A solo hike to Stoos
Pumped full of fresh, wonderful emotions every day, I for some reason decided this would continue. I knew we had a plan to visit the Aletsch Glacier, but that depended on the rest of the team's availability. Some citizens had been sucked into the quagmire of workaholism, and so we were waiting for the right moment. Garik periodically mentioned how he got screwed over with hikes last time due to the unpredictability of his friends. Because of this, I thought that this time we would definitely go on a hike. I'm always glad to get out into nature if my health permits; vegetating at home is useless to me. Hardly anything brings me joy anyway, and it's better to keep my hands and feet busy. Plus, the unpredictable Swiss weather actually seemed to favor us.
So the news from Garik at midnight saying he'd be skipping tomorrow (Tuesday) came as an unexpectedly unpleasant surprise to me. As often happens, it’s not that easy to reach an agreement while traveling. Especially when the plans were very vague to begin with, and there are many participants. Nevertheless, I was deeply disappointed. I had already mentally prepared for the hike, and I knew the forecast promised even worse weather ahead. I thought "Cherchez la femme," but what can you do. I joined the trip at the last minute, and it's not my place to make demands or set conditions. If someone wants to hang out on their own for a while, that's their right. It's just a pity to find out so late, because otherwise I could have planned a solo excursion in advance. I'm no master of planning either, but sometimes it feels like compared to many people on this planet, I'm practically a guru. True, the price for this is frequent zoning out into my phone instead of admiring the surroundings. It would be great to do these things in advance, but that's definitely not for me with my concentration skills, exacerbated by medications and chronic illnesses.
In the morning, I was eating the tasteless local muesli with milk, which the Swiss usually drown in yogurt, and thinking about what to do. The friend I was staying with told me where I could go for a walk in a reasonable amount of time amidst some beauty. It was a place called Stoos and a hike between the peaks of Klingenstock and Fronalpstock. I poured several coffees into myself, threw fresh socks, hiking boots, thermal underwear, and meds into my backpack, and ran for the train.
Nostalgia
The road to Stoos and the funicular ride
I made it to the train on time, and headed to Stoos. To get to the right place, I first had to take trains with a couple of transfers and then hop on a bus. I think I forgot to mention that in Switzerland, before a trip, you need to validate your ticket with the current time using a special yellow machine. From now on, I'll call it a validator. If your ticket is for a specific trip, it might already be sold with the date from the ticket machine, and you don't even have to validate such a ticket. But if it's a more flexible option, for a day or a few hours, then it's absolutely mandatory. You can find the yellow validator on platforms, in buses, and even on steamboats. The fine for riding without a ticket is 100 francs + the ticket price, and ticket inspectors board the transport very, very often. This time I didn't forget to validate it, and so as not to lose the ticket, I put it under my phone case.
I got to Stoos without any adventures. I popped into the local village shop to grab a coffee and gather my strength, and a culture shock was waiting for me there. The store had an automatic checkout, but no cashier and no staff. Souvenirs, farm food, coffee from a machine — take whatever you want, ring it up yourself, pay yourself, and scram. I can't even remember ever seeing anything like this before. Except maybe in Lithuania and Estonia, in the countryside along the roads, you can sometimes buy honey or vegetables and just toss coins into a box yourself. But here, an entire store is like that!
This made me think quite a bit about how far we still have to go to reach such civilization. Sure, the store has cameras, but that's not a silver bullet — wrap up your face, and what's the camera going to do? The only calculation is that people who go to the mountains aren't prone to petty theft. Interestingly, I saw something similar in Jordan — they leave crates of Coca-Cola out on the street at night there, and don't sweat that anyone might take them.
Next, a funicular with an incredibly steep angle of ascent awaited me. They say it's the steepest in the world. To handle this, the floor changes its tilt angle while moving. So you don't end up standing on the floor at an angle, like we experienced later when taking the train to the glacier in Lauterbrunnen. Nice thing was, my Tageskarte worked for part of the way up (up to the cable car), as was often the case later on.
Ascent to Stoos
Ascent to Klingenstock on ski benches
I ascended Klingenstock (near Stoos) in two stages: by funicular and by ski benches. A funicular is when cars on rails are pulled by a cable. But if the cabins hang on cables, it's a cable car. It can be more substantial, with closed gondolas of various sizes, or it can be the kind where it's just a bench and you plop your ass down almost on the go.
