Tag Archives: mountains

Switzerland

Doing it on our own

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After our last climbing course, Kay wanted to buy a set of quick draws and some more carabiners so that we could go climbing on our own, but we still had the problem of how to get there. Most climbing spots in Switzerland are only accessible by car and Kay just has his motorbike.

Kay was worried that if we would leave our bike gear by the bike, it would get stolen, yet it would really be a lot to hike up with to the climbing areas.That’s when I came up with the brilliant idea of buying a Pacsafe bag to attach to the bike. I’ve known about Pacsafe for years since reading about them in my subscription to Outdoor Photographer years ago, and it was the perfect solution for us to take all the gear off and safely lock it up while we hiked and climbed.The weather was so beautiful this weekend. Sunny, warm, but not hot, and with a cool breeze running along the hills sometimes.After a short hike, we reached the climbing area around Mythen where there are several routes from 3a-7ish climbing grades. We stuck to the 3-4 levels to get used to doing it on our own.Kay at the top of the second route above. Below was the view when I climbed up myself.Some succulents growing near our last route.The last route was actually pretty tough for us. Kay started first and got stuck at one point, and when I went up a little while later, I almost didn’t make it past the same tough point. But I kept thinking, “Kay can do it, so can I!” 🙂

Here he is at the top. The view was definitely worth it, even with the weather closing in.Selfie at the top too!Kay preparing the rope to abseil down.View from up there looking down on Vierwaldstättersee. It was pretty breathtaking.I went down first and Kay followed. I am getting the hang of this abseiling by yourself thing.In fact, abseiling might be one of my favorite parts of climbing. It sure is the laziest part. 😉

Back down again, Kay was pretty smiley. And handsome. Don’t forget that!One last selfie and it was time to head back on the bike. The ride back down the curvy hill was certainly easier than the way up. On the way up, I felt like I was in danger of falling off because of the heavy backpack, but on the way down I just needed to make sure that I did not dive into Kay.We are hoping that we’ll be able to get some more climbing done this summer, but things are starting to get tight. Only a couple more weeks until Kay is off for the army and weekends are filling up left and right.

Switzerland

Guided Husky Walk in Muotathal

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A while back I headed in the direction of Luzern for the weekend for a friend’s hen do. On a Saturday in February, we headed to the Hüttenhotel Husky-Lodge in Muotathal to learn how huskies are cared for and to go on a guided snowshoe walk with them.

The dogs were SO sweet and I left the trip wanting to bring one home with me!

We learned that they are so friendly and tame. If you do not hurt them, they will not hurt you. Belly rubs were much appreciated!

We split the hike with one dog per two persons and unknown to me and my partner, we picked the alpha dog of the pack. She always wanted to be at the verrry front of the trail!

Although we didn’t ride on a sled with the dogs, it was very interesting to experience walking with them. I already have experience snowshoe walking with Kay and with the dogs, it was a whole different experience!

The dogs with blue eyes were male and the ones with brown eyes were female. They had some Siberian huskies and some Swedish kinds… I forget all the different types, but they said they sometimes trade dogs to keep the genes healthier in breeding.My partner had the dog most of the way up and the dog was really pulling her. My friend could barely control the dog even walking. It was a bit funny seeing the dog surge forward.We switched shortly before our summit and the dogs really do help alleviate the energy required for uphill climbs! But on the reverse… it can be quite disastrous going downhill if you are not in control of your dog!

I have an OK time leading dogs and I seemed to be better about holding our dog back than my partner. Maybe part of it helped that I was speaking to my dog in Swiss-German, unlike most of the English colleagues around me. It was hilarious to hear them try and say “Stop, slow, slower!!” to the dogs with no reaction.

She might be peeing during our break, but she was still cute. 🙂

I really had to be careful on the way down to take slow and steady steps and make sure that when she would pull ahead, she would not set me off balance, toppling me over.

Overall, the walk was much more enjoyable with the dogs. They helped pull you up, down and forward on the long stretches. You could really feel the difference in energy exhausted on the flat stretches.

The weather was not the greatest, but it didn’t rain or snow, and at the end of the day we saw a bit of blue sky and some mountains in the distance. All in all, not a bad day!

We ended the evening back at the lodge with a fondue dinner. I had risotto and lamb to keep gluten free and we all enjoyed a well-deserved glass of wine!

Switzerland

Sleeping in the Mountains

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With Street Parade coming up and summer coming to a close, Kay and I wanted to get out of Zürich for the weekend and spend a night in the Alps, so last Saturday morning we hopped on the train with our coffee and my bagged refrigerator oats at 6:30am and rode 2 hours towards Dallenwil to start an Alpine trail.

Mmm Mmm, baggie food. It was actually blueberry and goji berry refrigerator oats and it was tasty, despite looking like a bag of barf.

The train was also packed at 6:30am because we weren’t the only ones escaping Street Parade. Streets filled with smoke, thousands of people dancing in sweaty, embarrassing getups, trash, puke, foot and train traffic? No thanks. I’ll take the Alps over that any day.

