Saturday 7th September : Weather: 14°C to 22°C: Sunny and warm with blue skies
Kandersteg: 12.1k walk: Circuit to Oenschinensee
Ascent and Descent: Ascent 483m, Descent 483m,
Time: 10am to 3.00pm: Total Time 5hrs: Walk time 4hrs + 2 x 30 min stops
Accommodation: Hotel Pension Spycher, Kandersteg
Blue sky day to Oeschenensee
A stunning relaxing day walking a circuitalmost 500 metres up to the Oeschinsee above Kandersteg. Yesterday we could peer down to th azure blue lake, today we joined a procession of tourists then had coffee and lunch near the lake.
We slept in til 7am after a long day yesterday to the Hohturli Pass. Breakfast is at 8am, so we give the early morning cup of tea a miss. A quick shower and we’re down to breakfast, not lavish, of cereals, bread, cheese, meats and jams and two hot cups of tea. We’ve contacted Luca in Bern and he's planned a walk for us tomorrow, a 12 k circuit to Anenhutte for lunch. We’ll look forward to that. By the time we’ve had breakfast, paid 416 CHF for 3 nights, it’s 10am when we leave to walk to Frutigen down the valley, planning to catch the bus back. But the track is closed due to rock falls so now we’ll walk to Oeschinensee.
Yesterday’s Hohturli Pass up top
Azure Blue Oeschinensee
Coffee at Oeschinensee
Jan grabbing a seat for coffee
Lunch at Oeschinensee
Following signs to the Oeschinensee, we head up through the fields. We don’t need to follow signs, just follow the streams of people heading our way. It’s a wide well graded tourist track with hikers, kids, dogs, picnicers, and first time walkers - some in thongs and designer shoes. It’s a warm morning as we steadily climb up through the forest for and hour and a half to reache the Oeschinensee, where there’s already thousands of people picnicing beside teh lake. There’ some hardy swimmers in the cold glacier lake at 17°C.
I spy a seat and race off to claim it for our coffee with a view of the lake, the alps and the comings and goings of the tourists. We sit for half an hour in the warmth of the sun before walking along the track around the edge of the lake to see where it met the main track coming down from Hohturli Pass. Yesterday we took the high route without descending to teh lake so we were interested to see if the two tracks connected. They did, and wherever we looked, there’s picnicers under every inch of shaded tree, as the day is quite warm now.
Back to our coffee seat to find it’s been taken, but there’s another seat in the shade where we stop to have a cheese, tomato and ham sandwich for lunch. It’s after 1pm when we leave to walk back the same way we came up, ony it’s a lot hotter now but there’s still a stream of people coming up. It’s 3pm when we’re back, and we drop in to Voig, a base supermarket to buy just one cold beer for 1 CHF. Back to our Spycher Hotel Room to share a beer. The Coop shuts at 5pm today, being Saturday. So after a shower and just before 5, we walk down to the Coop to buy a few things for dinner - one tomato and two beers - to go with our left over bread, cheese, butter, ham, lettuce and mayonnaise. We’re leaving for Locarno on Monday and want to minimise our baggage.
After dinner, we recall memories of previous trips, discussing the best and worst of places we stayed in. This place, the Hotel Spycher, has memories from 2015, when we stayed here with our friends Graham and Jenny.