This weekend I went
for a hike from Göschenen to Andermatt. After
last weekend, I wanted to spend a little less time on the train, but I still wanted to get into the mountains to enjoy the nice fall weather while it lasts. (It rained cats and dogs on Sunday, so I'm pretty happy that I got out!)
The hike is along a transport route that has been used for hundreds of years, and you can see evidence of this history all along the way. On this hike I really had a feeling of the harsh and wild nature of the mountains and the incredible work and engineering that goes in to making these regions accessible.
I hiked alongside a beautiful turquoise river much of the way, with many interesting bridges (including one called the Devil's Bridge, where, history says, a massive loot of gold was lost ages ago during a crossing gone bad).
One of the other interesting things about this train was that much of it ran on top of the galleries where the road and trains ran. These galleries have a rock wall on one side, and then are mostly open on the other (as you can see from the pictures below), which I guess serves to keep the tracks/road clear and passable without being fully underground. (The primary roadway for the Gotthard Pass is a tunnel that starts in Göschenen and goes under Andermatt. This roadway is the start of the old Gotthard Pass.) Since these galleries are covered with grass and trees, it was easy to forget that you were walking on top of a road!
Aside from the many fantastic and ethereal waterfalls, there was also a memorial for a
Russian general who beat a famously successfull retreat through this area, apparently.
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| Not your usual tunnel signs. |
At the end of the hike, I wandered around Andermatt a little bit, seeing some of the beautiful (
and interesting) scenery. The setting for the town is really stark and lovely, and I enjoyed having some time in the sun there before heading back to Zürich.
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| Beautiful fall colors. |
