Braunwald to Urnerboden Valley (Kanton Border Glarus/Uri)

Wednesday October 10 -- The perfect hiking weather is continuing day after day, so off we go again under forecast of balmy temperatures but wind in the Alps. As it turns out, we ended up TOO close to the Alps, where clouds hung low just over the highest peaks (to our North the cloudless blue skies) and the winds were cold which was unexpected when we have Fön winds.

But still, plenty to stir the senses as we made our way from Braunwald in Canton Glarus to the Canton Border in the Urnerboden Valley in Kanton Uri: The vertical cliff faces that accompanied us on the entire 4-hour hike, the everpresent stunning peak of Mount Ortstock (2717m), the unexpected sensational views into the Linthal and Urnerboden Valleys from the rather unassuming peak called Rietstöckli (a small cone-shaped hill covered with avalanche supports requiring 5000m of steel.... to prevent accumulation of winter snow), pleasant and not difficult hiking trails, and a small dairy farm offering self-serve refreshments (and cheese of course) on a lovely terrace supplied with picnic tables and umbrellas (and since we were the only people far and wide, nobody smoking!!!)

To finish off the day, a Postbus ride back home via the Klausen Pass and the Schächental valley, our favourite mountain pass... although I ended up falling asleep on this 100-minute bus ride!

As we rode the gondola cable car from Braunwald to a point higher on the hillside (to save 250m of uphill walking) we got a good view South of the area we would be walking (above the cliffs) to the point on the left called Rietstöckli, from where we got a great view into the next valley: Urnerboden.

Cable car ride from Braunwald lower village to Grotzenbühl, where we started the hike

Braunwald has been the starting point for 6 hikes for us in the last five years (blue one we did twice). This time it was the 11-km (orange) trail to the Urnerboden Valley.

Another view South, this time including the peak of Mount Tödi, which usually dominates the skyline here but today was quickly covered by the thick clouds that settled on the Alps this day

Upper alpine pasture called "Ober Stafel". Past the woods behind it we were expecting a lake, according to the map and trail descriptions

It's been a long dry summer this year, and here the effect is pronounced: The lake (Bergetenseeli) is totally dried out

We decided that next year, we will hike up to the next  ridge, then over the saddle (where there is currently snow) into the next upper valley: Glattalp

These stone towers that we saw from the cable car are called "Teufel's Chilchli", which means "Devil's Church". Not a pretty name!

No matter that the clouds covered the sun once in a while, we still had stunning views, this one North along the Linthal Valley and Braunwald on the hillside, where we started

To the East, this area is called the "Tectonic Arena Sardona" (Glarus Thrust), a UNESCO World Heritage Site

We had our lunch here, at the foot of Mount Orststock, looking down at the upland moor valley, and looking for Ibex in the cliffs (didn't see any)

One last little section to the peak called Rietstock, so many avalanche structures in this one place. 5000m of steel were apparently necessary for these structures, although many are also made of wood. The reason for this effort is that the cantons wanted to keep the Urnerboden Valley accessible during the winter, but this section is right at the entrance to the valley, and avalanches continually blocked the road.

The avalanche structures are actually almost works of art

From the peak of the Rietstöckli, this unexpected view into the Urnertal Valley, all the way to the Klausen Pass at the back. The goal of our hike is the curved road below, from where we caught the bus up and over the pass

Where there is the possibility of food, there are Alpine Choughs. 

Our trail took us through the avalanche fences, and down the cliff ahead.

Before descending, a look up to the peak of Mount Ortstock

At first it looked steep, but the zigzag trail had just the right slope to make for a comfortable descent. We assume the farmers use this trail to bring their cows up to the higher pastures in summer.

From below, just a few of the many avalanche fences on this peak.

Heading into the Urnerboden Valley, the entire valley is enclosed by these beautiful cliffs.

A comfortable road takes us to Urnerboden, which, by the way, is the largest alpine pasture in Switzerland, and 1200 cows spend the summer up here.

Always happy to be able to fill up our water bottles!

We came across this cheese dairy (owners are not up here any more), still offering refreshments (self-serve) out of a fridge that they seem to need to tie down. I was thrilled about the cute little terrace!

So lovely to enjoy refreshments on our own alpine terrace without any other people around! (there is ALWAYS someone smoking!)

Last view across Urnerboden Valley to the Klausen Pass, before descending to the road.

At the road we are at the border of Cantons Glarus (where we came from) and Uri, which is ahead of us.

Waiting for the bus at the Kanton Border

From the bus heading toward the Klausen Pass, we get a good look backwards to the little peak with the superb views.

On the West side of the Klausen Pass is my favourite view: The stunning cliffs below Mount Schärhorn. We have walked the trail below these cliffs as well.

