Given the beautiful weather, Emilie and I decided to head up to the mountains for a hike today. The Swiss town of Champéry – which is near the French border (south of the eastern edge of Lake Geneva) – served as our starting point.
When we arrived it was difficult to find a parking spot. It turned out that there was a large mountain bike race – apparently Champéry is the mecca for mountain biking in Switzerland. While walking to the trails we saw a number of bikers and they were pretty impressive. How they go so fast on the trails with such little brake control is beyond me. It’s also worth mentioning that the riders I saw – men, women and even little kids – had the biggest thighs I’ve ever seen. It kind of reminded me of Popeye’s forearms in that they almost didn’t look real.
As can be seen from the pictures below, it was easy to find motivation for the hike. Both the weather and the scenery were incredible. Nice place to have a house, right?
The beautiful views continued throughout the first half of the hike. The great weather ended up backfiring on us a bit, though, as it was incredibly hot and there wasn't a lot of shade on the trail up the mountain. And some of the inclines were a bit severe, but allowed for a good workout at least.
For lunch we found a nice spot by a stream and set up camp. Emilie had prepared some sandwiches and it was nice to take a break to get off our feet for a while. Here are some pictures…
The return hike was nice as well, with plenty of beautiful views.
We also got to see a number of the local alpine residents.
Here's a shot of a random bench on the trail. I've also seen similar ones on other hikes, and It's kind of nice to have them scattered along the way in case you want to take a break.
The one negative of the hike was that I somehow lost my sunglasses. I have no clue how this happened and I realized fairly quickly that they were missing, but there was no use backtracking.
When we arrived it was difficult to find a parking spot. It turned out that there was a large mountain bike race – apparently Champéry is the mecca for mountain biking in Switzerland. While walking to the trails we saw a number of bikers and they were pretty impressive. How they go so fast on the trails with such little brake control is beyond me. It’s also worth mentioning that the riders I saw – men, women and even little kids – had the biggest thighs I’ve ever seen. It kind of reminded me of Popeye’s forearms in that they almost didn’t look real.
As can be seen from the pictures below, it was easy to find motivation for the hike. Both the weather and the scenery were incredible. Nice place to have a house, right?
The beautiful views continued throughout the first half of the hike. The great weather ended up backfiring on us a bit, though, as it was incredibly hot and there wasn't a lot of shade on the trail up the mountain. And some of the inclines were a bit severe, but allowed for a good workout at least.
For lunch we found a nice spot by a stream and set up camp. Emilie had prepared some sandwiches and it was nice to take a break to get off our feet for a while. Here are some pictures…
The return hike was nice as well, with plenty of beautiful views.
We also got to see a number of the local alpine residents.
Here's a shot of a random bench on the trail. I've also seen similar ones on other hikes, and It's kind of nice to have them scattered along the way in case you want to take a break.
The one negative of the hike was that I somehow lost my sunglasses. I have no clue how this happened and I realized fairly quickly that they were missing, but there was no use backtracking. After the hike we stopped by Les Bains de Lavey, which is a thermal wellness bath and spa on the way home. It was a very nice way to end the day and relax the muscles. I didn’t take my camera inside, but here’s a picture that I found on the internet.
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