A Sunday stroll on the Tüllinger Hugel

It's fruit blossom season, so we decided to do a nice Sunday stroll on the Tüllinger Hugel to check it out.

Nothing fancy here, just a nice walk with nice views on a lovely spring day and lots of different kinds of blooming trees.

A couple of bits:

• As we were starting to get a bit hungry we saw a group of people ahead. When we got closer we realized that there was a stand selling food and wine. A stand run by the people we normally buy fruit from. Bonus! So we stopped and had a glass of wine along with some bread and schmalz. mmmm... civilized!
• By the time we got to Ötlingen we were hungry again. The places that had outside tables were all full, but we happened across a cafe that was going to open up in 10 minutes. We grabbed a table and settled into wait. And not a moment too soon: people immediately started showing up and, by the time the cafe opened, there was a line. Good timing!

Track:
Stats: 11.8km, ~500m up and dow

The Eulengrat, and a couple of bonuses

We had originally thought about doing a snowshoe tour for the weekend, but the weather was so warm and sunny that we decided to go climbing instead.

We ended up doing the Eulengrat together with a couple of other folks from the SAC Basel. This is mostly the same approach as we took for the Balmflue last year, but shorter. We weren't super early, so we weren't completely sure what to expect for crowds, but we ended up only seeing one other group on the route (must be because it was Saturday). The route was quite nice, good rock, enjoyable climbing, only greasy in a couple of places, great views (unfortunately it was hazy, so no Alp view for us). Definitely one to go back to for early-season fun. :-)

Since we were pretty quick (~2 hours for the 9 pitches), and the day was so nice, we decided to do another route, so on the way back to Oberdorf we stopped by the Bubikof and did the easy two pitch route to the top there. This time there was no risk of being lonely: no surprise that there were loads of people on the routes and that we spent a bit of time enjoying the views and waiting to abseil down.

Since we had some time before the train back, we then walked to the spot where you can see the big dinosaur footprints preserved in the wall (it wasn't a wall back then, of course). Really impressive and cool (and somewhat surprising that we'd never been there).

Climbing above Court

The climbing area "Dalle de Court" is one we've known about for a bit, but haven't gone too since all the routes but one (a 5b) are in 5c, 5c+ range. Oh, and the public transportation connections are pretty bad. Yesterday we decided to go anyway.

We took the train to Moutier and then walked the 6km to Court from there instead of waiting 53 minutes for the next train. It ended up being a lovely walk through the gorge, so it wasn't bad at all. The crag is a big slab just above town.

We started by taking the 4c up to the grass band, and then from there climbed (route numbers from the SAC guide):

• 4 (5c), both lead, then both toprope to practice a bit
• 2 (5c+)
• 1 (5b+)
• 6 (5c+)
• 7 (5c+)

This was really, really nice slab climbing, with not much at all for the hands on most of the routes, and mainly of small stuff for the feet. You could really put your feet just about anywhere, so long as you were careful about it.

We left when the weather started to turn, right about the time it was forecast to do so. We'd just missed the train from Court (and that has a bad connection in Moutier anyway), so we walked back through the gorge again, doing it pretty fast since the weather was only going to deteriorate. We didn't get tooooo wet. :-)

This was very fun climbing and we definitely want to go back.