11 km starting on the hillside above Braunwald, and ending at the Kanton Border (Glarus/Uri). Total walking time: 3 hours 45 minutes, although we were up here for 6 hours.

Hike through the Grossschlierental Valley in Central Switzerland

October 6, 2018 -- Sometimes everything seems to work against us, and yet we still try to have something good to remember after the pain is gone.

The trail we studied on the map had a very nice-looking little stretch of moor landscape along a winding creek (Glaubenberg Moor, total 125 km2), that's something we like, and an interesting possibly adventurous trail into a ravine... It was a valley not far from home (just South of Lucerne near Lake Sarnensee), but the drawback was we had to walk the full 15 km to get out of the valley, i.e. no places to catch trains or buses in between. AND from the map it was clear that half of that was on asphalt or forest roads, which I try to avoid in most cases, but it was all downhill, and if the landscape is interesting the other parts make up for it.

Negative:
As we got out of the bus at the pass road at 9:a.m., it was very cold and uncomfortable and way more cloud cover than forecast. 

Positive:
After 10 minutes' walk we got to the lovely Schwendi-Kaltbad restaurant, which was warm and cosy and we spent an hour there with hot-chocolates and our first chestnut-paste dessert of the season. Also, we found out there is quite a history here. Iron mineral springs were discovered in 1642, a bath house built in 1672, a health resort in 1860 which burned down in 1970, and one of the original outbuildings converted to the current restaurant in 1983.

The piece of wood above is too small to carve an Alphorn, but this is the kind of branch they try to find for this instrument. The dessert is called Vermicelle

Negative:
I got into an altercation with a man about an off-leash dog (he unleashed it RIGHT BESIDE the sign that reads "Dogs must be on leash in this nature conservation area) who told me to "go back where I came from" (by which he meant Germany... I get that a lot).

Positive:
The moor-land was very very pretty, but unfortunately was only 25 minutes of what turned out to be a 5-hour hike. But we read later that this is apparently the largest moor area in Switzerland (125 km2). We also got to witness the eerie bellowing of Red Deer Stags, echoing across the valley. Highlight of the day. 

This is called the MoorBear Trail and is 25 minutes of lovely trails along this winding stream. This is a conservation area because these moor biotopes are becoming rare in Switzerland.

Negative:
This was followed by 3 km of road, still no sun... 

Positive:
.... followed by 15 minutes' walk through a forest filled with all kinds of funghi, and a big sign with rules on how much you were allowed to pick. I'll bet the man with the dog would not have followed those rules either. I wouldn't want to eat the ones we saw, though.

1) No picking of mushrooms on the first 7 days of every month. 2) Max.2 kg per day per person, and max 500 gm of Morel Mushrooms. 3) Only permitted to pick in daylight. 4) Children under 12 may only pick mushrooms if accompanied by an adult. 5) No collection for commercial purposes.

We weren't sure why the rocks were laid out so haphazardly for this trail. It was not very comfortable to walk, and most likely also not for mules in the pre-automobile days...

Negative:
Another 3 km of paved road, so looking forward to the detour into the ravine... but look, what's new?

On our map there should have been a trail into the forest here, but we could find nothing.

We asked a couple of local farmers picnicking nearby, they said that trail hadn't been used for about 10 years now, was totally overgrown because the river had washed too much of it away, so the official trail was now along the road, i.e. an additional 3 km of paved road...

We wanted to walk this green-marked trail into the ravine, but it did not exist any more. Big disappointment, especially as the alternative was another 3 km of paved road.

Positive:
Absolutely nothing. 

No, not really. We had a couple of views across the Sarnen Valley to Mount Stanserhorn, and to the summit of Mount Titlis.

Mount Stanserhorn on the left. The one with the world's only open air double-decker cable car.

This is the forest and ravine that we would have like to walk out of. The trail would have exited the ravine here at this spot.

This is the trail that used to go through the ravine. Actually, it used to be the only access to the upper valley before the road was built during WWII by Polish refugees

But wouldn't you know it, when we FINALLY got to the village with the bus stop (Schonried) after 4.5 hours of walking, the bus wasn't running that hour, which meant another 30 minutes to the next train station in Alpnach Dorf, BUT at least 10 minutes of that was through a pretty alley of trees.... small consolation for my very sore feet, which required two full days to recover....

There was another small pretty forest section before reaching the village of Schoried, where we had planned to catch the bus. Here we catch a glimpse of the Alpnachersee to the North.

Since the bus wasn't running this hour, we walked another 30 mintues to the train station in Alpnach Dorf, below (Alpnachersee in the background, and Mount Rigi which you can see from a lot of places in Switzerland)

This 10-minute stretch through a tree alley was a small highlight.

