Hike to the Steinacher Look-Out Tower on Mt. Altberg near Zurich

Sunday March 8 -- It wasn't supposed to be a nice day, but we were surprised with some sunshine and decided to visit another look-out tower nearby, which we had spotted on a recent train trip as we drove past.

It is called the Steinacher Tower located on a small hill called Altberg, on the border between Cantons Zurich and Aargau. For us, only a ca. 1-hour trip by train and bus. The tower is fairly new, built in 2010, and is approx. 30m high. On a nice clear day you could get some stunning views of the Glarus Alps, and although we did see the mountains, it was -- as it often seems to be when we choose to climb a look-out tower -- somewhat hazy with white skies. It was also cooler than expected. And because of much recent rainfall, the unofficial forest trail that we chose to walk turned out to be much used by mountain bikers and very, very muddy (in this case, it would have been better to walk the regular forest roads). Difficult to walk as we had to pick our way around large mud puddles! As the day grew warmer, though, we enjoyed the sun-dappled forest with the signs of Spring, and ended up with a surprisingly pretty river-side trail along the Limmat River (the main river that flows through the city of Zurich) to reach the train station at Killwangen-Spreitenbach.

Side note to the Corona-Virus "panic": Fewer people use the public transit now (especially on Sunday when they can do an excursion by car) so we were surrounded by way fewer people than usual, much to our liking!

We got off the bus in the village of Weiningen, which is in Kanton Zurich

First we had a look at the very pretty half-timbered homes in the small village core

A lovely wine press would indicate that there is wine produced in Weiningen (thus the name?) and sure enough, the first part of our climb to the ridge of Altberg was through vineyards

This old building was an antiques shop with some very nice bronze statuettes on display

I rather liked these statuettes, looks like a lot of work went into creating them. There was a very hefty price tag on one of them!

The little church in Weiningen

Weiningen also had its own castle (the oldest parts of the building are from the 16th century), which is now the town library. 

Looking down at the village of Weiningen and the vineyards (Mount Heitersberg in the background)

On the way up the hill, the Glarus Alps East of Zurich look HUGE

After 30 minutes of picking our way along a muddy trail along the ridge of the hill, we finally came to the Steinacher Tower, built in 2010, so fairly new.

Heading up the tower to see the view

On this East side is the forest across the top of Mount Altberg, which we had just walked through

Mostly the best view was across the city of Zurich to the Glarus Alps

The Zurich Landscape, with Lake Zurich in the back and Mount Uetliberg (Zurich's home mountain) to the right

Looking down at the stairs in the tower

Heading back down the tower

More forest trails, this time not so muddy as this was the official trail. In all the forests there is always indication of trees blown over by recent gale-force winds

Happy to have spied and been able to photograph this pretty bird: A female Great Spotted Woodpecker (was quite high up in a tree)

Heading down to river level: This is the Limmat River, the main river that passes through Zurich on its way to Brugg nearby, where it and the Reuss River both join the Aar River on its way to the Rhine. 

We are happy to see these signs of Spring!

Instead of heading straight to the train station, we took a detour so we could walk an additional 1500 meters along the Limmat River on this narrow trail. We did not regret this!

Limmat River

Waterfowl... 

Our Sunday afternoon hike across Mount Altberg, from Weiningen in Kanton Zurich to Killwangen in Canton Aargau. The Canton border is the line in pink, near Würenlos. Just over 10 km, and it took us about 3 hours to walk. 

This satellite view shows how we walked exactly across the ridge of this small hill

And here is what the mountains looked like as we got home: This is very close to where we live...

Bernese Alps with Mounts Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau looking huge as a backdrop to Lake Zug