Yesterday we almost hiked from Staffelegg to Hauenstein and we almost saw its five passes. Instead, due to an unjustifiable confidence in my prep skills combined with me field testing a new hiking app, we took the wrong turn after getting off the bus and went in the opposite direction.
I recently read about the power of visualizations so for this hike I prepared: I visualized where the sun would be during most of the hike, where we would begin and end. I also flew through the route with Google Earth and visualized us walking it. Now, yesterday provided us with an incredibly valuable learning experience, I learned that: the brain won’t remember a thing out of visualizing a whole route through Google Earth, remembering where the sun will be during a hike is useless when it’s cloudy, the weather app’s “clouds” tab is actually the “rain” tab, the “clouds” tab is the tab with the little cloud on it, when you don’t see your destination in signpost after signpost it’s a heavenly sign, pay attention.
In any case, I’m sure it rained a lot on the other direction.
The Jura Crest Trail is one of the seven Swiss national hiking routes and it connects Zürich with Genève. Yesterday the weather was so bad over most of Switzerland that we had barely any options. Compared to our previous hikes the most salient parts of this hike were how smooth the landscape looked and the lack of cowbells, people and sunlight.
While we were eating our home-made hummus half-way through we met a friendly local from Aarau who was training for a multi-day hike later in the year. His dog liked to break branches apart with its teeth and I got to practice my German listening skills while Loes did the talking. I was really happy to catch most of the conversation although I wasn’t able to express it in words.
We also came across a 700 years old lime tree outside of Linn whose falling branches were being held by tight ropes. A couple was setting up a picnic table next to it with huge clouds in the distance.
It wasn’t the hike we planned but we got valuable memories from it.
This entry is part of the series Switzerland (2015 - 2020):
- Bye Bye California, Welcome Switzerland
- Schaffhausen And The Rheinfall Waterfalls
- Hiking From Wasserauen to Ebenalp
- Konstanz, Germany
- Bellinzona
- Hiking From Richterswil to Pfäffikon SZ
- Hiking From Einsiedeln To Schwyz (Via Jacobi - Stage 5)
- Hiking From Staffelegg to Brugg (Jura Crest Trail - stage 2) (This entry)
- Hiking From Trogen to Appenzell
- Hiking From Maienfeld To Heididorf
- Sense Exploring While Walking In Nature
- Hiking From Einsiedeln To Brunni
- Living In Switzerland