I was gutted to find out that I forgot my walking sticks though. My magical walking sticks. It made hiking seem very, very slow… for me. Not for Kay, who was always about 500m or more ahead.

We had lots of cows on our trails, which meant watching out for fresh cow pies. But the cows were so cute and friendly!

Swiss cows are used to wanderers walking through their grounds and some of them even come over for pets. Apparently they like being scratched behind the ears… and they like licking salt off you too!

Mmmm, salty hikers!

It became a bit cloudy the more we were hiking, which is great for walking, but when we got to the top of our hills it was quite chilly after all the rain during the week.

And those blasted clouds started following us up on the hill and surrounding us in cloud every time we got to a peak damnit!

Still, it’s hard not to admire the beauty around you as you are walking.

When we got to the end of the pre-alpine trail, the alpine trail started up and it was actually fairly steep and scary. Sometimes on one side there would just be a big, rolling hill, but I kept my eyes on the path and kept going.

We also saw for the first time a sheep dog, which barked at us for 20 minutes while we took a bathroom break and tried to decide if the dog would bite us or not. We weren’t anywhere near the sheep, but we had to walk into the sheep dog’s area to pass.

Kay walked along the fence until it became too steep on the one side and the dog barked at him the whole time. I shushed the dog and told him to be quiet and then I crossed over the fence while the dog was by Kay. I was a little scared that he would come attack me since he was a very big dog, but almost as soon as I crossed the dog came halfway towards me and then lay down in the middle of the path and was quiet while I walked past him.

In order to travel light, Kay wanted me to try sleeping in a bivi bag for the first time so he could avoid carrying the tent and give us the opportunity to sleep in many places tents could not be set up. This is how we were able to settle on the location below for the night.

Bivi (or bivy) bags are basically water and windproof bags that you put your sleeping bag in for the night. It’s kind of like sleeping out in the open without a tent, except that you still have a sleeping mat and protection from the rain and wind. Sort of.

I say “sort of” because my bivi bag was cheaper material than Kay’s, so as soon as I was in it for the evening it was already forming condensation on the inside. Kay told me to sleep with the bivi bag unzipped, which helped a little… but I woke up in the middle of the night with a snail two inches from my face on the inside of my bivi bag. AHHH.

Whew. Aside from the snail and the sporadic claustrophobia feelings inside the bags, I slept OK. It was a pretty windy spot on the mountain and I got pretty cold at times at night, so at some points I did need to close the hood of my sleeping bag to cover all but my nose… and at other times I thought I would suffocate if I didn’t free my arms a little. But it was worth it to wake up in this setting:

In typical mountain settings, the ground warms up in the morning and the dew starts to evaporate into clouds that rise up and over the mountains. The only bad thing about all the condensation and dew is that all our packs had gotten fairly wet overnight. It was the biggest difference than sleeping in the tent where your pack is safely inside the tent, protected from dew.

But sometimes when I woke up at night with my face poking out of my sleeping bag, I got to see a sky full of stars that I’m not used to seeing in the city. It was magical!

We also had not found a water source before camping for the night and unfortunately, we ran out of water during breakfast the next morning. I had a mild panic attack as we started our 4 hour hike on Sunday with little to no water left in Kay’s pack.

I may have been desperate enough to be picking grass and licking the dew off of it. And leaves…. leaves that tasted strongly of chives. I was thirsty!

The hike the next day was not nearly as fun without my sticks and with such rocky, muddy paths going down the hill.

Below is basically what one of our paths looked like… and I was not impressed in my dehydration! A fellow wanderer told us this was the difference between a “walk” in the mountains and a “hike”. And he was right!

We made it to water eventually and then back home, but we didn’t get quite all the hiking done so Kay wants to head back to this region again for a day hike to get to the last peak with a lookout point over lake Luzern.

How do you feel about camping in the wilderness? Would you ever sleep in a bivi bag?

Switzerland

Braunwald 2013

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On our second weekend in the new flat, we headed back to Braunwald again to try out my birthday present – climbing gear – and went to do some via ferrata climbing.

Below is the start of the short hike from the Braunwald station up to the start of the via ferrata.

I was having some trouble at the start… my newish climbing sticks were having trouble staying open and my point and shoot wasn’t taking pictures on my SD card, so I ended up using the iphone, which was a bit of a pain while climbing.

And while we started without a cloud in the sky, I joked to Kay that when we got to the top we’d be covered in fog/clouds. Well lookie here!

*Shakes fist at mountain* Why?? Every time! Sigh.

At least these clouds were coming and going, but you could see as the day warmed up that air was pressing up from the valley and wrapping around the mountains.

It actually made for nice climbing though. When the sun was out it got a bit too hot, but when a cloud would encompass you, you would be covered in a nice cool mist. It was very refreshing!

Mind you, I was only taking pictures with the iPhone during the non-scary, stable-footing areas. So if you think any of these are scary, imagine what I was doing when I was too nervous to take the phone out for fear of dropping it!

