This morning, I woke up early (earlier than my companions, crazy huh?), showered, grabbed a banana, and headed for a wander. Munster is larger than you’d expect from looking at it, and (not wanting to have to try out long interactions without Therese as a translator) I decided to head down toward the Rhone (away from the city) anyway. I followed what looked like a path, and when it turned into a field before hitting the next path, I just kept trucking. Apparently, that’s no bueno – I worried about that about half way across the field, and Therese informed me that you can be fined/arrested for straying onto somebody’s field. Thankfully, it was early enough (and recently mowed) so nobody cared. I made it down to a cute bridge, and yellow trail signs popped up just the far side of the bridge. I should also mention that since most of the rivers and streams here are glacier fed, they’re all a lovely teal. It isn’t so green as some of the places out west and can pick up a very dark hue in the shade of the mountains. Trails in Switzerland are everywhere, and they’re all well marked with yellow (or a few other colors) signs. The signs have details about which town the trail is headed to and the time it will take you to make it to the next/major town. Though I had found a nice set of trails, I turned back to go get more of a breakfast with my now-awake hiking buddies.
After some bread, jam, weak coffee, and apricots, we headed out to the butchers (an amazing place with really tasty sausages, among other things), the grocery store, and the bakery. There will be plenty of bread/sausage/cheese/fruit lunches, bread/jam breakfasts, and relatively quick dinners (including racklette made by Therese).
Once stocked, we headed up the opposite side of the valley to (a) a Catholic pilgrimage church – typical white church on the outside, a bit more ornate on the inside and (b) signs pointing to the Gomer Hompsterzapst (completely misspelled/mocked) trail. We hiked up to a stream that comes through town and then across into some farmers field. After hiking up and down the mountain for a bit looking for a better-worn trail, we followed the cairns up through the meadow (finding wild strawberries that I would kill for and wild blueberries both in season) and across the side of the mountain until finding the honest to goodness trail at the top (we later found a much easier connection down to Munster). Though it felt like we climbed a fair amount (aka, enough to get me to the top of any of the Smokies/Blue Ridges, or at least that’s what I’m going to claim), I think the entire time we stayed on the lower half/two-thirds of each of the mountains. The trail wound around the sides of the ridgeline, and between almost every mountain-like entity there was a holler carved by a steeply-descending, rocky creek. The trail was very well maintained, and presented some gorgeous views of the opposite side of the valley. Since hiking tends to be slower than biking, and I take pictures when I find something pretty, I have 8 bazillion pictures of the same couple of mountains (from different angles, if that makes it more ok).
We hiked for about 4-5hrs, including lunch, and made it to Oberwald. We then hopped on a train, and were back to Munster in time for dinner. It was just enough of a hike that my feet are a little tired and everyone’s at that content stage of weariness. We had some stuff that Therese got from the butcher (I believe she said it was ground venison with ground pork) in tasty gravy with potato things and salad. While the hike was incredibly pretty, two things that Therese had told us about when planning became obviously true: (1) there isn’t much of what I would call true wilderness – the exception might be out east, where we can’t make it on this trip – and (2) you can hike from anywhere. We were hiking along the side of a pretty well-populated valley, and there were lots of powerlines, villages, rail tracks, and very small roads to prove it. Though for all the small towns we passed, all of them had other trails hooking up to the trail we were on (and I know there’s a regional trail that runs on the opposing mountains with a similar thing happening).
Anyhow, I’m still excited about the mountains; the cheese and sausage here are way more amazing that I was expecting, and tomorrow we see Milan.
No comments:
Post a Comment