SnowSlider - Blogging From the mountains by ise

So, farewell to summer then! I think that might be my last high walk for a while, it’s snowing now and the higher level routes will either be impassable or need snow shoes or skis. Being a Monday I was the only person on the mountain yesterday and it’s not unlikely I’ll be the last crossing this route this season now. The farmers have moved all the cattle down and shut up all the alpages and taken down all the fences so it’s eerily quiet on the mountain.


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I’ve had some flu like symptons for a week or so and apart from strolling to the next village not really got out much, I’m not really 100% but an easy walk in the pre-alpes looked like a good idea. I wanted to go to Schwyberg again and take a look another look at the area, I’ve not snow shoed around there but it looks excellent terrain so I wanted to get an idea of the ground before the first snow.

Last time we were over there was Julie’s birthday when it was pretty awful weather, torrential rain and thunder storms, I’m just back from the UK and some time in Wales where it always seems to rain but they never really get storms of the sudden violence we have here. Anyway, today was actually rather fine, mostly clear skies and around 10′c in the valley and slightly colder on the tops with a fairly cool breeze, really just perfect conditions for walking.


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Once upon a time there were two ski areas at Schwarzsee, one’s still there today and I’ve skied there a few times as it’s pretty local. The other closed some time back and was known as Schwyberg. All that remains now are a few abandoned buildings and lifts, both of which really ought to be removed. It was a spur of the moment decision to go there, the original plan had been to do a via ferrata over at Gstaad. I’d had it in mind that the lifts were running but that’s not until Sunday in fact and we didn’t fancy hauling all the gear up on foot. So, we decided to go to Schwarzsee mostly because it’s near the Subaru dealer and we had taken Julies car in for the annual service. In fact, there’s a subaru dealer near most mountains here, it’s just this is our dealer and that mountain.

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click on photograph for larger version

I wanted to make this route for a little while. It starts off at Schwarzsee a small village with a ski station that I’ve skied and hiked around before. Kaiseregg is the local peak at 2185m and offers some great views over this side of the alpes and Bernese Oberland. Yesterday, August 1st, was a public holiday in Switzerland for Swiss National day. The last time we went round here was a few weeks back when we got as far as the car park at which point it started some torrential rain and we withdrew. This time we had clear skies and sunshine.

We took the ski lift from the lake up to 1480m and had a coffee at the restaurant before making the climb to Salxmatt at 1637m (above), you can drive up to here and a lot of people had. You also get the first full view of Kaiseregg which is the peak on the far right of the picture. It’s then a climb up to the Kaisereggpass where we paused for a drink and to admire the scenery.

I’ve stored the track in my GPS and you can see it in Google Earth : track file


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