Jungfrau
German for 'the maiden' or 'the virgin'. Several etymologies coexist: the standard reading is that the high pastures below the peak (the Wengernalp) were owned by the Augustinian convent at Interlaken and worked by its nuns, so the mountain became 'the nuns' mountain' and eventually 'the maiden'; a competing reading sees in the name a reference to the peak's untouched, unclimbable appearance from below.
One of the iconic trio of Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau dominating the northern Bernese Oberland. The summit sits on the Bern–Valais border above the Jungfraujoch railway terminus.
The 'Maiden' was the first major Bernese summit to be climbed: on 3 August 1811, by the Aarau merchant brothers Meyer with two Valais chamois hunters they had recruited at Lötschental, approaching not from the famous north face above Interlaken but from the south, up the Aletsch firn. The ascent caused a sensation in early-19th-century scientific circles. Today the Jungfrau is more famous for the Jungfraubahn, the rack railway opened in 1912 that bores 7 km through the Eiger and Mönch to emerge at the Jungfraujoch — the highest railway station in Europe — making the summit a comparatively short day's climb.
Summit · huts that serve as bases for routes on this peak
- Mönchsjochhütte3,657 m