YouTube channel What On Earth Is This? recently traveled to the Lauterbrunnen Valley of the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland to document the world’s newly crowned steepest cable car, a record-breaking piece of engineering that connects the valley floor to the mountain village of Mürren with a maximum gradient of 159.4 percent, or roughly 57 degrees.
The new Schilthornbahn, built by cable car manufacturer Garaventa and completed in late 2024, shatters the previous record held by the Loen Skylift in Norway, which topped out at a 133 percent gradient.
The project replaced a cargo-only cable car that had operated on the same Steckelberg-to-Mürren route since 1985. As the video documents, the new system covers the 1,190-meter horizontal journey and 775-meter vertical climb in just four minutes, down from ten minutes on the old system. Each carriage, built by Austrian firm Carver, holds 85 passengers and a maximum load of 6.8 tons. Robotic cargo boxes attach to the underside of the carriages to transport luggage and supplies to hotels and restaurants in Mürren.
The system runs 365 days a year and is entirely self-powered through solar panels and regenerative braking energy, eliminating the need for external power lines. All three new branches of the Schilthornbahn are fully automated and equipped with emergency recall systems that return carriages to the station without requiring cable rescues.
Riders pay 23 Swiss francs for a return trip from Steckelberg to Mürren. A full journey from Steckelberg to the summit of the Schilthorn and back runs 115 Swiss francs.
