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...

The Schnebelhorn is with 1292 meters the highest point of canton Zürich. Tom and me reached it with a hike that was ironically almost entirely within the canton of St. Gallen. Tom had contacted me spontaneously through Hikr the week before, thanking me for my supposedly nicely written reports and suggesting that we do a snow shoe...

A new via ferrata in the Glarus valley? It was a well-kept secret to me until tricky and Alpin Risepublished their reports. Time for an exploration... ---- The "Indianerkopf" rock, on which the via ferrata is built, is clearly visible from Netstal railway station. From the station, we cross the river and head towards the...

Above the massive ski resort of Courchevel, lies (according to the Cicerone guidebook "Via ferratas of the French Alps") "one of only a few proper mountain via ferrata's in France, and also the highest route of the country": the via ferrata de la Croix de Verdon. It is conveniently accessed with the Saulire cable car, though this...

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...

"A Dutchman, a Chilean, two Irishmen and a Belgian went to climb a mountain." It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but this was actually the composition of our team for a two-day hike with the objective of Clariden (3267m) in the Glarner Alpen.   On Saturday we took the Klausenpass Postbus up to the Klus/Chlus bus...

Last month I published the report of day one of my weekend in Italy, but part two (and arguably the best part!) was still missing. So here we go... My CouchSurfing hosts works at the Ispra Joint Research Centre, a huge European Commission institution which even has its own section of the Italian Alpine Club! This section had...

With the SBB "Vier Seen Wanderung Sommer-Hit" special offer, you get a train to Engelberg, cable car/ski lift to Jochpass, cable car down from Melchsee-Frutt, Postauto from Stöckalp to Sarnen and a train back home, all at 50% off. That means only 28.80 CHF from Zürich HB (with Halbtax) for the whole shebang. Pretty good...