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Journal: |
I made the 6:30am breakfast and caught the 7:35am train back to
Sevelen on what was already a warm and sunny morning. I
started hiking from Sevelen shortly before 8am and soon crossed the
Rhine River into Liechtenstein. Apart from crossing the river
and seeing a sign, it wasn't much different to Switzerland! My route
took me through the centre of Vaduz, the capital, on a very quiet
Sunday morning, although the open-air cafes in the pedestrian mall
at the centre of town showed signs of preparing for a big influx of
visitors soon. There wasn't much old about the town, apart
from the castle overlooking it, but the modern buildings were
sympathetic to the style and understated.
I climbed out of
town on the Via Alpina, mostly along forest roads, passing by Vaduz
castle on the way. Higher up I passed a car park which was,
apparently, the favourite place to start walks on the mountain.
A small bus had recently dropped some kind of youth group who headed
up the trail in front of me. I caught up with them, and they
let me pass, just as the trail turned into a spectacular
cliff-hugging scramble along the face of the Alpspitx. It was
no place for anybody with vertigo, with almost constant sheer drops
for many hundreds of metres on one side of the single track.
It was a place to travel slowly and carefully and I made good use of
the wire ropes attached to the cliff face. At one point I
encountered, coming the other way, an overweight and very stressed
looking 20+yo guy who clearly wasn't going to take his hands of the
wire rope when we met. I found a slightly wider part of trail
and let him pass between me and the cliff face, mumbling something
as he went. The trail just went on and on, sometimes along
wooden planks suspended from the cliff face and in other places up
ladders or scrambling using all fours. The views were just
breathtaking and, although the adrenalin was pumping, I loved this
bit of trail.
When it finally crested a ridge I found a bench
seat and had my muesli bar lunch looking far into Austria and was
joined by the youth group. The Via Alpina then headed north
along the ridge of the mountains and climbed up to the top of
Kuegrat (2123m) where I enjoyed more superb views while chatting
with two young German couples who were out for a day hike, and
somewhat envious of my trek. There was more rock scrambling
and slow going down from the mountain, but then the track improved
and my pace picked up as I left the ridge and travelled along the
Austrian side of the mountain towards Feldkirch. It was still
a very warm day and I was sweating buckets, but it got even hotter
in the late afternoon as I descended steeply on more technical
switch-backing single track through a conifer forest. My knees
were suffering big time and I made heavy use of my trekking poles to
take some of the strain.
I finally made it to Feldkirch, an
old and well-preserved town, around 6pm. There were a few
expensive-looking hotels in the old town and I noticed a few tour
buses parking for the night, so pushed on a bit further towards the
railway station and found a cheapish and nasty hotel nearby where I
was very pleased to get a room and take off my sweaty gear and boots
for a well-earned shower. It was big day with 2000m ascent and
2000m descent and 32km, much of it technical and slow. I think
tomorrow will be less mountainous but the temperatures are again
forecast to be in the 30s (C).
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