheless outdoors — the walls keep most of the rain off, and it is wet down there in any case. The operator's own highlight is a 170 m² net suspended seven metres above the Lütschine.

It will not carry a full day. One to two hours on site plus close to two hours of travel fills a half day; the rest belongs to something else in Grindelwald — the Männlichen, for instance, whose gondola starts from the same place. For a comparable experience elsewhere in the region, the St. Beatus Caves on Lake Thun are the same idea inside a mountain rather than in a gorge, at a similar admission and a similar time budget.

Sources

Prices, season statements, visit duration, path length and the figures for the net come from the operator Outdoor Switzerland AG, retrieved 19.08.2026; the two conflicting season statements stand side by side there in the wording quoted. Journey times, bus frequency and return connections from transport.opendata.ch for Thursday 20 August 2026. Coordinate, endpoint and elevation from the swisstopo gazetteer and elevation service (api3.geo.admin.ch): the stop «Grindelwald, Gletscherschlucht» sits at 1,014 m and about one metre from the timetable endpoint, while the terrain name «Gletscherschlucht» marks a point some 900 metres further up the valley at 1,106 m, which is not the entrance.

Related Articles

Cave

St Beatus Caves

A kilometre of walkable dripstone cave above Lake Thun, open all year at a constant 8–10 °C.

Valley & waterfalls

Lauterbrunnen valley

The valley where the Staubbach Falls drop 297 m free from the cliff — the highest free-falling waterfall in Switzerland — plus the Trümmelbach Falls inside the mountain.

One summit, two cableways

Männlichen

The one viewpoint in the region served by two cableways from two different valleys — from Grindelwald Terminal and from Wengen, at different fares. The Panorama Trail to Kleine Scheidegg and the Royal Walk to the summit (2,342 m) both start at the top.