First proper peak after my accident! Initially quite a few people wanted to join for a hike, but in the end only Anita, Ben and I went. I guess the weather forecast predicting an overcast day with rain showers didn't sound very inviting. It turned out very nice in the end. We even got slightly sun burned. While the clouds did indeed hide many vistas it stayed dry and nicely cool.
Planning this trip was a bit frustrating for me. I was scrolling around Google Earth with an overlay of all the hikes I have already done. This of course rekindled my ambition and inspired me to look at way more challenging objectives than I can realistically tackle in my current state and this early in the year (still a lot of snow in the mountains). So I settled for the Gulmen (1788m), a very modest peak that's easy to get to, features a South-Westerly approach and thus little snow and is never far away from access roads that I could use to bail by car should it come to that.
We started a couple of minutes past ten in the pittoresque village of Amden at lake Walen. It took us about two and a half hours to gain 800m and reach the summit. The trail mostly went through fresh green meadows strewn with flowers. Anita couldn't help herself and made friends with every herd of cows we passed. Some of them became quite attached to her ;-)
We chose a detour on the way down, passing some small leftover patches of snow. After a total roundtrip time of about 5:30 hours we were back at the car. My foot was hurting pretty badly towards the end, but I was still walking and not hobbling like the last time. So definitely an improvement. I did use walking poles and took turns with Anita carrying the back pack though.
~13km, ~900m elevation gain
