An easy hillside stroll

I'm visiting Leukerbad again. It's a Small town in Switzerland with beautiful mountains, hot springs, and lots of hiking trails.

Today, I took the cable car to the top of the mountain and went hiking.

I should mention that Swiss trail markings are different from Pennsylvania markings. In particular, the scale is different. A PA "Moderate" is a Swiss "Easy", and a PA "Difficult" is a Swiss "Moderate".

I'm reasonably comfortable with difficult hiking trails in Pennsylvania. I had nowhere to be the next day (though I was hoping for more hiking and sightseeing), and I was in a town full of spas. There was no better time to push myself. Unfortunately, I only had a few hours before the cable car down the mountain stopped for the night. So, I chose a middle difficulty trail that was supposed to take about two hours and took off.

It was easy going at first, but it started to get a lot harder somewhere along the way. I was expecting a challenge, but it was getting to be too much. It was the point where I was balancing on a 3 inch wide icy ledge on the side of one foot, preparing to jump a rather frightening gap when I realized that I might have gotten onto the wrong trail.

Since the clock was ticking and I'd burned over an hour, I just reversed course and went back to where I started. I checked the map, and the trail I'd ended up on was rated "K6 - ED (Extremely Difficult)" on the Swiss scale.

Suddenly, I didn't feel so bad about giving up.

My Fitbit claimed that I climbed the equivalent of 87 flights of stairs on the trail. Tomorrow is going to be rough.

Another aside: before I left, I bought some sunscreen. It was pretty expensive, but it's Switzerland, so I didn't think about it too much. I remembered it at the trailhead. As I applied it, I noticed that it was a weird color. It turns out that it was sunscreen with concealer (makeup). I got tan gunk all over my clothes, but I'm sure that I looked fabulous on the trail.

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