After spending the day walking around Basel (largely in the rain–thankfully I’m definitely the Washington duck!), my former boychoir classmate Anselm and I spent the night at his sister’s for one more night, and then headed out the next morning to the mountains through Lucerne to Langis, up the mountain from Sarnen.
Once we got up past the snow line and to the lodge, the snow cam down hard with quite a bit of wind. I was very glad Anselm had an extra hat, because the train had rolled away with mine on the first day.
We had a 10k loop that we were planning to do, but on the ground the directions were not obvious, so we took our chances on the most likely looking trail posts that started up into the mountain forest on one side. For the next few hours we explored up and around that peak, nearly all the time making our own way underneath the cover of the forest: under the trees there was less snow to wade through, and the strong wind was whipping around far above our heads. With at least 8 inches or so of snow on everything, everything was beautiful, made even better by our complete freedom to explore anywhere we chose (with the tracks we left plus the orientation of the mountain, we had no doubt of easily making our way back. In the end we exited the forest a few meters from our start point even without seeing our old tracks more than once). After working our way most of the way around and up that peak we stopped for a simple lunch in a sheltered corner of the hill, and enjoyed the juxtaposition of enjoying dried banana and mango in their environmental opposite. A robust loaf of bread, bell peppers, and some sliced meat filled out the fare.
We emerged at a high open point on the mountain finally and after wading through the wind and deeper snow layered across the open space, we found a very solid little structure of logs that had collapsed when the tarp roof had filled in with water. Along with, no surprise, a VERY neatly Swiss-stacked pile of firewood (even at a few thousand meters they are consistent) we found waterproof bags with camping supplies as well as some sheep skins when I pulled back the tarp to look under. Anselm and I both baptized the hike by consecutively stepping by accident into the puddles in the tarp by accident, and then with Anselm’s feet getting a bit damp and cold after all the trailblazing, we headed back “from whence we came.” It was a little while yet until the bus back down came, so since I had cards along we played for a while, remembering “Egyptian Ratscrew,” “Spit,” and a few others that had been so popular when we were both at the American Boychoir.
It seemed like with all the snow and wind the valley MUST have been whitened while we were up under the clouds, but although we followed a snowplow for a few minutes, the snow line came like a straight edge, and so we entered back into the wetter, greener, warmer half of Switzerland again.
A few hours by train, and we were back in Geneva again: a very satisfactory trip!
Hungary4Harmony 