SWITZERLAND'S ADVENTURE HUB
Interlaken: Where Canyoning Fits a Bigger Adventure Trip
Interlaken packs paragliding, skydiving, via ferrata and canyoning into one small Alpine town — here's how a canyon descent fits into the wider region.
See canyoning trips on GetYourGuide ↗A small town punching well above its weight
Interlaken sits on a narrow strip of flat land between Lake Thun and Lake Brienz, directly beneath the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, and that specific geography — deep glacial gorges nearby, sheer rock faces rising straight from the valley floor, wide flat land for landing paragliders — is exactly why it became Switzerland's adventure-sports hub rather than any other alpine town nearby. Most operators here run more than one activity out of the same base, and it's entirely normal to be canyoning one morning and doing something completely different and airborne the very next, all within walking distance of your hotel.
What else shares the same valleys
Paragliding launches from the same slopes that feed the canyons below; skydiving drop zones look down on the same glaciers that carve them over centuries; via ferrata routes climb the very same rock the gorges cut straight through. None of these activities overlap with canyoning in technique — you don't need to have done one to try another, and the skills genuinely don't transfer — but they share the same base towns, the same small community of guides, and often the same weather-dependent scheduling, so it's worth checking forecasts across your whole stay, not just on canyoning day itself.
Building a multi-activity Interlaken trip
Because most adventure activities here run as half-days rather than full-day commitments, a lot of visitors end up stacking two or three across just a few days rather than picking a single one — canyoning one morning, then a via ferrata climb or a paragliding flight on another, with a rest day worked in between if the schedule allows it. Booking with some deliberate slack between activities matters more here than it might in a single-activity destination, since a canyoning trip rescheduled for weather is genuinely common enough that back-to-back bookings on tight timing can end up colliding.
Getting to Interlaken without a car
Interlaken is a genuine train hub in its own right — direct or single-change connections from Zurich, Bern, Lucerne and Geneva put it within a few comfortable hours of most Swiss entry points, and its two stations, Interlaken West and Interlaken Ost, both sit close enough to the town centre to walk with luggage. Canyoning operators typically handle the transfer from town out to the gorge themselves as part of the trip, so a car is genuinely one thing you don't need for the day, even if you end up renting one for exploring the wider region afterward.
The Jungfrau region as a base for more than one day
Canyoning itself is usually a half-day commitment, which leaves the rest of a longer stay free for the Jungfraujoch cogwheel railway, the two lakes either side of town, hiking trails out of Grindelwald or Lauterbrunnen, or simply recovering afterward with a swim in the lake and an early night. Most visitors end up treating canyoning as one highlight within a longer Bernese Oberland stay rather than the sole reason for the whole trip — which also happens to give useful flexibility if a canyoning date needs shifting around the weather at short notice.
More things to do nearby
Not sure which canyon, or whether it's for you?
Leave your email and roughly when you're travelling — we'll send a short rundown of how the Interlaken canyons compare, which suit first-timers versus thrill-seekers, how cold the water is, and what a half-day actually involves.