Friday July 31 -- The last time we were in the Davos area was in 2017, where we discovered a beautiful Valley called the Sertig Valley. Flanking this valley to the East is Mt. Jakobshorn, locally known as "Davos' View Mountain". Along the mountain is a ridge that you can walk for about 90 minutes before descending either back into the Sertig Valley, or down the East side into the Dischma Valley. At that time I had decided, the next time we come back to this area, I want to walk that ridge trail.
In some places in Switzerland, when you overnight in a hotel or B&B in the region, you get a special guest card for discounts on cable cars. So that was our plan for spending two nights in Davos.... we received a guest pass for discounts for two days. So on Friday we used our discount card for the cable car ride up to Mt. Jakobshorn and walked the ridge trail. As for which valley to descend to: The descent to the Sertig Valley was less high and steep, but Urs especially wanted to discover the Dischma Valley to the East, so we descended there. More importantly though, we wanted to go right to the back of the Dischma Valley, so we planned it perfectly to reach the valley bottom at Teufi just as a bus was heading up.
Now, after 4 hours of walking -- including a very steep descent -- I would normally have called it a day. But after some unfortunate very dark clouds blocking the sun during the best part of our hike on the mountain ridge, the day had turned beautiful, and a nice cool wind blowing gave us a second burst of energy. So at the very back of the valley in Dürrboden we had something cool to drink, rested for an hour, and then walked the two hours back to Teufi along the old Via Valtellina mule trail, accompanied by the soothing sound of the Dischma River, an easy stroll for us. In the end it was a lot of sun exposure after all, and I was glad of a nice dinner in the cool dining room of the restaurant at Teufi, and a welcome shower at our B&B after a 20-minute bus ride out of the valley!
Highlight of the day: After our ridge hike, we were the only people on the wide open upper alp on the Dischma side, and got to enjoy loads and loads of marmots!
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| Heading up Mt. Jakobshorn on the first of two cable cars. Below is the main city of Davos, mostly catering to skiers in winter |
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Looking down the Landwasser Valley. The Sertig Valley is the first side valley to the left.
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Going up the second section. Across the valley is Mt. Weissfluh, which is the site for our excursion on the third day.
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Second section of the cable car up to Mt. Jakobshorn
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Beautiful weather this early in the day (9:00) and lovely lighting up here on the mountain
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View from the restaurant terrace at the summit station. Straight ahead is the Sertig Valley. In 2017 we walked out of that valley along the tree line, and then around the other side. On the left is the ridge we are walking this day
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The times provided on the signs in this area are all a little tight. To get to Teufi takes at least 3 hours 30 minutes, especially on the steep descent.
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Heading off onto the ridge. This is also a mountain bike paradise, and lots of bikes came up on the cable car as well. But they are all heading down into the Sertig Valley
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My heart is soaring because the day looks promising and I love ridge trails like this one
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View back to the Jakobshorn Summit Station where we started our hike. It's also possible to walk the ridge on the other side.
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More and more clouds are covering the sky, and we have to use every break in the cloud cover for photos!
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Heading South along the ridge
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A zoomed view into the Sertig Valley
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Panorama View to the South: Sertig Valley to the right, Dischma Valley to the left
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View to the West
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Large storm clouds forming. They were so dark we were sure it would raiin
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Enjoying the ridge trail
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Approaching the end of the ridge, the trail is now on the eastern side and we can see below the wide open alp where we are going to descend parallel to the stream. It's there we were hoping for sunshine, but it was not the case. This large upper alpine meadow is called Rüedisch Tälli.
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| Starting the descent from the Tällifurgga toward the Dischma Valley. Sunshine comes and goes. |
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Descending this beautiful wide open upper alp, we unfortunately did not have the sunshine I had hoped for, but we were "beating the heat" and there were NO other people!
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Filling up on fresh mountain water!
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Highlight of our day: Lots of Marmots, even babies!
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The baby kept running back and forth between the burrow and its mama! She didn't seem too concerned about our presence.
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Looking back at where we had descended, from above right. Finally, sunshine.
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More marmots, all pretty close to the trail.
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There was only one single farm on the entire hillside on the entire 700m descent. Till here it was good going. The rest of the 300m descent was on the steep road (on the left side) which was built to access this one single farm.
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The road from the Alp Rüedischtälli Farm descended in a zigzag, but was steep and annoying to descend on. Below is the road into the back of the Dischma Valley, which we traveled by bus later.
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Always impressive how the trees grow on the boulders.
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FINALLY, reached the valley bottom! We had almost 5 hours to complete what the trail markers claimed was a 3-hour hike, before the 13:45 bus (we started at 9 a.m.) and yet at this point, we still had to rush to make it to the bus stop in Teufi!
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A quick look up valley before heading down valley another 10 minutes to the bus.
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Crossing the bridge to the main road, here's a look down the Dischma Valley
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Across the bridge and up to the restaurant at Teufi, where we later had dinner and where the bus stops on its way up the valley. We got here with barely 10 minutes to spare
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Trail markers claimed this was a 3-hour hike, but it was at least 3.5 hours as drawn on the map, and closer to 4 hours to walk!!!
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We were very happy to have caught the 13:45 bus up the Dischma Valley from Teufi, because the next one wasn't until 15:15. By 14:10 we were at the back of the valley (the bus took longer than normal because the road was so narrow, and passing all the bikes plus trying to cross with oncoming cars was difficult). After refreshments and an hour to rest poor tired feet, we took on our second hike of the day, a 2-hour walk down the valley back to Teufi, where we had dinner before taking another bus back out the valley to our B&B for our second night... (This trail, by the way, is part of the Via Valtellina, a 135-km long ancient mule trail for the transport of wine from the Veltlin in Italy to Montafon in Austria).
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Walking along the Dischma River
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| The terrain was so pretty that the walk was not at all boring |
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| The 17:00 bus heading back down the valley. By this time we are almost at Teufi. |
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Back along the same stretch of river that we walked early in the afternoon!
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Restaurant at Teufi where we sat in the cool back dining room by ourselves and enjoyed a healthy meal (here they call it a "Fitness Menu", only meat and salads)
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Next door to the restaurant and across from the bus stop, this very pretty house.
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The only other hikes we have done near here are in 2013 and 2017. This day two hikes: ca. 4 hours from Jakobshorn to Teufi and then ca. 2 hours from Dürrboden to Teufi
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And back again at our B&B. 7 p.m. and we are ready for a shower and bed! The night before all the rooms were rented, but this night we were the only guests. Urs was fast asleep by 9 p.m, but surprisingly I could not sleep for a long time!
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