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

A Long Hike to the "Bolle di Magadino" Nature Reserve

Wednesday March 4th -- You'd think we would know by now not to plan a mountain hike before checking webcams, and not to assume that just because we were in the same place two weeks earlier that the conditions are still the same... and even though it had snowed here in the North to the lowest levels, we certainly didn't expect the amount of snow we faced near Biasca where we wanted to do the final stretch of the Strada Alta ("high road"... of which we have two segments still to do) in the Leventina Valley.

So we stayed on the train (a long trip, because we took the old, longer route) to Bellinzona and did an easy but very, very monotonous walk along the Ticino Canal to the Magadino Nature Reserve (1500-hectare biotope for birds passing through), where only the final 30 minutes of the three-hour hike actually offered something to see. The first two hours to where the Ticino River enters Lago Maggiore were the longest 8.5 kms I have ever walked. Nothing to see except a row of trees and the same snow-covered mountain ahead... not even the water. And we could have gotten there with a bus, but we wanted to walk our 12 km.

At the reserve we saw a few standard winter fowl: Cormorants, various ducks and swans, Eurasian Jays and maybe a woodpecker. But we noticed that the marsh grasses had been cut, and there are sure to be way more birds when the marsh grasses grow again.

At least we had sunshine although also a cold wind... and the trail was not asphalt, so that's a good thing, and my feet hardly hurt, which is quite astounding. And now we've seen up close the marsh lands that we have often admired as we make our way past there by train on other excursions....

Start of our hike in Gudo. This was the only thing of interest we saw in the next two hours!

 

The Ticino River (one of Switzerland's most important rivers) just before it empties into Lago Maggiore. We walked about 8 km parallel to this, along the treed alley on the far left.

We started in Gudo and walked to Magadino, and walked the permissible trails through the Nature Reserve. It took us about three hours. There was a bit of a cold wind blowing, so not as comfortable as we had hoped. 

One interesting structure along the very straight path is the railway bridge, which crosses the large plain toward Locarno (this bridge we have crossed many many times!

A lone locomotive making its way across the railway bridge behind us.

View behind us to the East after we entered the nature reserve. 

The most interesting thing we saw on our hike!

Here the Ticino River empties into Lago Maggiore from the East. Directly across is the Maggia Delta, where the Maggia River empties into the Lake from the West (at the city of Locarno). 

At the end of two trails were these bird hides. No birds to see here, though.

The view of the Gambarogno (East side of Lake Maggiore) from the second Bird Hide. Our ultimate goal is that church across the way in the village of Magadino

 

View across Lago Maggiore from the bird hide. It is probably more interesting when everything is green!

On the last short stretch through the reserve is where we saw the more interesting ponds

 

Very common winter bird: The Cormorant

 

Other common winter birds

Last view of the reserve as we head along the lake to Magadino

Along the lakeshore were several art pieces made of locally quarried marble (Arzo Quarry near Mendrisio)

A look up at the church in Magadino before catching the bus back. A hike up this mountain is something reserved for another day.

 

And another last look across Lago Maggiore from Magadino on the lake. 

 

First and probably only time we will walk across the Magadino Plain!

We have done lots of hiking in the mountains arround this area

Three Monasteries on short hikes near Mellingen (Aargau) and Menzingen (Zug)

February 29 and March 1st, 2020  Two short weekend walks = one of our normal 12 km hikes, but over two days. Because we just wanted some fresh air, and didn't have any long weekend trips planned.

On Saturday we walked about 5 km along the Reuss River near the city of Wohlen, starting in a small and quaint medieval-looking town called Mellingen. The interesting thing about this stretch of the Reuss River between Bremgarten and where it flows into the Aar River at Brugg is that in a popular vote of 1965 it was decided that there should be no more construction along this section of the river, no motorboats, and no dams or blockages so that the river can flow as it will. We even saw evidence of beavers (they do try to tackle some very large trees!). It was slightly cold and windy, but we really just wanted a bit of an afternoon walk.

On Sunday we had no big plans, as the weather was supposed to be bad. But as the day was shaping up to be sunny we headed nearby to Menzingen in the direction of Aegeri again for another short walk through pastoral landscapes and around monastery grounds so we would be back home early in the day.

The main feature of both these walks was that the trail was mostly paved or forest trail, which was interestingly not too annoying but ideal for this time of year as it has been raining a lot and our preferred trails are simply too muddy.

(Photos of the 6-km walk from Mellingen along the Reuss River are HERE). 


Ca. 6 km walk from Menzingen to Aegeri (near Zug) on Sunday:
(30 minutes by bus)

A 6-km Sunday afternoon stroll in the area between lakes Zug and Aegeri, just a 30-minute bus ride from home. We started in Menzingen and walked via Gubel Monastery to Unterägeri

There is a very large working monastery in Menzingen, the main feature of this town. That's where we started on our walk. 

Close up view of the monastery in Menzingen, with its copper dome

The landscape is slowly starting to look spring-like

A view westward toward Lake Zug and the town of Cham

The Gubel Monastery. It was a popular walking destination for this Sunday afternoon.

The first fleabanes? (Tiny daisies)

We sat on a bench on the monastery grounds and admired the landscape to the South, with the back of Mount Wildspitz, and the forested area that we are going to cross before heading down to Unteräegeri behind that.

Cute little shed?

A typical farmhouse of this area

There used to be a sandstone quarry here, and this house was built in 1874 to replace an old barn to serve as accommodation for the quarry workers. The cornerstones of the house and the stairway are all made of the sandstone from the quarry across the road

 

Looking down at the town of Unterägeri before descending to the bus

This is near where we live, so we have done a lot of hiking in this area. Recently we started in Unterägeri and walked along the East side of Mt. Zug to Allenwinden. This time we started in Menzingen and ended in Unterägeri (both the yellow paths)