Hexensteig

I’ve been following Marcel’s beautiful blog for a long while now. They get away most weekends either hiking or climbing, or doing Via-Ferata. Marcel & Chrisi very kindly took us on one called “Hexensteig”. Only created recently, it climbs up a hole in the middle of a mountain (pretty much). Marcel has some nice pictures here on the trip too – worth checking out.

The method of climbing in a Via-Ferata is a little like the setup for caving. You have a harness with a couple of carabiners attached to it on slings. There are metal wires strung on the route attached by bolts every 2-4 meters. You clip yourself into the metal wire, and then when you get to a bolt, you transfer your carabiners one at a time (so you’re always attached to something). It was a little physical in places, very slightly overhung. It’s amazing how fast you lose climbing condition!.

The weather was supposed to deteriorate come midday, so we cheated and took the lazy-way up. Fun though. Oh, and Switzerland has signs everywhere.

To get into the cave you had to do a tyrolean traverse. Of course, Maaike and I were old-hands at this from the Paso Del Viento circuit. Easy peasy.

Anyway, loved it. Really fun to be back in the hills. I must say, the prospect of a holiday of via-ferata’ing would be something I’d love to do. I believe Austria has a lot?!

It took about an hour and a half to get through the route, and then we walked on up the hill for a view. One crazy thing was the grass. This slope:

is at about 1,600m elevation. It’s on about a 45° slope, or so. It is also mown. When Marcel said that I thought he was kidding. But it really is. To keep the avalanches down. Check out the lawn mowing machine.

Finally, back down the hill (it took me 6 days to be able to walk properly again! my thighs are completely out of shape for this!) and then a quick dip in Lake Lucerne.

Many thanks to Marcel and Chrisi for taking us on this trip, putting us up in Zurich and generally being such great hosts. Looking forward to your visit to NZ ;)