We would like to be out for 5-7 days of fairly easy hiking. We can carry all our stuff and would like to walk up to 100 km's. Any of you have any ideas about where we could try?
We would love a "West Highland Way" in Switzerland.
Thank you,
Hi, my wife and I was thinking of coming to Switzerland for some hiking this summer. We were looking online but couldn't find what we were looking for when it came to hiking trails.
You are aware that Switzerland has a small range of low hills running across it - they are called the ALPS
Wanderland.ch has all the marked routes. If you are genuinely keen to plan a route - see if you can purchase Swiss Topo . In which you can plan your route - with it giving KMs, height difference, estimated time etc etc etc
Alright, thanks, I will have a look at those. I will also use the topo map I have for the GPS and see what I can do. Thanks once again,
I've got the Lonely Planet, "Walking in Switzerland" book and at the front it lists all the hikes in the book against duration and difficulty level.
The list basically confirms what the other posters have said and although there are many easy day walks, all the multi-day walks have a difficulty level of medium, medium-hard or above (it's those pesky mountains again).
However, there was one Easy-Medium 3 day walk - down in Ticino, the "Lago Riton circuit". I know nothing about it but google-images shows some very nice images.
The book might be worth buying.
Will check that out, the thing is that I dont mind the mountains that much I just feel that it will take some of the joy out of the hike. I would concentrate to much in "I have to come up, as soon as possible" instead of "wow, this is beautiful". Thank you!
I quite enjoyed backpacking through the Engadine region, particularly in the Swiss National Park and Italian border areas.
Try the Canton of Jura and the Jura mountains. These are less grand than the Alps but nevertheless wonderful hiking country and the whole area is rather isolated but dotted with picturesque villages and has a medieval feel about it. Wild horses living up there too. Look up the Jura Ridgeway: This is the southface of the Jura mountains and extends almost from Zürich to somewhere near Geneva and it's possible to hike the whole length of the Ridgeway passing through some amazing scenery and villages.
Second those webs, with wanderland.ch you have whole country covered in as much detail as in commercial maps (well they don't have ski touring tracks... yet And printing of maps is also excellent, if you have color laser printer available, there is no need for paper maps (and if you want to support folks doing them buy guides related to these maps).
As for treks, it very much depends on location. Lower alps allow much more continuous trekking, but then you are not under glaciated titans and similar beauty. But if you head towards bigger mountains, having 1 continuous trek might be a problem (ie there is huge glacier and no way to avoid it, or you would need to do 1500m up & down just to get to next valley, which isn't that easy if you carry all your stuff).
But alps are so huge that trek of any length is possible. For me I would recommend pre-alps around Fribourg, Gruyere, Chateau D'Oex etc. They get to 2000-2500m high, from top you see all the beauty of Bernese alps and more, yet you actually cover a lot of horizontal, not only vertical distance. Similar ranges are found on other places as well.
If you don't intend to bring camping stuff, then you of course need to trek along mountain huts and then there is much less options (but still many!)
Is it actually allowed to wildcamp in Switzerland or is it just something which is possible to do under the radar? =D
Feels like we have received the tips we needed, will also have a look at Canton of Jura and the Jura mountains. Thanks everybody,
Full, zoomable, printable topo map is available for free online at the very site you mention. http://map.wanderland.ch