We had one flub in Muotathal: on the edge of town, a couple blocks from our hotel, was the entrance to the Hölloch ("Hell Hole"), the third longest known cave in Europe and the 11th longest in the world. It's 131 miles long and nearly 3,400 feet deep, and we missed it. We had 11 miles to hike, almost 5,000' to climb, and rain in the afternoon forecast, so couldn't spare most of the morning for a cave tour. Oh well.
We headed downhill and across the Muota river, then started up the next ridge. Our pass of the day was Chinzig Chulm ("Kinzig Pass") at 6,801'. The trail briefly paralleled a small gorge with water coursing through it--a slot canyon in the making--then emerged into steep sunny meadows.
Some local history helped fill the gap left by skipping the Hölloch. When we descended toward Muotathal on Friday, we found ourselves on the Via Suworow, a route we continued to follow uphill on Saturday. The route is named for and follows the path of Russian Field Marshall Alexander Vasilyevich Suworow, who, in September 1799 during the War of the Second Coalition, led some 20,000 Russian troops up and over Chinzig Chulm down to Muotathal. After a fierce battle in the valley, he led his remaining troops over the Pragelpass to Glarus. 15,000 survived.
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| S regaled me with military history as we hiked uphill. |
After feeding the horse flies breakfast, we decided to stick to the switch-backing road instead of cutting across the switchbacks on the trails. There was only so much blood we were willing to share with the local fauna.
Once the road leveled out, S, who is always keen for an Apfelschorle at the end of a steep climb, aimed us toward a small Chäserei (cheese-making farm). While he was setting down his backpack outside, I zipped inside and ordered a Schorle for him--and spotted a Fruchtwähe resting on the counter. Fruchtwähe is a Swiss custard tarte studded with fruit (apricots in this case), sometimes with ground nuts (hazelnuts in this case). I seized the moment: holding up a birthday candle, I explained to the proprietor my failed effort to find cake the day before. She took it from there.
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| Best "cake" of the entire hike, still warm from the oven |
Here's Carly sitting on the decor. The wooden heart is engraved with the word Grüezi, Schwiizerdütsch for Gott gruesse euch ("may God greet you"--equivalent to Bayerisch Grüss Gott). The greeting becomes Grüezi mitenand ("may God greet y'all") in situations with more than one greetee. It wasn't until we got closer to Grindelwald that we started hearing anything approximating Grüss euch ("greetings, you-plural"). Until typing this blog post, we mistook Grüezi for a contraction of Grüss dich, "greetings, you-singular," and heard Grüezi mitenand as "greetings you-singular et al."
I spent a lot of time on this trip listening to how people said Grüezi, trying to figure out the progression of diphthongs. Some folks could make the -üe- stretch on forever, before following it with a short, clipped -zi. Grüüüüeeezi!
After birthday tarte, we followed the goats down and then up the road, with a few switchbacks here and there...
...until we met back up with our trail. We were pretty sure there were fantastic things to see just behind the clouds, but we did not see them.
Swiss cows are pretty laid back critters...
There were probably interesting things to see here too:
We ate lunch near the Seenalper Seeli ("wee lake in the Alps-lakes region"). The suffix -li is a frequent diminutive in Schwiizedeutsch.
Let this photo of fly-sustaining cow poop serve as a synecdoche, a small representative standing in for the massive total accumulation of cow poop that we hiked through and around during our 15-day adventure. We congratulate ourselves on never slipping. The Swiss compensate for the cow poop everywhere with some of the finest small-farm locally produced mountain cheeses in the world.
Our lunch spot:
We continued hiking upward after lunch. The upslope fog morphed repeatedly between clear and obscuring:
As we hiked upward, the meadow widened, and we felt like small specks in an expansive space, even when crowded in by the clouds. We could occasionally hear rocks tumbling down the high ridge to our right.
Lo--blue skies behind S!
The trail to the pass involved climbing up to the ridge...
...then continuing along a long, flat (relatively) expanse before finally reaching the pass. Summering in the alpine meadow were dozens of grazing sheep. Sheep are kinda dumb, and these sheep were no exception. The ones closest to the trail clearly wanted to have nothing to do with us, but chose the trail as their escape route, and were consternated that we kept following them. This, despite all the free space around them and the role-modeling of off-trail sheep who didn't understand what the lengthy hubbub was about.
Almost at the pass--go west and up a bit more, young man.
Whence we came:
Passes are fantastic places for wildflowers, presumably because of rain and local fog and cloud formation. Flowers are bigger here, and denser and more varied.
I'm particularly a fan of pasque flowers. They're in the buttercup family, and look the part when they first bloom; eventually they get bored and shove their leaves into alpine electrical sockets, and--pfffzzzt--their hair stands on end for the rest of the season.
At last, the pass! The blue signs point to climbing routes requiring technical gear; the yellow signs, to hiking trails. It took Suwarow and 20,000 soldiers with multiple cannons two days to cross over here from west to east.
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| Suwarow was here |
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| Whence we came |
View from the top:
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| Fairy thimbles growing in a protected spot at the top of the pass |
As we began our descent to Biel, a glider silently passed by overhead.
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| Can you see the glider? |
We saw three Murmeltiere--marmots--including this bold, scruffy one.
The trail down was steep and rocky, passing a few scree fields.
Almost at the end of the day's hike. This field was full of eriophorum, a.k.a. cotton grass, a type of sedge.
We overnighted at Hotel Biel-Kinzig, a relatively newly built ski hotel with an adjacent gondola lift. We had meant to stay at a cheaper hotel in the Schächental valley below, but it permanently shuttered three weeks before we began our hike. We considered ourselves lucky to find other accommodations on relatively short notice--and we certainly didn't mind the views...
Ta da! 10.7 miles, 5,000' ascent, 1,800' descent--a beautiful hike.
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