After spending the last weekend in Germany with Anita (a night on the Reeperbahn and a day in the Sauna Oasis) Helmut visited this weekend. Ignoring an abysmal weather forecast of nonstop rain we went for a hike up the Brisen (2404m). We only had about 4 hours of rain. On the other hand it was actually snowing (in July!) on the ridge and summit for about another hour. So we got thoroughly drenched. And I learned to pack gloves for the next time. I always ignored the warnings and considered them overly cautious but almost failing to take pictures on the summit because my fingers were frozen stiff taught me a lesson ;-)
We spent most of the time in dense clouds, so unfortunately couldn't enjoy the vistas. Well prepared and planned as my mountain expeditions typically are, we took the wrong way up the summit (a "blue" difficult trail instead of the "red" easy one) and descended into an entirely wrong valley as well. In my defense the Post Auto dropped us off at the wrong stop in the morning and my hastily printed map was turned into a useless ball of paper slush by the rain. So there!
Nevertheless we walked the originally planned distance and height almost to the decimal point. About ~22km, 1600m elevation gain and 2000m descent. Hiking from 8 in the morning to about 5:30 in the evening.
All in all it was still an enjoyable experience - I've learned something and we moved Helmut's personal boundaries a bit (he has this thing with steep cliffs ;-) ).
We spent Sunday sight seeing in Zürich.
Summer, where are you?!
2011-07-23 Brisen Hike |
Summer is not here either :( They keep on forecasting good weather "next week". Ha ha. Probably we will get summer temperatures in the middle of January or some such thing and then another flood because the snow melts too quickly and has no where to go because the ground is frozen!
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