Hi all,

Been a long time since I've been on these forums, but I remember this being an amazing community for information about climbing and trekking, so I thought I'd reach out for advice.

My wife and I are in Freiburg, Germany for the summer (leaving in ~1 month), and have not been to the alps yet... mostly been climbing and running in the Black Forest area. We don't have any gear aside from shoes and harnesses, so technical routes are (sadly) not an option, but we can scrape together backpacking gear, so we really want to do a 3-4 day trek in the alps before we leave.

We don't have access to a car, so we need something that we can use public transit for. I've been looking in the Zermatt area because of lifelong dreams of seeing the Matterhorn, but would be open to other recommendations. We're looking for high, exposed, Alpine terrain and not afraid of big elevation gains, long distance, or class 3-4 scrambling.

I realize that it's a pretty broad question, but any ideas from personal experience would be greatly appreciated! In the meantime I'm combing the databases.

Thanks in advance.

Maybe some stages of this could be relevant:
http://www.mountainwerks.org/cma/2006/hauteroute1.htm

The author is also active on summitpost

A classic area would be the Bernese Oberland with Interlaken as a base camp. You have Kleine Scheidegg at the foot of the Eiger, the Lauterbrunnen Valley, Grindelwald, Wengen, Muren and hiking routes all over the place. Lot's of day options but there is plenty of longer things to look at also. I've also been to Zermatt but I think there are more options in Interlaken and it is more price friendly.

I did "Le Tour du Val de Bagnes" few years ago, Verbier to Verbier passing by Lac de Mauvoisin, Chanrion, Panossière, Châble... It was fantastic !

Thanks all for the advice. I'll look in to it all. Have heard of Interlaken from quite a few people here, too.

Cheers!