Four Lakes Hike
It was about time to go for the first real hike. We chose the Four Lakes Hike that leads from Melchsee-Frutt to the Trübsee along four gorgeous lakes (see route 2 on map). This is first lake we arrived at just after we had stepped off the gondola.
What is so convenient in a small country like Switzerland is that most places are rather easy to reach within hours using public transportation, only. To get to the lake (called Melchsee), we took three trains, one Postauto (play the movie to hear what we heard in front of scary curves), and finally, a gondola. And that took less than three hours from house door to the Melchsee.
Arriving already at the second lake. All the crystal clear lakes mirrored the surrounding landscape beautifully because there was barely any wind that could have caused ripples in the water. A bit of a breeze would have been very welcome. Although it was only 23° Celsius, there was no shade at all and the altitude was between 1800 and 2300 meters. So, yes, we suffered and the results are still visible, a day after the trip…
Although this was not a dangerous trip by any means, you still could fall to your death with one misstep. As you can see, Teresa avoids this like one of those nimble mountain goats.
This reminds me of some car trips across the alps I did with my parents many years ago. Sometimes, we would end up crawling up a road to mountain pass behind a few cars just to find out that some person scared of heights decided they had to make everybody miserable. They just should have taken the Postauto!
Anyway, back to the beautiful hike…
That’s the only fog we encountered on our whole trip. Actually, in the morning while traveling towards Luzern, we saw the snow-covered mountains from over 50 km away. The temperature in the nether regions were expected to be in the thirties and there was no cloud in sight. As I write this post the day after, it is actually 35° Celsius and this without any A/C. More about the latter in some other post, maybe.
And then it was time to be hungry. So we looked for a nice spot along the shores of the third lake. This picture shows our view from the very place we had our lunch consisting of the typical Brot and Cervelat.
This hike has officially medium difficulty. So far, it was more of walk, a bit up, a bit down. The next goal was the Jochpass, that is, a mountain pass, and that meant going up. And up it went. The picture shows the same lake we had lunch on, just from slightly higher up. And then it went further up and around a corner, and then up even more, and so on. Actually, it wasn’t that bad, but it was hot.
Having reached the top of the Jochpass, all we had to do is to climb down. That may sound easy, but if you are already a bit tired and have to make one big step downhill after the other, well, it’s not that much fun. Still, the view up towards the Titlis was not something we would not want to have missed.
I was looking so much forward to a really big ice cream. But instead, we grabbed some drinks and ran for the train packed with other tired and sweaty hikers. We finally made it home by 6:30pm and rewarded ourselves with Gschwelti! En guete to us.
What a beautiful hike. The photos of the lakes are marvelous. So good to see that you have time to do these things and are not too constrained by work and school.
The leaves are late in turning this year. Many of the maples are just going red and orange now, and the birches are yellow, but the best colors are still a week or two away. We had rain much of the time the last few weeks, which has delayed the change.
Tom