Seehorn – Hüreli – Pischahorn and down to Tschuggen via South Rigde

I planned my hike from Davos Dorf to Seehorn, Hüreli and Pischa Horn. From the top of the Pischahorn I wanted to go down to a bus stop along the Flüela pass, but possibly not along the Southwest Ridge, the way I decided to go up but another route. Therefore, I looked at my options in the SAC guide. The South Ridge down to Tschuggen “ZS” seemed too hard for me, especially if I did it the first time in the descent. With all the snow there still is at this altitude, I thought that sliding down the Matijsch Tal might be fun. However, once I was on top of the Pischahorn, and after checking out my options visually on site, I decided to go down the South Ridge anyway…

I started my hike at the train station Davos Dorf walking into the Flüela valley. After a few hundred meters the marked path up to Seehorn turns left. At the choice below an obvious wall, I decided to go left instead of the main path on the right. It is the most direct way up to Seehorn. Clear red/yellow marks lead the way up on the west ridge. The view up on Seehorn is quite spectacular, however today it was very hazy. Despite its name “Seehorn” the lake can’t be seen from the top of the mountain, in order to enjoy the view down to the lake one just needs to go down the north side a little bit. 

From Seehorn I then went down to the saddle at point… and up to peak of Hüreli which offers a very nice view as well. There I took a short break. Form Hüreli the marked path to the top station of the Pischa cable car follows the rather scenic ridge. Here and there I had to walk over some snow fields.

From the top station of the Pischa cable car on, there was quite a considerable amount of snow left. I didn’t take the path, but went to P. 2738 in more or less a straight line. From there I followed the path or traverse in snow fields where covered by snow. After the saddle shortly following P. 2738 I continued on the south east side of the ridge and further up directly on the snow free southwest ridge.

The Mattjisch Tälli was still almost completely covered with snow; down to about 2300m, so sliding down there would have been quite quick and probably fun too. The south ridge looked very interesting and tempting though and not at all like it would be ZS. So I decided to give it a try. It also appeared like there were lots of possibilities to leave the ridge towards Mattjisch Tälli in case it would get too difficult.

Well, it turned out that the south ridge is not difficult at all. I’ll give it a T4, sometimes it is a little exposed and sometimes you have to use your hands, but the climbing difficulties are not harder than a I maybe an easy II (and those can be bypassed as well). So I ended up following the whole south ridge down to Tschuggen via P. 2886, P. 2797, P. 2837.8, P. 2306.8, more or less always staying on the crest.


The reason for the classification ZS in the SAC guide is probably due to the fact that the “Bündner” SAC guides are hopelessly outdated and ZS in these guides is not how we understand ZS today.
See also point 8 in PStraub’s comment Und praktisch alle Bündner-Führer sind hoffnungslos veraltet.

I would be interested if anybody else made this observation and if this is a general “trend” in the old “Bündner” SAC guides or just a mistake for the Pischhorn? Can one assume that a ZS in the old “Bündner” SAC guides is maybe T5 at most? If so this would open up a whole lot of hikes for me…


Davos Platz – P. 2072.5 Seehorn – P 2119 Hüreli – Pischa – P. 2738 – Pischahorn - P. 2886 - P. 2797 – P. 2837.8 - P. 2306.8 - Tschuggen

PS: Due to a stupid mishap in setting my camera, the photographic yield for this hike is very meager :-(