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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
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...
Doing what you love If you’re reading this, you’re either a runner, an aspiring runner, or interested in running. If you’re an aspiring runner, all of the runners out there will surely agree with me when I say that running is freedom. I met one of my friends at the Jungfrau Marathon this year, and...
Summer’s over! Riding the tram home on Thursday evening I picked up a copy of the free paper Blick am Abend. On page three a I read “Der Sommer war schön” (The summer was nice). I think to myself, “was nice” it’s only August there is still a good month of summer left and, summer...
Back to Zermatt There is something comforting about returning to someplace familiar. For the third year in a row on the first Friday in July I took the train to the most picture perfect alpine city there is — Zermatt. With it’s international fame as a resort for the rich and famous, Zermatt is best...