A Gantrisch traverse

The forecast rain and thunderstorms for Sunday afternoon and Monday led us to cancel our plans for a long climbing weekend, so we went for a nice hike instead.

From the bus stop at Schwefelbergbad we follow a few other hikers up the trail and through the woods. When the trail turns right to start heading up through a field we turn left and cross the stream on a bridge and then head up the grassy ridge on the other side. There's not even a use trail here, but the direction is clear: up up up to the Chlyne Ochse. It's all grass flank, so the route is pretty direct: straight up the broad ridge to the peak. Towards the top things get a bit steeper and there are some rocks and bushes, but there are no technical bits: just up, up the steep grass (yay for sticks!).

Once at the peak we take a short break and read some descriptions of the next bit up to the Ochse. The couloir that is the obvious way to do the last bit to the peak is full of snow, so we're not doing that. The shoulders to the left and right of that don't look super promising, but we figure we'll go look. We continue along the ridge, past a few gendarmes and then up the steep last bit of grass to the peak (it's a lot less dramatic than it looked). Here we aren't alone: a couple of other groups who were on the bus (they've come up the standard trail) are also there. We do a lunch break, enjoy the awesome (!) views of the Alps, and plan where we're going to go from here. Conditions on the Gemsgrat look great, and the ridge after it is appealing, but we'd like to end up in Simmental today and going that way will lead to a long stretch through the valley. We decide to leave the Gemsgrat for another time.

Now we follow the path down to the saddle at Alpiglegalm and then pick up a use trail that heads up to the Hane and the next ridge. This is a lovely thing with a bit of scrambling, a couple of really good spots to bivac (aside from the lack of water) and ongoing great views. The rest of the ridge is a T6 thing that we aren't necessarily ready for today, so we follow a bit of use trail down into the South face, descend steeply for a bit (we're wearing the big boots today and they are just soooo good on steep grass), and then traverse to the pass at Grenchegalm. There are a couple of snow fields in there, but the conditions are good and with the exception of one short stretch (Greg uses his ice axe here while kicking steps) it's not particularly steep. At the pass we re-meet a group of four hikers who had been on the bus and who had left the peak of the Ochsen not too long after we got there. Now we're on a marked trail that takes us up, up to the peak of the Widdersgrind. Here we do another food break and enjoy the views some more before continuing along to p2025 and then following the use trail along the east ridge. This is a nice bit of walking down to the fields around Holzmad, where we take the direttissima descent to the buildings at Nässli. From here it's a marked trail down the rest of the way to Oberwil.

As we join the trail there's a sign saying that it's 1.5 hours to Oberwil. The next train leaves in an hour. It's probably doable, but we decide not to push and just take the train in 2 hours. So we take a break in the fields below Nässli and then continue down along the nice trail at a normal pace. Just outside of Oberwil we realize that the train station is in view and that we have 7 minutes to catch the earlier train (WTF? there's no way the 1.5 hours on that sign was right). Rather than having to wait the hour, we do a bit of jogging and make it down to the train station just as the gates are dropping across the road. We have the 30 seconds necessary to buy tickets and then we get on the train, laughing, and start the trip back home.

Another great day of hiking in the Gantrisch. We certainly need to go back and to do more here. :-)

Track: Stats: 12km, 1415m up, 1955m down