It was actually right before this shot below when we started the red-line (intermediate) trail that there was a part Kay said was a bit “tricky”. Well, apparently tricky to Swiss = freaky to non-Swiss. It was just a little overhang wraparound that had some “tricky” footing and nothing really below it besides a huge drop, so I had some panic moments as I struggled to overcome my fear and find the footing around it.

Of course with via ferrata, you are hooked in the whole time with your two clips, but still… I didn’t necessarily want to fall 10m and hang by some rope and wire with no real footing to recover. That would have freaked me the eff out.

Actually we took a look at the start of the black trail (expert) and I decided that it would be too difficult for me that day, but on the descent we started hearing screams from the black trail. It sounded like a woman screaming for her life, but Kay thought it was a little boy who was climbing with an older man we saw.

Still, it is very disconcerting to hear shrieking echoing around the mountains! It really sounded like whoever it was, they were having a hysterical breakdown.

“Are you OK?” asked my sweet husband intermittently. Usually he asked during times when I was in fact pretty scared and trying to keep going.

Or maybe I was just taking a picture break. 🙂

Those white patches in the back are actually snow. Normally I think the snow is all gone at this level, but we had a really terrible spring and late start to summer, so there was still a fair amount of snow around the top, but not on the trails.

By the way, can you tell that I totally picked out the same helmet as Kay? Matchy matchy. He hates it. 🙂

Panorama view at the top of the red trail, where we decided to have lunch in a nice grassy area.

The way down was fairly steep and there was not so much to grab on to… we actually had to hold onto the wire a fair amount which made Kay nervous. At the very end there was something like a a 30m/100ft ladder to climb down, also suspended over basically nothing, where at the end you would climb to the left and further down. Descending that was also pretty freaky, although less so than the other area because at least on a ladder I know where to put my feet!

Then we hiked back to the cable lift and rode down with these beautiful views.

I love the mountains! Why don’t we visit them more often?

There was also a magical waterfall on the way down. I could almost get used to living up here if it wasn’t so far away from reality.

For now I think we’ve agreed that we should try out some more red lines before I attempt a black line. I’m sure Kay would be fine, but the look of the start of the trail made me nervous. Another day!

Travel

Weekend in Wallis

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In, gosh… 2011 (how long ago it sounds!) we received a smartbox as a wedding present that would let us stay one night in a number of fancy hotels or wellness centers in Switzerland, eastern France or northern Italy.

During the winter of 2011/12 we put off deciding when to go because we thought it would be nice to go in the summer and spend one night in the mountains camping and then another night in the hotel. Then we would really have a full weekend to utilize the long journey time by train.

When summer 2012 rolled around we finally sat down and decided which hotel we wanted to stay at but because it was really a wellness hotel with a sauna and steam room, Kay thought it sounded like more a winter activity and he wanted to wait until it was cold to go.

Well, here we are in January and the smartbox was expiring soon! Without waiting we finally booked the hotel last week and left for Mörel early Saturday morning.

Mörel is around 2.5 hours from Zürich and originally I wanted to spend two nights in the hotel, but Kay wanted to save some dough so we just planned to go early Saturday, spend the day snowshoe walking and then later enjoying the wellness center and then on Sunday we would head back.

We got to Salina Maris hotel around 9:30am. They were pretty surprised when we told them we walked up from the station. I didn’t read the reservation email thoroughly, but apparently they would have sent a driver to pick us up from the train station for free! Oh well… it was only a 10-15 minute walk up the hill.

The hotel generously let us check in early (9:30 is pretty darn early!) and rented us snowshoes and poles. We dropped our thing in the room, rearranged our backpacks for hiking and were off.

As you can kind of tell, the mountains were pretty gorgeous. When we first arrived it was really sunny and we had blue skies, but we did experience some clouds and fog throughout the walk.

Snowshoe walking is also, by the way, pretty fun. Tromping around like a little kid in the snow is great!

I ended up just wearing long underwear under my normal trekking pants. I had puffy $10 snowpants from Kohls in my backpack, but I didn’t need to use them because it was warm enough walking.

After a few hours of walking the trails, we headed back down the gondola to Mörel again and prepared ourselves for wellness time!

In the wellness area we spent several hours using the sauna for 15 minute increments, taking a rest outside, using the steam room for 10 minutes, resting and repeating. At the end we jumped in the salt pool and enjoyed the jacuzzi.

At 18:00 there was an apero for guests and we met the other guests (all Swiss) in the hotel for some white Walliser wine. Everyone at the apero was very friendly and I had a nice time trying to keep up in Swiss German.

One of the couples at the apero ended up going to the restaurant as well so we actually enjoyed our complementary three-course meal with a pair from the Biel region! It was not as “romantic” as we had planned, but I was surprised and delighted to have much such open, friendly Swiss. It is really not common to just sit down and eat dinner with complete strangers here, but they were so much fun to talk to.

The next morning we got up and enjoyed the delicious brunch before enjoying the sauna and steam room one last time. When we headed back to the train we were both extremely relaxed.

I can highly recommend the hotel rooms at Salina Maris. They are very large, have nice, clean bathrooms and even kitchnettes and fridges to use for the weekend. The ski slopes were also practically empty, in case you were looking for more reasons to go. 😉