On Tuesday evening, I was googling Amden and learned about a historic stone stairway connecting Amden to Weesen, down below on the Walensee. The interwebs report that this "historic stairway" was the main connection between the two towns until a road connecting them opened in 1882, but I couldn't find any information on how old the trail was; the Amden-Weesen tourism website just says it's "historic," and includes an apocryphal story about a priest and a three-eyed horse ghost that took place "several centuries ago." After falling into disrepair, the stairway was restored between 2000 and 2005. We adjusted our route on Komoot to include it.
It was steep in places, with occasional peeks down to the lake:
...and had psychologically supportive cables along the most exposed sections.
Heading down, we encountered no one else on the trail, but we did pass a snail that was heading up.
We walked through Weesen along the sparkly blue Walensee, then followed the Linthkanal heading west. The canal was built in the early 1800s to prevent recurrent damaging flooding in Näfels, Weesen, and Ziegelbrücke. It eventually empties into the Obersee section of Lake Zürich some 50km to the west.
A few miles later, we crossed the bridge in Ziegelbrücke and entered the canton Glarus, the fourth canton of our hike. (We had begun in St. Gallen in Rorschach, then crossed Appenzell Ausserrhoden hiking to Gais and Gaebris, then Appenzell Innerrhoden hiking along the Alpstein ridge, and back into St. Gallen when we headed down to Unterwasser.)
We stopped at a grocery store in Niederurnen to stock up on apples and nuts, then continued southward through continuous villages along the Rauti creek...
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| Lots of sun-warmed rocks meant lots of lizards |
...until Näfels, where we headed up our next mountain.
The trail, in Swiss fashion, started with a straight shot up...
...before yielding to switchbacks along a Way of the Cross erected in 1991 by Franciscans from the Kloster Mariaburg to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the Swiss confederation. I regret that I did not take any photographs of the stations and their succinct but probably unintentionally humorous reminders that as we stumble on very steep ascents, so stumbled Jesus.
A little more than halfway up, we passed under Obersee Strasse, which takes drivers all the way up to the Obersee (a tiny lake, not to be confused with the Obersee section of Lake Zürich).
Driving/riding, of course, would have violated our Rules of Walking. A few less steep miles later, we arrived at the lake and Hotel Obersee, our accommodation for the night, where they had the best spare-roll-of-TP holder I've ever seen...
Almost as soon as we arrived, the increasingly dark clouds released a heavy downpour. We had been making it a habit to set off early to avoid rain, and had so far been successful.
After the rain stopped, we enjoyed dinner on the restaurant terrace. The sole vegetarian option was what we would come to learn is a Swiss staple: Chäsmagronen mit Apfelmus.
The word Chäsmagronen is Schwiizerdütsch, and far enough removed from Hochdeustch that even S wasn't sure what it meant. Our initial guess was something to do with macaroons, but it turns out to be mac & cheese, routinely served with applesauce--Switzerland's answer to Bavaria's Käsespätzle. Of course, in Switzerland (as in Bayern, but clearly not as in the U.S.), it's made with local cheeses cultured from milk produced by all those relaxed long-eyelashed cows grazing mountain meadow grass. No orange cheddar here...
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| Evening view from the terrace |
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| This stork deserves an award for Best Nontraditional Use of Silverware |
After dinner, we walked around the lake.
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| Art along the trail by sculptor Jacky Orler |
Ta da! 11.2 miles, 2,100' ascent, 1,900' descent, plus 2 miles around the Obersee.
Given how straightforward and urban this day's hike was, I was beginning to worry that our route was going to become a little repetitive: up and down and up again, bucolic but with decreasing variety, the most breathtaking rocks behind us on the Alpstein. Turns out I needn't have worried...
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