Our First Snowy Hike

Last weekend, we went took the intercity train out to the town of Laufen and then hopped on a PostAuto bus to the tiny village of Grindel.  We were nervous about having only a four-minute gap between the train's arrival and the bus's departure, but then we remembered that we are in Switzerland, where people only get nervous if the connection time is a few seconds.

This is the trail head in the quaint village of Grindel.

As you can see, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!  We love having true seasons!

Go, Aussie, go!  We are now on the Wanderweg out of town.

Austin is having a great time in the snow, as you can see.  He was so excited to get out in the snow that he was running around and barking.  We were a little concerned about the snow getting packed into his paw pads, but he seemed okay with it.  We will have to get him some doggie snow booties for longer hikes though because he did stop once to lick his front paw.

This neat little farm was to our left as we were on the trail.  Swiss country buildings look so cool covered in snow (no pun intended).

Some lovely scenery.

We stumbled across a pistol club out in the countryside. No one was there, but there was a target range in the back.  We heard through the grapevine that, next to the United States, there are more handguns in Switzerland than anywhere else.  Gun-related violence, however, is very low.    

After the gun club, we headed out into a nature preserve that was truly breath-taking.

This was a frozen and snow-covered pond out in the nature preserve.  It was so tranquil out there.

Veronica and Austin on the tiny bridge across the creek.

The snow on the trees and bushes was quite beautiful.  Right behind this bush was a small waterfall that had mostly frozen over into a fantastic ice sculpture.

We ate some snow from the branches and it was pure...and cold.

The patterns on the untrodden snow field were awe-inspiring.

Some more Swiss buildings covered in snow.  We are not sure what this building is for, it kinda looks like a village inn.  Perhaps one can be served grog by a beer wench...the world may never know.

At one point, the trail disappeared completely because no one had used it since the heavy snowfall.  Luckily, we had some deer tracks to follow, and the yellow diamonds painted on the tree trunks also denoted the trail. 

Walkin' in a winter wonderland!

This amazing natural icicle formation could be seen across the valley.

In addition to there no longer being a trail, things got a bit treacherous.  The weather had felled some trees and we had to do some improvised scrambling to get by.  Good times.

We made it!  So proud.

This is almost at the end of the trail.  We ended up at a little village where there was a heavy metal band practicing in a barn.  Our bus back to the Laufen Bahnhof was an unacceptable 5 minutes late!  That's like 3 days in Swiss standards.

We really loved this hike through the snow and we are stoked for more winter adventures.  More pictures of this hike will be available on Flickr in the near future.  Ciao for now!