Zugerberg Hochwacht – A fun little tour to Zug’s home mountain

On this day I had commitments until 2PM in the greater area of Zug and therefore not really time to go for a fully grown hike. However, I didn’t feel like just doing nothing at all, but decided to give Zug’s home mountain a short visit.

I’ve never been on the Zugerberg before and actually expected it to be one peak. However, when I studied the map I noticed that there isn’t really “one” Zugerberg, but the whole area including a series of a few hilltops is called Zugerberg.

I started my hike at the train station of Zug and walked more or less along the marked path up to Hochwacht, via Lüssirain – Steren – Muserhof – Bilgerighof – Urihof.

The top of Hochwacht is not the highest point, but it actually offers a pretty nice view down to the lake, the greater Zug area and the Innerschweizer Alps. I enjoyed it for quite a while before I started walking down towards Oberwil.

For the way down I chose a “path” which is actually not on the newest editions of the Swiss maps any more, but only on the edition of the 25K of 1976. It more or less follows the cable car line. From Schönfels it first goes downhill to the cable car bridge at P. 834. I didn’t really find a path or path traces any more, but on the right side of the little river there, I followed a downhill mountain bike path.

After the bridge at P. 834, the old path goes down to the bottom station of the cable car, just left of the tracks parallel to it. Down to the bridge at Lärchenbrüggli, there are indeed clear path traces visible and this part of the path is still used, but below Lärchenbrüggli, I couldn’t really find any path any more until I was down at the street near P. 619. Instead I found a lot of cut and dead wood (probably from keeping trees out of the cable car) and sometimes I kind of felt like in a jungle and a machete would have been helpful :-)

From the street near P. 619 I then followed the marked path all the way to the train station of Oberwil.

 Zug – Lüssirain – Steren – Muserhof – Bilgerighof – Urihof – Hochwacht – Vordergeissboden -  Schönfels – Lärchenbrüggli – Gimenen –  Zug Oberwil