Big Farmer and Little Farmer were cute too.

Central Switzerland farm house

 

Pretty decorated balcony

The church in Alpnach Dorf.

It took us 5 hours to walk the 19 km through the Grosschlierental Valley from Langis to Alpnach Dorf

Another Section of the Strada Alta (High Road) in the Leventina Valley

Wednesday October 3, 2018 -- Just South of the Gotthard Tunnel is a 50-km trail from Airolo to Biasca in the Leventina Valley called the "Strada Alta" or High Road, on which you can walk from one quaint village to the next, parallel to and above the roar of the freeway below. We can access this trail at many places by bus, and had already done a couple of sections (both in winter months) so it was time to do a section while the weather is still sunny and warm (the never-ending summer continues!). This section was from Rossura to Cavagnago.

We started at noon which is really rather late for us because we were worried about early morning shade on this side of the mountain, but we won't be doing this again any time soon for two reasons: 1) We have more energy when we start early and the noon-time heat made us sluggish, and 2) the noon bus run is actually a school bus for kids who live in the mountains and go home for lunch, and what a noise of little girls all inquiring in unison in high-pitched Italian voices where we were headed to, like they'd never had adults on their bus run before....

And we needn't have had to worry about sunshine, it would have been OK at 10 a.m. as well, and by noon was surprisingly warm. The stretch we picked should have taken 3 hours to walk (we were planning to add an additional 45 minutes to the next village called Sobrio), but with the heat and loitering in the villages, we managed to make 4.5-hours out of it, just in time for the bus back down. The next village will have to wait for another trip. We've got two more sections to walk, then we'll have added our footsteps to that particular 50-km section....  

Biggest surprise to me was the style of houses here: Almost all were in the dark brown wood of the Valais region of Switzerland, rather than the stone rustico houses I have come to associate with Canton Ticino, proof of the early migration hundreds of years ago of the people from the Valais region to this part of Switzerland. 

And another interesting thing we learned: We walked through a large chestnut forest where all the trees were numbered. A quick check on the Internet informed us that decades ago, when chestnuts were a staple food, the communities looked after their families by assigning trees to them, and only that family could collect the nuts that fell from that tree.... 

The San Lorenzo Church is the first thing you see when you step out of the bus in Rossura

Since we visited this church on the previous leg of this trail, we decided to move on right away toward the next village of Tengia

The houses in these Ticinese villages are actually Valais-style architecture

It's always a treat to come across waterfalls and ponds such as this one.

A large part of our 4+ hour hike was through forest such as this one

On our approach to Calonico, we saw this lovely church (San Martino) perched on a cliff high above the Leventina Valley

Again, we decided not to visit this church, but to check out the village of Calonico instead, which we really liked.

The Strada Alta Trail is also part of National Trail No.2: The Trans Swiss Trail

I thought this was rather cute

This house behind me is a historical building dating from 1684 which has been renovated by a group called "Foundation for Vacations in Historical Monuments" and is being rented as a vacation home

Built in 1684

I rather liked this replica of a church: This is the standard rustico style of architecture here, stones without mortar.

We came across this Grotto (Ticinese Restaurant) in the chestnut forest. If it wasn't closed for the season, we would have stopped for something to drink here

We wondered why the trees had numbers on them. Seems that decades ago each local family was assigned a tree and they could harvest the chestnuts from it.

We also quite enjoyed the village of Anzonico

In Anzonico, we sat on the bench in front of the church and had coffee, and enjoyed the view to Chironico on the other side of the Leventina Valley.

Across the valley is a sunny plateau with a very lovely historical town called Chironico. We have been there twice.

Shortly before our destination we came across this very old church, Oratorio di San'Ambrogio, the oldest part of this building dates from the 13th Century. Inside were very pretty frescoes

 

Gorgeous frescoes behing the altar in the little chapel of San'Ambrogio in Segno, shortly before Cavagnago.

More interesting houses along the way

The last village we managed to fit in before catching the bus back down to the valley bottom was Cavagnago. We had a few minutes left to have a quick look.

Interesting hexagonal-shaped fountain in Cavagnago

Five more minutes before the bus came, I had enough time to have a quick peek into the church here.

More frescoes, this one of The Last Supper, a popular subject for paintings.

On these narrow mountain roads, a small van-bus is the norm. This time no kindergarden children!!

On the way back toward Lavorgo, we pass through the villages we just walked through. This is Anzonico.

On a previous hike we walked from Osco to Anzonico. This time it was 11 km from Anzonico to Cavagnago. On the other side of the valley, we've walked from Lavorgo to Chironico to Giornico twice already.