I’ll be honest, I’m a lazy trail runner. I generally have to Google PR to be reminded that it means personal record. I’m not really concerned about my PR versus your PR, I’m just interested in an adventure. I love that I can take a train at 6 am and be on a trail about...
Author: Mark Melnykowycz
Alpine Route to Santis
One of my favorite mountain runs is to go from Wildhaus to Santis via the blue SAC Alpine route. This route climbs quickly from the valley and then offers a long ridge to the Altmann before taking the Lisengrat to the Santis summit. It’s an ideal location from St. Gallen, Winterthur, Zurich and Chur as...
Swiss Trail Running – Braunwald
Braunwald is a wonderful village near the end of Glarnerland in Switzerland sitting at just above 1200 m with easy access from a train and then a funicular. It's an ideal day trip from Zurich for climbing, klettersteig (via ferrata), paragliding, hiking, easy mountaineering, and trail running adventures. I originally headed there to go over...
Swiss Trail Running Summer Snow – Altmann
The influence of climate change means that seasonal changes are becoming more abrupt, and this seems to be quite evident in the Eastern Swiss Alps where the snows stay into June. I headed to the Alpstein for a quick run up Santis but had to stop at the Altmann summit as the Lisengrat ridge to...
Swiss Trail Running – Mt Speer
The Eastern Alps in Switzerland provide a playground of easy mountain tours and are ideal for day trips. For a quick mountain trail running experience, the route from Krummenau to Kaltbrunn provides 1300 m elevation change over 25 km distance, and offers a multitude of variations. The route follows the Swiss hiking trail to Mt....
360 Trail Running with the Ricoh Theta
Since I started trail and mountain running adventures, I’ve experimented with different forms of recording the experience. When you’re traversing many kilometers up and down it’s important to keep weight to a minimum. In the past I’ve used a Ricoh GR Digital, GoPro, and Sony E-mount cameras like the NEX5/6. Since last year I’ve been...
Bored with Running Marathons – Now Seeking Experiences
I started trail running around two years ago. The idea was to combine a bit of the speed from ski touring with the foot work from sport climbing into an easily accessible sport. I also discovered the marathon experience, starting with the Swiss Alpine k42 and Jungfrau marathons in 2011. Since then I’ve run in...
Swiss Trail Running – Mt. Santis
The idea of shooting a short trail running in the Swiss Alps had been tossed around between us before, and so in Sept. 2012 we decided to just do it. Our little team included Matthew Anderson, a photographer based in Winterthur who has a passion for adventure sport filming to do camera work, with music provided by...
Mt. Santis Trail Running Preview
The Dromeus team (well the two of us: Christian and Mark) teamed up with Matthew Anderson Photography to do a trail running video shoot in the alps. We decided on Mt. Santis, a high massive in the easter Swiss alps and made the Rotsteinpass hut our base of operations. Our goal was to capture the...
Swiss Mountain Run – Elm to Linthal
One of the most beautiful (and there are many) mountain locations in Switzerland is Glarus, and if you’re in the area, a nice run is from Elm to Linthal over the Richetlipass and is about 20km and 1200m elevation gain. This run started in Elm Dorf at 977m, after passing a Swiss tank base you...