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Thursday July 26th, 2007
We were up at 7 for breakfast (sorry Sally), because although the weather forecast was good, today was expected to be a fairly long day -- some 7.5 hours of hiking time. Actually it turned out to be just over 6, in part because we are now fit enough to hike faster than we could initially, and in part because we changed the route to leave out Engelberg, which saved us a half an hour, because it turned out that no-one needed anything from the village or was interested in visiting the famous monastery in the middle of a hike.
If any readers are thinking of doing a multi-day hike at some point, don't bother to try to combine it with cultural activities: it won't work. During a hike it turns out that all anyone wants to do, other than to rest and eat, is to finish the hike. After the hike and on rest days all anyone wants to do is to stay off of one's feet as much as possible. I honestly believe that if the Mona Lisa was in the local museum we H2H hikers would not go and see it if doing so required walking more than 300 meters or standing for longer than 20 minutes.
Of course, guest hikers are another species... at least at first. Bea and Arnulf, for example, after dinner tonight went for a walk. You can't see me, but I'm shaking my head at the sheer insanity of it.
But back to the hike. What can I say? Yet another beautiful hike in Switzerland. If by now you haven't understood from my posts that this is one of the loveliest countries around, then repeating myself in this one is not going to break through the comprehension barrier either. I'll just say that the proof is the number of hours I spend each day just looking around and marvelling as I hike.
There are, of course, exceptions -- when it rains, or there are low clouds, for example, and also when, very rarely, I get caught up in the exercise dimension of hiking. This doesn't happen often for several reasons:
o as the sole map reader (which is a subject for another rant!) I try to stop every time there is a fork in the trail to make sure that everyone knows which way to go.
o I try to spend some time each day hiking at the end of the group, mostly to make sure that no-one feels left alone and struggling too long or too often.
o and lastly because the H2H is so long that it feels as if the only way to get to the finish line is through slow and steady. It is inconceivable to approach it as a series of sprints, which is what it would feel like if one were focussed on exercise all the time.
But occasionally I do get the urge to race up or down a slope, and today was such a day. The last stretch up to the Jochpass (2207m) was around 420m of altitude, and I did it in under 50 minutes. My state of mind must have been contagious, because Arnulf also charged up (finishing just behind me, which was pretty amazing given that I have been hiking for a month and he only started yesterday!), and even Russell (normally the epitome of slow and steady) was spotted marching up the slope at a much higher speed than normal Sally, who would have otherwise beaten Arnulf and me by a country mile, opted to stay with Russell, and Bea, very sensibly, had opted to take the gondola. The result: we sat at the top for 45 minutes sucking popsicles and trying to recover an urge to continue!
But continue we did and arrived at the Engstlenalp Hotel at around 4PM. It's a nice old place, in a beautiful setting looking along a valley at the Wetterhorn and the east side of the Berner Oberland, and with a mixture of "nostalgia" (i.e., unrenovated and lacking bathrooms) and more modern rooms. Dinner was fine and we retired early about 9PM... after all, we have to be up for breakfast at 7 tomorrow :-).
