Alpine like hiking in my “backyard” and a brand new extreme route from Adliswil to Felsenegg

As some of you probably know from some of my other reports (for example this one), my current “backyard” is the Albis ridge. Every now and then I do some short hikes in this area and try to discover new alpine like routes from the Sihl valley up to the Albis ridge. I usually take my camera along - just in case, but don’t want to post every little hike. I now accumulated enough pictures and some new routes, so I think it’s time to post a new report. In addition last weekend there was the official reopening of the newly renovated “Luftseilbahn Aldiswil Felsenegg”.

On May 24, 2008 Freddy Nock opened up a new, extreme route from Adliswil to Felsenegg, something which probably won’t ever be repeated. He walked from the bottom to the top station of the newly renovated cable car in a nifty high-wire production, on one of the main cables – “of course” without safeguards… It was spectacular but probably nothing for the ordinary mortal hikr :-)


Following is an example of one of my hikes including some collected pictures from this area

This hike started in Adliswil and I walked to Leimbach Friedhof. From there I hiked up the Fallätsche, as nicely described by Roman Koch on his website, I chose the “aplin” route. Instead of turning right at around 730m towards the Teehütte, I kept going up the Fallätsche. Path traces actually take you all the way up to the main path, towards the end it is almost T5-ish. From the path I then went down to the Teehütte. Since May 10th, the lookout balcony is closed. I don’t exactly know why, but this area is known for landslides and instability, so I guess the ground moved again and the lookout is just not safe any more.

From the Teehütte I then traversed the Fallätsche over to the Glecksteinhütte as describe in Roman Koch’s hikr.org report here. Instead of going up to the ridge or down to Leimbach at Glecksteinhütte, I kept following path traces, more or less staying on the same altitude, to get to the Alpinahütte. Still staying on an altitude of about 680m above sea level, I continued to follow path traces (sometimes easy to find sometimes not present at all, easy T4). Shortly before Mädikon the path trace joins up with the Leiteli path and eventually goes uphill a little bit. One ends up on the “hiking highway” between Uetliberg and Felsenegg, not far from Balderen.

Of course I didn’t stay on the “highway”. There is a picknick area built by the city of Adliswil, a few hundred meters after Balderen (to the left of the main path). From there I followed the Zurich/Adliswil boundary stones along a not very distinct ridge down (T4) to the path coming from the farmhouse at Leimbach leading to Oberleimbach. Every time I’ve been here so far I’ve seen some animal running away and today I actually saw (and captured) it: it was a deer which seems to have settled down here. I was surprise to see a wild deer within the Zurich city limits.

For a few minutes I followed the path towards Oberleimbach, but at the horse stables I turned right, up on Rebbergstrasse to Atelier Rebberg and went up to the Albisridge again via the T5 route I described as “Oberleimbach” in my report. Back up on he ridge I then followed the “hiking highway” to Felsenegg. Due to the grand reopening festivities of the LAF all the cable car rides were free and so I took the way back down to Adliswil which was very easy on my knees.

Adliswil – Leimbach Friedhof – Fallätsche – Teehütte – Glecksteinhütte – Alpinahütte – Baldern – Leimbachhof – Rebegg – Felsenegg