The main planned activity for today was a hike that had some options to shorten or extend it. It was a super foggy morning when we headed out—taking a short bus ride up to Tannenboden and then hiking from there (along with various mountain bikers for various stretches; we learned to listen for them and then stand out of the way).
That was a ~5-mile hike that was mostly uphill, but that had a few flat-ish sections until we reached Maschgenkamm. The various trail signs along the way kept providing unbelievable (and nonsensical) time estimates to that peak—calling it a 6 hour and 20 minute hike, and then, 20 minutes later, reporting it as 5 hours and 20 minutes remaining, and then, 20 minutes later, again reporting it as 5 hours and 20 minutes. Benton was adamant that these numbers were just…wrong, based on the map. And, he was right. We arrived at Maschgenkamm after 3 hours. We moved at a fairly steady pace, but were by no means flying along.
The fog density ebbed and flowed as we hiked, but it never burned off, so we had some neat views in the sense of “not being able to see more than 50’ at times,” but we were pretty sure there were some spectacular views throughout the hike that were deeply hidden behind a cloak of white moisture. We also got drizzled on a little bit, but that was very light and pretty brief.
We had the option to take a chair lift down the mountain from Maschgenkamm back to Tannenboden, but we opted, instead, to continue the hike to Prodkamm, where we caught an 8-person (!) chair lift down to Prodalp, where we stopped for a coffee, and then continued on down in the gondola right back to Tannenheim, which was a stone’s throw from our flat. We had a momentary hiccup, in that the pass for the chair lift + gondola was CHF32 (~$32), and the lift operator could only accept cash. That was much pricier than the other lifts we’d taken (and, somehow, was one ticket for CHF24 and another ticket for CHF8; we’re not entirely sure that was correct), and we’d been trying to unload our Swiss francs, so only had ~CHF15. Luckily, he accepted Euros, and we made it down!
We showered and changed at the flat and then took the bus down the mountain to Flumserberg and then took the train one stop over to Walenstadt (the same route we’d taken the previous morning to start our hike) to check out that town. As it turned out, there was a street festival in full swing! We wandered through that and then walked down to the short of the lake (Walensee) and people/duck/coot/parasail-watched for a while before getting an early dinner at the restaurant at Hotel Seehoff right next to the lake.
From there, it was a leisurely course-reversal to get back to the flat in time to tune into Marilyn and Al’s wedding back in the States via YouTube!
Being conservative with connections, we’re planning to be out the door at 7:25 AM tomorrow morning to start the journey into Italy, with an itinerary that has us arriving in Florence in the late afternoon.
An interesting/memorable experience of the day:
Benton: the Eurasian coot that genuinely seemed to be just entertaining itself by swimming into the surf and then bodysurfing back to shore.
Tim: Benton falling asleep on the (short) bus ride down the mountain on our afternoon trip to Walenstadt.