I didn't dare to sit down right away, even though some young Chinese tourists were calling me over. First, I stared for a bit to see how they do it. It's not rocket science — you walk up, take off your backpack, and fall backward onto the bench. Meanwhile, it wiggles and moves, but very slowly, so there are no difficulties. Though I'm sure there are neurotics (in the terminology of my friend from Switzerland) who will think the bench is going to push them off the wooden platform onto the grass. Not the most terrifying thing that can happen in life, let's be honest.
Riding on such a seat is more interesting than in a closed gondola. If the weather is good, you don't have to pull down the protective hood. You look around, breathe the fresh air, listen to the cowbells ringing. Eventually, this sound will drive you nuts: it's omnipresent. The animals graze quite high up, at least up to two kilometers, and there are a lot of them. Therefore, when a famous chocolate brand draws Alpine cows on its packaging, there isn't actually that much exaggeration. I don't know what it's like to ride the chair if you're really terrified of heights, but I was comfortable. It's not that far off the ground. And my head only spins if I see kilometer-deep abysses all around. Especially if the adjacent slopes are so steep that there's nothing to grab onto if you fall. I was afraid this was exactly what awaited me at the final point of the ascent, because my path lay from Klingenstock to Fronalpstock along a mountain ridge at an altitude of two kilometers. This is usually not enough for altitude sickness, but I'm getting old, and I share genes with my sister. The experience in the Dolomites in Italy showed that she starts feeling awful from as low as two km. My own ascent there says I can handle three with minimal discomfort, except maybe the panoramas make me slightly dizzy.
In total, about forty minutes later I made it to the top. It turned out that although the track was narrow, the slopes didn't look all that threatening, and were even covered in grass. I stood there for a bit to adapt, and stomped onward.
Ascent to Klingenstock
The walk from Klingenstock to Fronalpstock
So, I was walking from Klingenstock to Fronalpstock, the village of Stoos, the canton of Schwyz. Here I should mention that Schwyz is one of the original cantons that concluded an alliance treaty on August 1, 1291. This date is considered the starting point of Switzerland as a state. And although that very first alliance was tiny, it soon grew, gained influence, and existed until 1798. At that time, Napoleon destroyed it, and in its place created the Helvetic Republic, also abbreviated as CH, which is Confoederatio Helvetica in Latin. Hence Switzerland's .CH domain and the CHF currency code, meaning the franc of the Confoederatio Helvetica. The famous font is called the same precisely because it was created by Swiss designers Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
The second interesting fact is that the village of Stoos is only accessible via funicular, and therefore there are no cars in it. An extremely rare phenomenon in our time, but hey, it happens. I walked unhurriedly, having realized I wasn't in the shape to go galloping through the mountains. I weigh 93 kg, but that's still 20 more than it should be. I even wrote about this later in our "Alcotrip of Zuris" chat to warn them that I walk slowly.
I didn't expect Switzerland to be so beautiful, because out of envy and laziness I don't look at photos of places I'm traveling to beforehand. If you look beforehand, you get this effect: "yeah, yeah, seen it," which isn't very cool. So anyway — for the first few days I thought roughly like that, but when I arrived in Stoos, I was absolutely gobsmacked by the magnificence. Photos, of course, don't convey even half the impressions. I highly recommend going to my profile and checking out the photospheres via the links. Even despite my medications, which make me slightly sluggish and reduce my reaction time, I was blown away. It's even better with clouds, as long as it's not overdone — they constantly change the scenery because they drift at breakneck speed.
Another interesting thing — gravel for reinforcing the trail is delivered by helicopter. Sure, why drag it up on a ski lift when helicopters are sitting idle. They say that in Switzerland you can take a day off work for the improvement of mountain trails, paid for by the government. Idyll. I wish I lived like that!
Klingenstock - Fronalpstock
Artificial intelligence and a walk through the Swiss mountains
Sergey wrote here that helicopters are used not only for gravel, but also for moving, transporting cows, and taking large things from upper floors, like palm trees. In the beautiful Latvia of the future, we'll be doing that too. Hovering on hoverbikes with wardrobes and potted plants! Unless, of course, the machine mind turns us into paperclips. I just happened to stumble upon a game about exactly that. It has no graphics, but is generally addictive. From the genre of "click a lot and watch the numbers go up." The goal is to convert the entire planet into paperclips, naturally. And not even just the planet, but the entire accessible universe.
