On board the world’s steepest cable car

My neighbour on the flight to Zurich had the newspaper open on the travel page – inevitably we started chatting about our respective onward journeys.

“You’ll be trying out the world’s steepest cable car then,” he said, on learning that I was bound for Mürren, the car-free Swiss village that perches on a mountain ledge facing the Eiger. Since December the record-breaking new lift has been hoisting visitors from a car park on the valley floor in Stechelberg (866m) to the village centre (1,640m) in four ear-popping minutes – and making quite a stir.

What avid news hounds might not realise is this is only the first segment of a £100-million project to replace the entire chain of lifts from Stechelberg to the Schilthorn (2,970m), the crowning summit of Mürren’s ski area. There used to be four stages to the journey, now there are just three. And it’s not the only news coming from Switzerland’s most storied resort.

My approach to it was not by the new cable car, but on the train which brings rail travellers less steeply and more slowly to the other end of the village. After 133 years of service, this conveyance has been upgraded with £50 million-worth of new rolling stock.

I emerged from the station to the welcoming and unfamiliar sight of lights shining from the windows of Mürren’s Palace Hotel. This landmark property, where British ski pioneer Arnold Lunn held court and proclaimed the new sport of downhill and slalom racing to a sceptical world in the Twenties, reopened its doors this winter after standing empty for 15 years, a ghostly reminder of faded glory. £30 million has been spent by a team of hopeful investors and heritage-conscious lovers of Mürren.

So much expenditure, for a village of 450 inhabitants, at a time when skiing is a sport commonly assumed to be on the wrong side of climate change, may seem brave, to say the least. But in a warmer world, there are short-term advantages to be exploited by high resorts such as Mürren, and it’s not all about skiing. Summer tourism overtook winter business here 20 years ago.

Confined in the straitjacket of heritage listing, the Mürren Palace team has added suites and a spa by erecting a new tower in the garden, all in wood and much admired. Inside the main building, the decorative style note is restrained, the ambience is contemporary. The front desk is a table and a girl with a laptop, and you’re less likely to encounter a liveried concierge than the manager in T-shirt and jeans. ‘“We’re not aiming for the five-star vibe,” he explained. Nor can the hotel be accused of living in the past – there’s not a vintage skiing image to be seen.

One survival is the Palace’s pillared ballroom which Sir Henry Lunn (father of Arnold) added when he bought the hotel in 1910 and made it the flagship of his tour operation. The room is far bigger than the hotel needs but the restorers were not allowed to tamper with it. “Thank heavens for preservation orders,” said local resident Bernard Lunn, Sir Henry’s great-grandson.

After breakfast in this hallowed space, a five-minute walk through the village brought me to the new cable car station, resplendent in a sheath of shining copper. The descent to Stechelberg on the world’s steepest cable car was an experience not to be shirked. Its gradient is said to be 159.4 per cent, otherwise expressed as just shy of 60 degrees. Because the lift climbs and descends so steeply, the cabin has to hang on an extra-long arm so as not to hit the cable, and that requires extra-tall pylons to keep it off the ground and above the chalets whose owners’ sunbathing balconies no longer enjoy the seclusion they once did. One of the pylons, at the tipping point, between steep grassy slopes and sheer cliff face, leans out over the abyss at an alarming angle for reasons that are no doubt obvious to the technically minded.

After parking my skis I asked a lift attendant if the cabin was pressurised. “Of course not,” he replied, laughing. “It’s higher up that people can have problems [with altitude].” Tour groups might be advised to break the journey on the way up, to explore the village of Mürren and the amusements on offer at the higher mid-station.

Sucking hard on a Murray mint, I stationed myself at the bottom window and took out my phone to video our ride as all true cable car aficionados do. Fiddling with the phone distanced me from the white-knuckle excitement of the ride. Even so, the “oo-er” moment as we plunged over the leaning pylon and stared straight down the wire to the base station was impressive enough to disturb breakfast. It looked more like freefall than a 60-degree slope.

On a slow morning in January, I had plenty of time to enjoy the aesthetics of Stechelberg’s new base station, an architectural hymn to sustainable Swiss carpentry, built on a scale that speaks ominously of the crowds expected. The gleaming entrails of the lift are on display behind glass, like a superchef’s kitchen. Then it was time to ride back up again, now paying attention to the view: a waterfall flashing rainbow colours in the morning sunlight, choughs performing their aerobatics above the wires of Mürren’s via ferrata, which winds across the cliff and finishes with a Nepal bridge over a gaping cleft in the rock.

Section two of the new lift chain, from Mürren (1640m) to Birg (2670m), also opened before Christmas and might be even more innovative. Double cables offer extra stability when the wind howls, and the two cabins run independently, side by side in rush hour for optimum queue dispersal. In slack periods, one can be shut down while the other continues to run, saving costs and allowing for maintenance. Uplift capacity has doubled from 400 to 800 passengers per hour, and 365 days a year of operation permits increased sales of expensive excursion tickets, food, drink and merchandise – the stuff profits are made of. By comparison, skiers’ lift passes are chicken feed.

Villagers and skiers do not all take kindly to sharing their lifts with day-trippers though, and mutter darkly about overtourism. But the lift company’s profits feed through to investment in the ski area: snow-making, piste grooming, snow parks, and faster chairlifts. In the arms race that is 21st-century skiing, Mürren’s slopes are as well equipped as any in the Alps, and among the least crowded.

Through the long years of construction, Schilthornbahn managed to keep the existing lifts and ski area fully operational, apart from the top section, from Birg to the Schilthorn, which closed for five months last October, depriving skiers of one famous black run and shutting down the day-trip business.

However, the new lift on this top section will reopen on March 15, in time for skiers to enjoy Mürren’s high-altitude skiing for the last month of the season; and in time for the Easter influx of excursionists. Once the ribbon is cut, Mürren’s new star attraction will be a 22-minute journey from valley to summit, across three different lifts – an engineering marvel to fuel the revival of this historic Swiss resort.

Essentials

Doubles at Mürren Palace (hotel-muerren-palace.ch) cost from CHF 250.70 (£221) per room per night, B&B, until April 15. Excursion on the Schilthornbahn (schilthorn.ch) (from 15 March; Stechelberg to Schilthorn) cost CHF 108 (£95) return. Discounts are available for children under 16 and holders of Swiss travel pass. A ski lift pass (jungfrau.ch; Mürren, Wengen, Grindelwald) cost CHF 299 (£263) for four days, until April 30.