Scrambling on the Brüggler and the Chöpfler

A hike to take advantage of late-season warm weather.

Train to Ziegelbrücke, quick hike to the gondola station in Niederurnen, gondola up to Morgenholz and then we start hiking. Gently up the valley, then turning and doing more real up, up, up on a good red-white path to the Wanifurggel. Food break in the pass, and then following the blue-white path along the ridge.

The first bit of this is easy following the ridge, just under the cliff. Then down, down along a bit of muddy terrain through the woods until we get to the climbing routes, then right and up, up, along the nicely routed trail that takes us back to the ridge, including some good scrambling (note: wear a helmet here if there are others underway). Once on the ridge a mix of hiking and scrambling, always following the makred path, on good rock, until we get to the peak. This trail maybe has too many chains and other helpers on it, but I imagine that they are nice if people are doing a foot descent after topping out the climbing, and it's nice to have the chain available, just in case, on the one quite exposed 5m scrambling bit just before the top. Nice food break with views and pictures (a large group of younger hikers shows up from the other direction when we're almost done, but they luckily aren't super loud), and then we continue along the ridge.

The first bit is easily down through not-so-steep grass, and then at the next saddle we follow the use trail which leads us towards the Chöpfler. This one is not marked and doesn't have chains, but the rock is good, it's generally not super exposed, the route finding is easy, and it's just super scrambling and hiking. Just before the peak we hit a blue-white trail coming up from the left (we'll take this down). We scramble the last bit to the peak (instead of taking the easier trail), have a short picture break (it's gotten quite windy), and then head back down the trail. This takes a nice route down through the cliff face, past some nice limestone formations, down, down. Towards the bottom a Rega helicopter flies slowly by, it looks like they're looking for someone. We take a quick snack break and watch what is either a very realistic drill or an actual rescue (though who knows what people were doing to the west of us) before continuing down, down into the valley.

We opt to head down the valley towards Niederurnen (instead of through the saddle and down to Innerthal) and follow a nice red-white trail to Lochegg, where we start our way down, down, towards town The last few km of this are, unfortunately, on road (some quite steep road), but we make good time and manage to get to the bus stop 2 minutes before the bus arrives to start us on the trip back to Basel.

Track:

Stats: 18.6km, 6:55, 1300m up and 1700m down. The track includes a straight line which is the gondola ride up, this is not included in the stats.