A long Jura ridge hike

The weather forecast wasn't great, so we opted for a long Jura hike. 

We got a quite early start and took breakfast with us with the idea that we'd have breakfast with a view from the Vogelberg. Starting from Reigoldswil things were ok, though cloudy and somewhat cool, and we even saw a bit of sun as we worked our way up. Our intent was to move reasonably quickly, but it's muddy enough that this doesn't really work out. The weather slowly gets crappier and by the time we hit the ridge above the Vogelberg restaurant it's actively raining. We stop under shelter at the restaurant and consider our options. No matter what we're going to need to head onto towards Passwang, so we set back out again. 

By the time we reach the Vogelberg itself the rain has stopped, but since it's really too windy to comfortably have breakfast we continue on to a spot a bit below the pass where we're out of the wind and can have breakfast. We'd brought along a thermos full of porridge and the jetboil so that we could do coffee and tea, so it was a nice breakfast. And, despite the suboptimal conditions, it really is nice to have breakfast outside! After breakfast the weather has improved a bit, so we continue on past Passwang, down, down to Ramiswil (and past the odd little chapel in the gorge), and then up, up to the next ridge at the Laupersdörfer Stierenberg. Great Jura views from up here (there's a curtain of clouds over the Alps today, so all eyes are on the Jura!).

The original plan is to follow the ridge for a bit and then head down into the next valley and up to the first Jura ridge near the Rüttelhorn, but after seeing the ridge we're on stretching temptingly out in front of us, we opt to just continue on this one. At Obere Tannmatt we stop for cafe and kuchen (how civilized!) and then continue on and on, past Probsteberg and the cool field stone wall we saw last January during the cave trilogy hike, past Malsenberg, and then along the trail diagonally down to Gänsbrunnen (we haven't taken this route down before... it's nice), where we have a bit of time to finish our last sandwiches before catching the train that starts us towards home.

This ended up being our longest hike. We did a few over 33km last year during the corona restrictions, but this one topped those.

Track

Stats: 9:44, 35.6km, ~1600m up, ~1400m down