Rorschach to Lauterbrunnen - Day 5 - Amden to Obersee

Wednesday July 2, Amden to Obersee

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...    

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--mostly of the "ya think you're tired" variety--that as we stumble on very steep ascents, so stumbled their savior.

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...

Evening view from the terrace

This stork deserves an award for Best Nontraditional Use of Silverware 

After dinner, we walked around the lake.

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...

Malerweg Day 5 - Altendorf to Neumann Mühle

Thursday morning, June 5, I headed out of Altendorf...

Just outside town, a person walking a dog headed toward me. He looked me and my backpack and asked if I was hiking the Malerweg, because if I was, well, everyone likes all the stairs on the steep trails, but they can be slippery, and the route over there gets you to the same place down below and is much prettier and doesn't have stairs and is only a little longer. 

I pulled out a map and saw how the other trail intersected down the hill with the Malerweg. "I walk here every day," he continued, "and the upper route really is much nicer. I'm not telling you what to do, but you should really take the upper route." 

In general when locals stop me to say "don't go this way, go that way," I figure they're either serial killers who want to lure me to isolated places OR they know the local terrain better than Komoot does; so I took another detour off the Malerweg and went that way.

It didn't take long to catch up to the Malerweg down below in the Kirnitzschtal*. From there, the trail led up to the Schrammsteine massif, a long plateau with several exciting rock formations and peaks.

Looking across the Elbe to Zirkelstein and Kaiserkrone

This hiker preferred to go barefoot:

Bark beetles are a scourge, but they chow down in interesting patterns:

About halfway into my hike, I passed the Kleines Prebischtor ("Little Pravčická Gate"). The name is in contrast to the non-adjectival Prebischtor further east in the Czech Republic--the largest natural sandstone rock bridge in Europe.

Kleine Prebischtor

Note the Barefoot Hiker under the arch for scale:

Further along the Schrammsteine, the Kreutzturm is a popular spot for climbers.

Can you spot the climber?

The Malerweg then descended again into the Kirnitzschtal and passed through Lichtenhain. The teeny tiny town was bustling with tourists, a surprise given its small size, but this is in part thanks to the Lichtenhain Waterfall, a tourist attraction since the 1830s and the terminus for the Kirnitzschtalbahn tourist tram that runs through the valley all the way from Bad Schandau.

Waterfall is to the right of the hobbit smial

Tourists clearly need an automat to provide DDR-style soft serve 24/7:

Lichtenhain is a starting point--and probably has been since the 1830s--for several popular hikes...

...including the route up to the Kuhstall, the second largest natural sandstone bridge in the Elbsandsteingebirge after the Prebischtor.

https://www.saechsische-schweiz.de/malerweg/en/interesting/art-along-the-malerweg/johann-carl-august-richter

To the left in the images above is a gap in the rocks through which you can access the outside of the arch; and from the outside, there's a stairway built into a gap in the arch called the Himmelsleiter ("heaven's ladder"). The stairs are quite narrow--the better to allow foot-sized gaps to fall into to the right and left. This here acrophobe declined to ascend, and thus missed the apparently spectacular views of the Schrammsteine from the top of the arch. A series of staircases allows hikers to descend from the other side, keeping the traffic one-way.

Not for me.

From the Kuhstall, the Malerweg descended...

...back into the Kirnitzschtal, and eventually to the Neumann Mühle hut, where I had a mattress waiting for me in a room of 28 mattresses.

Late lunch: Kartoffelpuffer. I've had Puffer in Bavaria before--basically potato pancakes--but the ones at the hut were like sweet, onion-less latkes, served with whipped cream, applesauce, and powdered sugar. Lecker.

Additional things I learned about at the hut:

Hey kids, you might be able to speak Hochdeutsch, but can you speak Saeggs'sch? It's always good to know a few words in the local dialect! Now build a conversation using the Saxon words listed below.

Ta da! 12 of the day's 17 miles

The hut's restaurant was closing early, so I had an early dinner, then set off for a backpack-less hike in search of mobile data, so I could check in with S.

Poor piggy! African swine pest info in six languages

Ta da! Another 5 miles.

BTW, I hiked the entire Malerweg in sneakers. They were thoroughly up to the job and more comfortable than hiking boots, although going back and forth to Dresden gave me ample opportunities to grab my hiking boots had I decided I needed them.

*I'm fascinated by the name Kirnitzsch. Is that a vestigial -z- between the -t- and the -sch? I asked S how to pronounce it, and he blandly said "KEER-nitch." But what about the -z-? "What about it? KEER-nitch." Why's the -z- in there? I decided to ask Google to pronounce it. Among the multiple only-incorrect answers it offered, this was the best of the worst: