Rorschach to Lauterbrunnen - Day 8 - Muotathal to Biel

Saturday July 5, Muotathal to Biel

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.

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.

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.

Suwarow was here

Whence we came

View from the top:

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.

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.

Rorschach to Lauterbrunnen - Day 7 - Richisau to Muotathal

Friday July 4, Richisau to Muotathal

The pass of the day was the Pragelpass, at 5,086' and in our 5th canton, Schwyz, after which Switzerland is named. The hike was straightforwardly up, followed by straightforwardly down. 

We had more rain and clouds on Friday morning...

S reading the fine print on a very large map

We passed a lotta cows...

Up up up we went, through the wet grass...

Pragelpass thattaway...

...past pooping goats...

...and eventually reached Pragelpass, where the sun finally emerged and so surprised me that I forgot to take any photos of the pass, the Alm where we had soup for lunch, and the first few miles of our descent.

Three miles down the trail, we crossed what had been dubbed on Komoot as "Wobbly Bridge," with one commentor noting that "a railing is missing and it wobbles alarmingly when crossing the creek." Armed with this heads-up, the acrophobe was totally prepared to wobble--but it turned out that the bridge was newly rebuilt, protected with cable rails on both sides, and wobbled not one bit.  

Just past the bridge, we found a wild strawberry bonanza. We had seen strawberries most days, but this spot had the sweetest and most abundant berries of the whole trip.

S was lagging behind because strawberries needed to be picked.

The trail passed through meadows...

...and woods...

Note the yellow diamond-shaped blaze. Trails were well marked.

...before arriving at a large boulder- and scree-covered slope. Crossing this turned out to be the highlight of the day, due in part to the variety of colors, shapes, and sizes of rocks, the abundance of plants squeezing themselves into the most inhospitable of places, and a half-mile long stone path that had been meticulously laid across the mighty jumble of stones.

S near the top of a stone staircase

Scree and boulders had never been more fun, but all good things must end, and we headed down through the fields toward Muotathal, our destination for the evening. Fields enable cutting directly across switchbacks in the roads, but when we were there, they were also enabling horse flies to suck our blood without mercy...

...so as we approached Muotathal, we traded trails for roads and enjoyed not being sucked dry. (As I type this post, sixteen days later, the scabs are almost all gone.)

For the past several days, I had secretly been carrying birthday candles in my backpack in anticipation of S's birthday, and today was finally the day to use them. But it turns out German-speaking Switzerland is a far cry from Germany and Austria when it comes to Kuchen and Torte. Indeed, their preferred dessert is more akin to pie (more about that in the blog post for Day 8). Until a satisfactory Geburtstagkuchen could be found, we made due with a Manner Waffel.

Happy bday, S!

Ta da! 10 miles, 2,000' ascent, 3,450' descent.