Why Engelberg

After ten days by Lake Maggiore to the south, Engelberg was the perfect place to stop and get our mountain fix — so we packed up the van, the kids and Fred and pointed ourselves towards central Switzerland. It’s the kind of valley that does all the heavy lifting for you — a classic alpine village with a monastery at one end and Mount Titlis glowering over the other, glaciers visible from the high street. Four days felt like exactly enough time to get under its skin without needing a full week’s holiday just to recover.

Our base: Alpenresort Eienwäldli

We stayed at Alpenresort Eienwäldli, just outside the village on Wasserfallstrasse, pitched up on their five-star campsite in the motorhome (there’s also a hotel on site, if that’s more your style). What sold us on it was the location above everything else — close enough to walk into the village, yet tucked into the trees with the mountains right on the doorstep. The facilities were a welcome bonus rather than the main draw: a restaurant and bistro doing regional Swiss cooking alongside more general crowd-pleasers, a spa and wellness area with a rock-pool style bathing experience, sauna landscape and treatment rooms for an hour of downtime, and an indoor pool with a slide that came in very handy on the day small legs had nothing left to give.

You can get the bus from right outside into Engelberg itself, but we walked it most days — about half an hour along the river and through the woods, which suited us perfectly with two children and a dog who all needed the exercise anyway.

The walk in: exercise rings, mountain bikers and one very happy spaniel

On the afternoon we arrived, we did that river-and-woods walk into town to buy our Titlis tickets for the next day, and it turned out to be a little adventure in its own right rather than just a means of getting from A to B. There are exercise rings and bars dotted along the path for kids to swing about on, and some genuinely excellent purpose-built tracks for mountain bikers if that’s more your family’s thing. Dogs are allowed off lead through the woods, which meant Fred spent the entire walk looking like the happiest dog in Switzerland.

Mount Titlis: real snow in August, and a walk we underestimated

Titlis was always going to be the big day, and it did not disappoint — though we learned the hard way that it deserves either a relaxed half-day of its own or a very early start, not both squeezed into one.

With our resort guest card giving us 10% off, two adults and two children came to about £180 for the cable car. Dogs under 30cm at the shoulder travel free; Fred is a whisker over that, so he cost us 15 CHF return. If you’d rather have tickets sorted before you even leave home, you can book them in advance here:

This post contains an affiliate link — if you book through it, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

What’s at each stop

Trübsee (first stop)

• Trübsee Adventure Park: the BagJump Tower, free to use — jump from 3, 4 or 6 metres onto the airbag below (minimum ages 6, 8 and 14 for each height)
• Trampolines and bouncy castles for the younger ones
• Trübsee Snow Park / SnowXpark — snow activities that don’t require any skiing ability
• Lakeside walking trails, and the start of the Four Lakes hike
• Restaurant Alpstübli for lunch

Stand

• Stand Ski Hut, with a rustic alpine-hut feel for a drink or a bite
• Starting point for further hikes, and for ski runs in winter

Titlis summit (3,020m)

• TITLIS Rotair — the world’s first revolving cable car, running the final stretch up, giving you a slow 360° of the glacier as you climb
• Cliff Walk — Europe’s highest suspension bridge, with views across the Swiss and Italian Alps
• Ice Flyer — a chairlift-style ride out over the glacier crevasses
• Ice Cave — carved into the glacier (closed during our visit because of the heat)
• Glacier snow park, with real snow topped up by a snow cannon in summer
• TITLIS Tower — the mountain’s newly opened restaurant and viewing platform

We came out at the summit into real snow in the middle of August — admittedly topped up by that snow cannon, which the kids thought was the best fun going, running underneath it again and again. The Ice Cave being closed because of the exceptional heat that summer had brought across Europe was our one disappointment, but the Cliff Walk more than made up for it, delivering genuine vertigo and equally spectacular views across both the Swiss and Italian Alps. If we go again, TITLIS Tower is where I’d want to stop for a long lunch rather than rushing through.

From the summit we dropped back down to Trübsee to walk around the lake, refuel and carry on hiking — this is also where the Four Lakes hike sets off, and where we badly underestimated the scale of what we’d taken on. Two chairlifts run from Trübsee up and over the mountain to Engstlensee, and both are included if you’ve already bought a ticket up to Titlis, so there’s no extra cost to explore further. By the time we’d stopped to refuel at Restaurant Alpstübli — a hearty Swiss sausage and fries hit exactly the spot — we only had time to reach the second lake, Engstlensee, rather than all four. No real hardship: every one of these lakes is a startling turquoise, crystal clear, and the further you go the fewer tourists you see, mostly just hikers who mean business. I’d say making the effort to reach at least the second lake is worth it precisely because of that — it feels like a different, quieter mountain.

We also had one of those sights you can’t quite believe until you’ve seen it: walking along the edge of Engstlensee, we watched a cow being airlifted by helicopter, legs dangling and tail swishing away as it soared over the valley. We’d read about the practice of flying cattle down from high pastures but never expected to actually witness it — an unforgettable few seconds.

In hindsight, trying to do the Titlis peak and the lake hike in a single day to save on cable car costs was ambitious to the point of daft. Titlis alone could comfortably fill half a day, especially with lunch at the Tower thrown in. The full Four Lakes hike, if you want all four, is a whole day in itself and wants an early start. I’d love to go back and properly crack that one. Rushed or not, it was still a brilliant day, and by the end our legs knew all about it.

As if to underline the point, my husband’s well-worn hiking boots fell apart the moment we got back — luckily Engelberg is exactly the kind of town where you can pick up a decent new pair before the next day’s adventure.

Brunni Bahnen: toboggan runs, a proper hike down, and a thunderstorm

The next day we took the Brunni cableway up to Ristis for a change of pace, though “change of pace” turned out to be relative.

First stop was the summer toboggan run, which the whole family loved without exception. You buy a ticket for 1, 5 or 10 runs from the machine at the top, then off you go.

After refuelling on the terrace restaurant, we set off to hike back down rather than take the cableway — a fairly serious descent that we were very glad to be doing downhill rather than up. It took around three hours to get back to the campsite, and the last half hour, right through the town, coincided with an almighty thunderstorm that left us absolutely drenched. Even so, there’s nothing quite like looking back up at a mountain you’ve just walked down under your own steam.

A gentler day: green meadows and a well-earned float

Our last full day was a deliberately easier one. We hiked from the campsite up to Restaurant Ritz on Gerschnialp and back — picture-postcard Switzerland, all green meadows and cowbells, with a genuinely warm welcome and a very good lunch waiting at the other end. Late afternoon was handed over entirely to the indoor pool back at Alpenresort Eienwäldli, which after three days of hiking was exactly what everyone needed.

Onwards to Colmar

We left after breakfast on our final morning and pointed the car towards Colmar in France — more on that soon.

Quick questions

Can you take a dog up Mount Titlis? Yes — dogs under 30cm at the shoulder travel free, taller dogs are 15 CHF return.

How much are Titlis cable car tickets? An adult return is 102 CHF in high season, children half price; a resort guest card can take a further 10% off.

Is the Titlis Ice Cave always open? No, it’s seasonal and can close during periods of exceptional heat, as it was on our August visit.

Can you do Titlis and the Four Lakes hike in one day? You can, but it’s a rush — better to treat Titlis as a half-day and save the full Four Lakes hike for a separate, early-start day.

The practical bits

• Where we stayed: Alpenresort Eienwäldli, Wasserfallstrasse, Engelberg — five-star campsite (also has hotel rooms), restaurant and bistro, indoor pool with slide, spa and wellness centre.
• Getting into the village: bus stops right outside, or walk the river-and-woods path in about 30 minutes (exercise rings, mountain bike trails, dogs allowed off lead).
• Titlis tickets: Engelberg to the summit is 102 CHF return for an adult in high season, children half price; a resort guest card can knock a further 10% off. Dogs under 30cm at the shoulder travel free, taller dogs 15 CHF return. You can book ahead using the widget higher up the post.
• Brunni tickets: Engelberg–Ristis cableway is around 34 CHF return for an adult, 17 CHF for a child; combined with the chairlift, budget closer to 46 CHF adult / 24.50 CHF child. Dogs travel for a few francs more.
• With a dog: Fred was welcome everywhere we went, off lead in the woods and on both mountains, for a small supplement on the cable cars. Keep a lead handy though — cows roam freely across parts of the mountain, and the area around Engstlensee is signposted as a nature reserve where dogs need to be kept on lead.