After a short lunch, because darker clouds were closing in, we descended rapidly towards Linthal, reaching it in the middle of the afternoon after about 7.5 hours of hiking (thankfully faster than planned). On the way down we were passed by a mountain runner who had come up the mountain almost three times as fast as we had: most impressive, although we all agreed that we had absolutely no desire to emulate the feat.
Fortunately the rain held off. Unfortunately Linthal turned out to be a bit of a failed village from a town planning standpoint: the antithesis of Elm The fact that the road to the Klausenpass, traversed by several thousand vehicles a day, goes the length of the long straggling village undoubtably does not help the matter. Add in the fact that our hotel is so-so, and that Thomas left (thereby robbing us of our ability to play Team Spades with one another), and the result is that this is perhaps a rest day that if I did the H2 again I'd probably not spend in Linthal.
But (and by now it is Saturday as I finish off this post) tomorrow we hike further -- to the Klausenpass -- and today I have this blog, and email, and reservations, and various other things to do. In fact, I think I'll give this "smartphone" to Russ so he can blog and then I'll take a nap now....
