Davos, Switzerland

So I know I still haven't put anything up about our new lives in Cambridge, but once again, I'm behind and have to share some pictures from our most recent travels - this time in Switzerland. I loved it there! The Swiss Alps were amazingly beautiful and reminded me a lot of home (Northern Idaho) in the summer.

We stayed in a smallish town called Davos and had the opportunity to take some pretty incredible hikes. Below are just two small subsets of the hiking map we received when we arrived. We would have had to spend a month there to explore even a fraction of the surrounding mountain trails. I've tried to highlight some of our adventures on the maps with colored arrows - this will be a test of how our monitors' color settings are!

Davos is set in a narrow valley between two huge mountain ranges. We took two trips into the mountains to the south of the valley (click image to enlarge).

On our second day in Davos, despite some serious rain, we decided to try to do some hiking around one of the mountain peaks near our hotel (marked by the red arrow). We rode the gondola to the top of Jakobshorn (blue arrows). It was an impressive ride up, but we weren't able to do any hiking or take any good pictures - we got to the top just in time to watch a massive storm cloud slowly engulf the mountain. We could barely see 3 feet ahead, so we opted to have some lunch and head back down.

Luckily, the weather cleared up considerably after that storm passed and we had beautiful weather for the rest of trip. Several days later, we took a bus up to Sertig Dorfli (black arrow). It was a distinctively "Swiss" valley - so much so that it almost felt as though we were in a Walt Disney recreation of a Swiss village. We had to keep reminding ourselves that it was real! We walked through this valley:


We were headed for the "wasserfall" that you can just make out over Jason's shoulder:

We finally made it!

On our way back out of the valley, we decided to forge our own path. Unfortunately, some of us weren't as brave as Jason and Ann when we came across this "bridge":

So, we decided to head back to the trail. Along the way, we were serenaded by this alpenhorn player - I told you it was like a Disney recreation!


On our way back, we also discovered that a local farmer had decided to use the main trail as a corralling area to milk his cows. Yet another characteristically Swiss site - milk cows with large cow bells:
I posed for this one especially for Jason's grandpa who has taken great care in teaching me everything there is to know about cows. Thanks to him, I can tell you that these are either hefers or cows - depending on whether or not they have had a calf!


They have the strangest way of putting their cows out to pasture - there are no fences keeping them in; they just roam the mountain sides. The farmers keep track of them by listening for the sound of their bells. So, we'd be in the most remote, isolated areas, but could still hear the constant clanging of cow bells.

We also made several trips into the mountains to the north of the valley (our hotel is still the red arrow):
One evening after my conference let out, we decided to ride the tram up to Schatzalp (yellow arrow) and then hike back down into the city. Unfortunately, pretty much every sign in Davos was written in German. We were half way up the mountain before we realized that the signs we were following were directing us to the actual area, not the tram that would take us there! It was a nice hike up though and much better exercise than hiking down!

Schatzalp turned out to be a really neat little area. It had a "sommersled" ride that was a lot of fun (even if Jason said I used my brakes too much!):

There were also great views of Jakobshorn on the other side of the valley (the peak we tried to visit but were run off by the storm):

As you can see, there were wildflowers growing EVERYWHERE and nice views of Davos in the valley below:


Our longest hike started in Davos with a ride up the Parsenn tram (white arrow). It was about a 20 minute ride up to Weissfluhjoch at an elevation of just over 8700 feet:


From here, we climbed another 600 ft to the mountain peak, (behind Jason in the above picture) Weissfluhgipfel (blue arrow). The views were amazing!

Do you see the small building in the center left of the above picture? That's where we were dropped off by the tram...it was quite a hike! But, with views like this, it was worth it.

Can you imagine how high the snow must have been if there's still this much left in July!?


After we hiked back down from Weissfluhgipfel, we set out for our lunch destination, Parsennhutte (black arrow). It was just at the end of the trail in the left of the picture:

After lunch, we headed back toward the hotel. A long walk down into this valley:

Like everywhere else in Switzerland, we enjoyed beautiful scenery the whole way down:

We knew we were almost back when we saw Davos See, the lake just outside of Davos.

Once we reached the bottom, we caught a bus in Wolfgang (purple arrow) and headed back to the hotel VERY ready to sit down!!

What an amazing trip. Just looking back at these pictures to write this post, I can hardly believe we were actually there. I can only imagine how beautiful the mountains must look covered in snow. Definitely tempted to go back for another visit!...