A two day hike in a remote location was required in order to escape the Swiss national holiday festivities. The inspiration came from the Nollenhorn and Joderhorn descriptions in the SAC Alpinwandern/Gipfelziele Oberwallis guidebook, though in the end we didn't visit either summit. With bad weather on Saturday, we decided to limit...

I've been meaning to discover more of the Freiburg Alps for quite a while. The exhaustive SAC Alpinwandern/Gipfelziele Freiburg guide book offers many great and often challenging ideas. Ironically, the choice fell on a route that's pretty much entire just across the border in canton Vaud. As seems to be the case with many...

While winter has at least made a brief visit to the north of Switzerland, the south still looks like summer. It's mid December, but alpine hiking is still possible in Tessin to altitudes well above 2000m. Our goal had a slightly more modest altitude, but an all-the-more rewarding route to the top: the via della variante onto the...

The Fürstensteig and the Drei Schwestern is probably the most famous hike in all of Fürstentum Liechtenstein. The numerous reports that exist on Hikr (e.g. recent ones by Linard03 and SCM) are also used in the field: in the bus to Gaflei I spotted two women with a Hikr printout. Don't forget to reserve this bus, by the way (+423...

There is a well-marked hiking route around the Lac the Mourycalled the "2500m tour", because most of the walk stays around that altitude. Following that example, I'll have to call my route the "Lac de Moury 3000m tour". ---- Day 1 Sorebois - Pointe de Tsirouc - Corne de Sorebois - Arête de Sorebois - Garde de Bordon -...

I first heard about the Fallätsche (alternatively spelled Falletsche) from a colleague at work, who recommended it to me as "a patch of Alpine hiking within the city of Zürich". The route of the "Fallätsche traverse" has been described on Hikr many times, including a six years old report in English by 360. Update...

Throwing in the following three ingredients... 1) Anxiety to finally properly start the 2015 hiking season 2) A good weather forecast for the whole weekend in the south 3) My intention to do some treks with bivouacs this year ...an ambitious plan was created: a two day hike from near Lake Como in Italy over the...

On pages 92-93 in the SAC Alpinwandern/Gipfelziele Gotthard guide book, there is a collage titled"I (heart) Gotthard" with 16 pretty photos of different sights around the Gotthard pass in different seasons. When I first browsed trough the book, one of the small photos in particular immediately drew my attention. At there very...

Crossing the entire Pilatus range from east to west, from Stansstad to Gfellen, has been a project lingering in my mind for quite a while. I'd call it "Pilatus extreme and ultra long", except for the fact that Tobi already coined this term for a hike that's even twice as long as mine! Respect! Still, my 2600m of ascent and ca....

For once, I left the organisation of a hike to someone else. I joined Konrad's suggestion of climbing the Mittetaghorn (or simply Mittaghorn), a mountain in canton Glarus that I hadn't even heard about before. With seven persons in total, we met up in Elm for this hike in the "Swiss Tectonic Arena Sardona" UNESCO World Heritage...

While waiting for my brother Mats to finish his MountainMan half marathon, I have a couple of hours to spare on Pilatus. A great opportunity to check out an interesting route from the SAC guidebook "Alpinwandern/Gipfelziele Zentralschweiz Vierwaldstättersee". The Nordwestpassage traverses from Pilatus Kulm to the Tomlishorn on a...

With daylight until late in the evening, I was hoping to get in some after-work hikes this season. Proper hikes I mean, not just a stroll on the Uetliberg. Until now however, either the weather wasn't right, or I had other commitments such as work or watching football games... Last Thursday, everything finally came together, and I...

I lived in the UK for more than four years, I know that the weather can be bad. But this winter really is something else. It was already the wettest winter on record before last weekend, and unfortunately for me it couldn't stop there. Torrential rain, storm force winds, really bad snow conditions with high avalanche risk,...

When I'm on my own, I often like to push myself on a rather long hike. That was also the idea this Sunday: first climb the Widderfeldstock and the continue north along the ridge for as long as I feel like.   Wanting to be well-rested, I don't start particularly early. The 08:04 train from Zürich brings me via Luzern...

"A long hike up Säntis for early risers. Let's start walking at 4am in order to get an Alpstein sunrise and to avoid the worst of the tourist in flip-flops coming up with the cable car. Who wants to join?" How I love kletterportal.ch already! Where else do people propose such great ideas (thanks Melanie!), without being dismissed...

I discovered kletterportal.ch on Friday, and already on Sunday I joined four other members on the Allmenalp Klettersteig in Kandersteg. The Kletterportal Partnersuche seems to be working great. I'll certainly try to use it more in future. The Allmenalp Klettersteig is my second Klettersteig in Switzerland, and certainly more...

After a cancelled plan to do the Klettersteig in Braunwald two weeks earlier (due to the weather), this ended up being my first via ferrata in Switzerland. Through CouchSurfing I met up with four others. First, the Engelberg-Ristis cable car, immediately providing great view of the town of Engelberg with its monastry and the...

Having just moved to Zürich, I met up with two CouchSurfers for my first ever hike in the Swiss Alps. A perfect day for it as well, with impeccable weather. We took the train to Brunnen, a quick yet stunning ferry across the Vierwaldstättersee, and the Treib-Seelisbergbahn to gain 300 meters of altitude before the start. The...

My second weekend in Switzerland, and again I joined up with two other hikers through CouchSurfing. The initial idea was to do the Kletterweg on the north ridge of Speer, there was still a surprising amount of snow, and one of the fellow hikers would not have been able to make it up that route anyway. So in the end, it became a...

I wouldn't have my birthday weekend ruined by another rainy forecast for Switzerland. So I just planned a weekend away over on the Italian side of the Alps. CouchSurfer Mayeul hosted me in the village of Cadrezzate, and both on Saturday and Sunday we drove to the other side of Lago Maggiore to go walking. On Saturday we hiked...