The Neutral Zone

Zürich, Switzerland - Hannah and I hiked in Appenzell on Saturday and ate fresh trout at a riverside restaurant by the Hirzel hills on Sunday.  Saxer Lücke Hannah and I traveled to the Alpstein mountains, which are a group of mountains in the southern part of Appenzell near St. Gallen. We took a long gondola ride up to the top of a prominent mountain ridge (about 1,800 meters) and then hiked along the ridge to the Saxer Lücke, which is the saddle between the mountains we were on and the abutting mountain chain ( Lücke means gap) . In this case, the saddle was formed by a fault line. In fact, the layers of stone forming the ridge we hiked along were so affected by geological activity that in some places they had turned vertical. However - to my knowledge - Switzerland is not particularly seismically active: they get an earthquake of magnitude 6 every century or so.  The hike to the saddle provides stunning views.  To the east you see a low valley formed by the Rhine. On on...

Zurich, Switzerland - We've gotten in some excellent hiking as the spring turned to summer. Below is a sampling of the places we've been. Stoos Ridge Hike We visited Stoos earlier this year when it was covered in snow. That snowshoe adventure ended in minor disaster when both of us tumbled part of the way down a hill towards the end of our route, resulting in minor cuts and bruises and a sprained ankle. Despite the raw memory, we decided to give Stoos a second chance and attempt the Stoos ridge hike, a 4.4km walk along the ridge that connects the Klingenstock peak to Fronalpstock. The path is at times a little narrow and in various places the drop off to the left, or the right, or sometimes both the left and the right, can be rather precipitous. This might have created more anxiety, except that the path was littered with all manner of folks who were less surefooted--like the portly older swiss gentlemen--or careful--the kids wandering about with their faces glued to their ...