snowshoeing on the churwurstli

sun glimmering on the fresh crystalline snow, under the watchful gaze of the 7 pyramidal peaks, the trusty band of comrades marched and frollicked through the brilliant late winter day. what fun is snow shoeing in perfect weather on the sides of the upper toggenburg valley! all of this necessitated a much-too-early start from zürich, but we all made it to hb in time to beat the good-weather-weekend-ski crowds, and head off towards alt st johanne. a very pleasent little village. an unexpected encounter with the lab secretary silvia and her border collie flo. a gondola ride up from the frosty snowfree valley floor in search of snow. a mountain cafe coffee to start the journey. and we were off.

most of the time the snow wasn't really deep enough to warrant snow shoes, but it lent quite an air of adventure to the outing. after meandering through quiet forest groves splattered with sparkling glimpses of the churfirsten/wurstli/fister (depending on your accent, desire or fluency), we had lunch on an pointy spur wind cleared of snow, overlooking the säntis massif, and overlooked by all 7 pointypeaks.



after lunch, frollicks were highlighted by a series of exciting cornice leaps and steep slope slides. face planting in deep snow is really much fun indeed.



we descended back down into spring.

alt st johanne had a most convenient migros, selling ice tea, chips, chocolate and bargain calanda, which tempered our hunger and thirst and kept us entertained through the many s-bahn changes back to hb.



exhausted as we were, paola and stefan were congenial enough to invite us all back to their superstyled new apartment in höngg for pasta dinner. their madagascan geckos are so friendly (being well trained in the correlation between people and food), and did rather seem to enjoy their night-time rain storm/water spray before tucking up in between their favourite leaves for a snooze. and the company was not so unfriendly either.

sleep was good.

pictures