A perfect fall hike.

My philosophy this fall has been to make hay while the sun shines, or, in my case, be in the mountains if at all possible while the sun shines. I have no idea if and when I will ever live this close to the mountains again, so seeing them as much as possible now makes sense. Also, I've determined that I'm addicted to mountains- they're like crack to me; I keep on needing to take "hits" of the mountains, and then I always feel so much happier. Sometimes during the day I even sneak up to the top floor of my building just to look at the mountains! Anyways this is why, the day after our Glacier Express adventure, I took myself into the mountains again for a hike.

Parts of the train ride were the same as the Glacier Express, but this time I got to sit facing forwards and by the window, so I got some clearer pictures. Mountain crack!

Eventually, I made it to Sedrun and started my hike, which was on a ridge along a valley, surrounded by mountains.

The landscape was covered in rich fall colors- all golden and crimson- which contrasted fantastically with the clear blue sky and the snow-covered mountains. The sun was warm but the air was still crisp, which, in my opinion, is perfect fall weather. Pretty much, it was amazing!

I really enjoyed the walk and the train ride back to Zurich.

It is pretty incredible how many km I traveled by train over the course of three days:

Thursday
Zurich to Zermatt: 300 km

Friday
Zermatt to Chur: 220 km
Chur to Zurich: 120 km

Saturday
Zurich to Sedrun: 130 km
Disentis to Zurich: 190 km

View A weekend on trains October 2013 in a larger map


Basically, I love my GA!

Hiking near Sedrun.

Hiking the Alp Flix.

The weather is not going to be fantastic this weekend, and, since I have some vacations coming up in September, I'm staying in town and working. This also means I can finally get caught up on some posts that I've been meaning to make...

Two weekends ago, also the same weekend that I made it to the Locarno Film Festival, Melissa and I went for this hike in the Graubünden region. It definitely required some commitment, because the train/bus ride was about 2.5 hours, with 1.5 hours of those being on a bus on windy mountain roads, but it was totally a beautiful hike.

We started out in the little town of Sur, which Google Maps has a hard time finding, because it is so small!

Our hike then wended its way up the mountain. Unfortunately, at some point we missed our turn (the signage was pretty terrible), and we ended up walking straight up the mountain, instead of making a more gradual climb. It was very beautiful, but we were definitely not where we were supposed to be.

Once we reached the plateau at the top, we hiked along it towards a lake, with great views of all of the surrounding mountains.

Eventually we made our descent back to Sur, where we were just in time to catch a bus to start our journey back. We stopped along the way in a little mountain resort town (Lenzerheide) for a post-hike Aperol Spritz, a favorite summer drink, before making our way back home.

It was a fantastic hike, and really nice to have company!