Spring hiking: Ridges between Olten->Waldenburg

Today was a day of Flües. It's been raining, so we don't want to do anything too tricky, but it's not supposed to rain today. We haven't really done much hiking this year yet, so part of the idea is that this should be something of a training tour. To that end Greg tosses a couple of ropes into his pack to add some additional weight; Andrea's not playing that game. :-)

We start in Olten (first hike started from there) and head through town and onto the path up up to Trimbach and then further to the Rumpelflüe. The nice path through the woods takes us along the ridge, past the restaurant at Rumpel (Greg has loads of fun with this name), under the Rumpelhöchi, and then up, up to the Naturefreundehaus (I'm sure there are awesome views from here on days when the viewing is good). Not too long after that we leave the marked hiking path and follow a use path up onto the ridge (there's a bit of very, very light scrambling here). Now we've got a very nice ridge walk above the Hornflue, with great views, a few chamois (don't think we've seen those in the Jura before), including one really curious one who lets us get quite close and seems as fascinated by us as we are by him. Past the Homberglücke and then back up onto the ridge for another good bit until we start to descend. Before heading down too far, we stop and have a food break. This is cut short when it starts to lightly rain. Ah well, we pack up and head on and the rain stops in a couple of minutes. The descent along the ridge down, down to the road gets pretty steep at the end, but is no real problem (still, it's good to have shoes with stiff soles).

along the Rumpelflue

After following the road for a bit we pick up the path towards Hägendorf, which we follow for a bit before turning off towards Allerheiligenberg. Here we're looking for a bit of ladder/short klettersteig to get us up past the wall of the Burgerrain. We just have a couple Hikr descriptions and some not particularly useful GPS points, and there's not much of a use trail, so this takes a bit of looking to find. Greg takes a picture or two and marks it on his watch, just so we have the GPS point (but it's plainly visible on the track below). Up the ladder and then along the ridge of the Burgerrain. This is another really nice path that's also clearly not used all that often. We find a nice spot during a bit of sun and sit down for another food break. The sun is gone within 3 minutes of us sitting down and a few minutes after that it starts to very lightly sprinkle and then hail. Hail! We pack up and continue on; the hail stops within a couple minutes (starting to detect a theme here). We continue along the lovely ridge until we get to the end and descend (not as steeply this time) to the road. Here we pick up another trail that takes us down into the Oberi Schlucht (this is the end of the Teufelsschlucht, which we've done before). After a bit of the lovely gorge we head up towards Rüteli, further on through the open valley to Bärenwil, and then along and around the corner to Langenbruck. There's a bus waiting there, but we opt not to take it. 3 minutes after the bus leaves, and a minute after we sit down for a snack, it starts raining (!). Fortunately there's a bench under cover, so we can have our break without getting rained on and by the time we're done the rain has stopped.

in the Oberi Schlucht

After the break we head through Langenbruck and then briefly along the road to Oberer Hauenstein, where we  pick up the trail towards Waldenburg. This ends up being a really nice mix of panorama and forest and river until we get to town. Through town we go, Waldenburg is longer than we remember, and we get to the train station about a minute after the train has left. Ah well... we grab hot beverages from the kiosk and wait half an hour for the next one.

views

Aside from the "amusing" weather, this was a really nice day out. Super varied hiking and a nice line on the map. :-)

Track:
Stats: ~22km, ~900m up, ~400m down