Two days over Thusis: Day one

The forecast for Sunday and Monday was good, so we decided to skip Fasnacht this year and head out to the mountains to get some sun and move our legs.

We start by taking the gondola up from Chur to Brambüesch under a very disappointing blanket of clouds, have a coffee, and then head up the snowshoe trail that runs more or less parallel to the T-bar for a bit before dropping us at the edge of a ski slope above the tree line. Hrm. Up we go beside the slope until we reach the bottom of the chair lift at Hühnerköpfe. Here there's no snowshoe trail at all in evidence, so rather than continue to walk up through the ski area, we take the lift up (nice that the guy at the lift lets us do this!) to Furggabüel. From here we should theoretically have great views out over the high plain and over towards the Fulhorn, our planned destination for the day. Given the low clouds, we don't actually see much of anything. Crap.

Ah well, off we go, following the tracks of other snowshoers, past the Dreibündenstein and continuing South. After a while the clouds lift some and we can see the, still cloud covered, top of the Fulhorn. As we continue the sun comes out a bit in front of us (yay!), so we adjust our route to head for that (not much point heading up a mountain to not have any views). Upon reaching a sunny patch, we have a quick lunch, marvel at the number of people heading up to the Fulhorn despite the less-than-optimal conditions, and then turn to the West and head a bit across the rolling plain. After some nice descending through deep snow, we hit the Culm Ault and pick up the winter hiking path that takes us around the Tgom' Aulta (Graubunden place names can really sound like locations in a fantasy novel) and then to the ski area at Alp Raguta. We do another short sandwich break, watching the guys curling and in general enjoying the chaos, and then set off down the road. Unfortunately we listen to some spurious argument from Greg about not wanting to sled down wearing a backpack, so we doom ourselves to a long, winding route down. Ah well, we wanted to use our legs.

From Feldis we take the gondola down to Rhäzuns, where we get the bus to Thusis and our hotel. The Hotel Weiss Kreuz has a small wellness area downstairs (steam bath, sauna, something in between) which we take good advantage of before a pre-dinner rest and a good meal to wrap up the day. The weather may not have played along, but it was good to be out in the fresh air and moving our legs.