Vorder Glärnisch Hike (16. Sept 2007)

Team: Andy, Yves

Yves, a fellow PhD student from Uni, had planned a one day hike up to the Vorder Glärnisch mountain (2327.4 m asl) and having no other plan I gladly joined.
We took a bus up to the Klöntaler Lake (848m asl) and started hiking. The way led through coniferous forest and across alpine pastures. We had chosen an alternative route that seemed interesting on the map and indeed it featured a somewhat exposed trail traversing a big cliff.


Trail traversing a cliff on the way to the summit.


















In the upper part the steepish trail even featured some cable fitted sections, just to keep it interesting.
The view from the top was splendid and we dug heartily into our lunch.


View from the summit over the Klöntaler lake.


















After that frugal meal we hid a new geocache in a crack close to the summit and then descended via a rarely travelled route. It turned out to be leading through very steep terrain at first then the track was very hard to discern, vanishing completely at some point. That was brilliant as we could train our navigation skills. For a short stretch the track involved some good bushbashing and a bit of boulder hopping, the we regained a real track again and swiftly continued downhill till we reached Schwändi, a little village with sporadical bus connections with none fitting our current schedule. We thus tramped on to Mitlödi (503 m asl) where we enjoyed a locally brewed beer while waiting for the next train.
More adventure awaited us in the train to Zurich. It was horrendously crammed with people and we chose to sit in a gangway in the restaurant car. Amazing to watch how easily people do get stressed out about such stuff. Two rather voluminous ladies tried to pass each other in our narrow passage. One pushed so violently past the other one (still puzzles me how much deformation the human body can deal with) that she tore away the spectacles dangling on the (expansive) bosom of the other one. This was followed by a lot of cursing and swearing. When she passed me I was flattened against the window, still beats me how they managed to cross at all!
More excitement arrived with the food trolley and it's master, getting terribly upset about us sitting in the gangway and the chef of the restaurant getting worked up about the fact that we did not want to cross the whole restaurant car but let the trolley pass by standing in the door of the kitchen. That was really a good laugh!
A dinner at Zurich Airport Foodtown settled this good outing.