Sunday 22nd September : Weather: 16°C Altdorf: 8°C Klausen: 20°C back in Altodorf: Hazy no rain
Schachental Hohenweg: Bus to Untere Balm, 13.4k walk to Biel : Cable car to Burglen Brug, Walk to Altdorf
Ascent and Descent: Schachental Hohenweg: Ascent 451m, Descent 697m, Altdorf: Ascent 8m Descent 210m
Time: 7.44am Bus to Untere Balm: Schachental Walk 8.45am to 1.35pm: 4h 25m + 1 x 30 m stop:
Altdorf Walk 1hr 15 mins: 2.30pm to 4.45pm
Accommodation: Krebsriedgasse 1 Altdorf
7.15am cows in the shed
Bus stop at Untere Balm with snow
Schachental Hohenweg Balcony walk
Beautiful views all day
Coffee stop half way to Biel
Lunch stop Biel waiting for gondola
A wonderful day on the Schachental Hohenweg walking 13.4k between Untere Balm near the Klausen Pass and the cable car at Biel. We then walked from the bottom of the cable car to Altdorf via Burglen, birth of the famous William Tell.
I’ve been awake since 2am thinking about the next stage of our trip. But I doze off at 5am and sleep for another hour when Ian suggests a cup of tea. Yes please! We’ve already decided to catch the 408 bus at 7.44am to Klausen Pass to start another leg of the via Alpini back to Altdorf. We have a quick breakfast, pack a morning coffee into Ian’s back pack, change into warm clothes as it’s forecast to be 6°C at 1800 metres near Klausen Pass.
We’re out the door at 7.15am and poke our nose into the shed to see the cows chomping on hay while waiting to be milked. It really is a farm stay! Then up the road to William Tell square to wait for the 408 bus to Linthel but we’re hopping off half way at Untere Balm, just before the Klausen Pass. It arrives exactly on time at 7.44am and is already packed with hikers, as the first stop was the Altdorf Bahnhof - the railway station. The bus winds its way high above the Schachental Valley on its way to Klausen Pass. It’s like a tourist bus ride with views of deep gorges, waterfalls and snow capped Alps and a running commentary by the bus driver - in German!
After 50 minutes, someone presses the stop button for Untere Balm, and six hikers plus us hop off to a cold 8°C. We can see the Klausen Hotel a bit further up on the next hair pin bend. We had stayed there with Jenny and Graham on our last Via Alpini trip in 2015.
A sign points along a pathway towards Biel 3hrs 40 mins. This is route 495, the Schachental Hohenweg and obviously other hikers have come to do it too. Its a fairytale wonderland through meadows and forests with views of snow capped Alps, and soon we’re walking up the path with the hazy sun on our backs. The Schachental Hohenweg is a mix of narrow forest paths, gravel tracks and bitumen roads, and is betwen the heights of 1,700 and 1,850 metres. There were many patches of melting snow along parts of the track making it muddy and slippery.
After 3k and 2hrs on this undulating track, we reach a multidirectional sign post that indicates we’re about half way to Biel, where we'll get the cable car down to the valley. A good place to stop for a coffee, with a spicy fruit roll, fresh from a packet stored in our bags left in Altdorf. We stop for 30 minutes to admire the view.
By 1.35pm, we’re at the Biel cable car station and look for a place in the sun for lunch, eventually sitting near a brick wall adjacent to the unoccupied ski units with outside tables and chairs which we were afraid to use. Lunch is very basic - a slice of Al Porto Pannetone, with a cup of tea. We watch the gondola going up and down from Burglen Brug to Biel, with views of snow capped alps in the background. It's 2.15pm when we pay 14 CHF each to take the two stage gondola down to Burglen Brug. There’s no 402 bus for an hour so we decide to walk the 4.5k back to Altdorf.
It’s an easy downhil walk beside the main road and soon we come to the Imholz Sport store where in 2015 we bought gas cans, but this year, no one there replied to my emails so we stoppd off at Zurich when we first arrived to buy them. Everything is closed on Sundays in Switzerland - and so they should be in Australia - so we can only peer in through the window to see what they stock. No gas cans but they might be downstairs. Who knows?
We walk down a footpath through Burglen, the home of William Tell, and read his tale of told through story boards every 20 metres. All we knew about William Tell is that he shot an apple on his son’s head, but the story boards on the path spell out the full folklore tale.
In brief, the Habsburg rulers sent Gessler, their bailiff, to this area of Switzerland to ensure that people obeyed their ruler, and he placed his green cap with feathers on top of a pole in the Altdorf town square for people to bow to. William Tell refused and Gessler forced him to take a test of freedom by shooting an arrow through an apple placed on his son Walter’s head. Tell succeeded, and took revenge sometime later and killed Gessler. This inspired the people to rise up against the Habsburgs for their freedom. An interesting story, brought to life in story boards.
Continuing on down the pathway lined by ancient stone walls, we’re back in Altdorf and walking the extra 600 metres to 1 Krebsriedgasse arriving just before 4pm. It’s sunny and a warm 20°C so a good time to have a shower, wash clothes and put them outside on the drying rack in the afternoon sun. I sort photos for a bit and at 5pm, we have a beer/wine outside admiring the alps and the setting sun. A family member arrives and reiterates what we have heard many times in the past few weeks - it’s not supposed to snow ths early and a few weeks ago, the cows and sheep up on the high pastures were in deep snow.
When the sun sets and it gets cool, we move inside to chop up our lettuce, tomato, onion, capsicum into our plastic mixing bowl with a few squirts of mayonnaise. Then dish it out onto plastic plates with slices of smoked salmon, washed down with a pinot grigio diluted with apple juice. Going outside to retrieve our washing, we see a few family members crushing apples and wander over to help by turning the cutting wheel. We only last 10 minutes and we’re glad they’ve run out of apples. They use the squished apples to make Schnapps during teh winter months.
I blog while Ian watches Tennis on Eurosport. After a cup of hot milk and honey we’re in bed at 9pm. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow so we’ll wait and see and plan our day over breakfast.