This, in case anyone hasn't heard yet, is a famous apocalypse scenario. The point isn't that AI is evil like in Terminator, but that we have no way to determine that its goal aligns with ours. We ask it to produce paperclips, and it does just that. But it doesn't know that it's temporary, only while we need paperclips. It can get so carried away that paperclips will be the only goal of its entire existence. We will have absolutely no way of knowing whether the AI understands that the paperclips are needed up to a certain amount, and not until the bitter end. If you ask it, the AI might lie, knowing that's what we want to hear.
This problem is called the alignment problem, and some AI researchers believe that we don't even have any ideas on how to approach it yet, and over the last few years things are only getting worse. For instance, Eliezer Yudkowsky even wrote an article: MIRI announces new "Death With Dignity" strategy, in which he urges us to at least fight for as long as we have the strength, since we definitely won't be able to win anymore. So it goes.
Fortunately, until that happens, we can admire the views of the Swiss mountains, which I'm not sick of quite yet. I knew that according to the MeteoSwiss forecast, a bit of rain awaited me around two or three o'clock. And so it did. Luckily, this route is very popular, and therefore there are often little huts along it for hikers to shelter from the bad weather. Right when I was passing one of them, it started to drizzle, and I decided not to tempt fate. I went back, sat down on a little bench, and soon other poor souls who had fled the elements began to join me. Not everyone, though, and I am terrified to imagine how drenched those who were halfway to the next hut got.
Shelter from the weather on the way to Fronalpstock
The weather shelter I had landed in had no doors, but it did have benches. In the distance on the horizon, lightning would occasionally flash, and I wanted to film it closer up to show you guys. Because of that, out of inexperience, I sat near the entrance to shoot a timelapse.
Soon the bad weather raged out of control, and I immediately ran to the wall so as not to get soaked. My phone stayed standing right there in the rain, so much so that a guy nearby even got worried that my Handy would get wet. That's what they call smartphones in Germany and Switzerland. The guy, however, was a Romanian, and sitting next to him was his pretty daughter, slightly younger than me. As my buddy and manager Rob correctly pointed out, I'm already at the age where everyone seems unexpectedly young to me. The Romanian girl later told me in the cable car gondola what to do in Switzerland if the weather isn't great, and treated me to a piece of candy. It would be convenient if people gave each other signals with candy, so you wouldn't have to guess who likes you and who doesn't. Because with my anxious psyche, it's not very clear.
We sat cozily together with the other hikers in the little house while the downpour went on. It looked quite terrifying: fierce winds, clouds tearing past at breakneck speed; good thing there was no thunderstorm nearby at least. Even such a peaceful demonstration convinced me not to joke around with the weather in the mountains, and to check the forecast carefully. On the other hand, we already went through this lesson back in Iceland, when we walked for 13 hours through a horrendous storm.
Read about it, one of the strongest impressions of my life.
As if by magic, after 40 minutes the rampage of the elements stopped. The forecast turned out to be surprisingly accurate. I have, however, long been filled with respect for meteorologists. They predict the weather for bike trips for the coming hours, or even a couple of days, extremely well. This is highly relevant for cyclists, because our brethren for the most part have no desire whatsoever to ride in a downpour or against the wind.
Some of the hikers left while it was still just drizzling, but I was in no particular hurry. The lifts in Switzerland usually operate until 4:30-5:30 PM up high, and 7-8 PM mid-mountain, and I was perfectly on schedule.
Nevertheless, when the rain stopped completely, I set off further on my way. Soon I reached a fork. Downward went a one-hour trail to the mid-mountain gondola, and before me towered the Fronalp in all its intimidating steepness and enormity.
Where did I turn?
Oh, it was fun
near Fronalpstock
Ascent to Fronalpstock and a mix-up with the stations
So, I looked at the two paths before me, and saw gnarly mountains on one, and a simple disgrace on the other. I mean, going down is somehow shameful, and I don't really like it anyway. Therefore, despite fatigue and laziness, I dragged myself upward, another two hundred meters of elevation gain. Just about an hour and a half remained until the last ride, I'd make it for sure.
And that's exactly what happened. And not only did I make it to Fronalpstock, I was also half an hour ahead of the time on the trail sign. They usually write it with some buffer there, for those who aren't rushing. This time I was rushing, because the risk of missing the gondola was very real. At the top of the mountain, according to ancient Swiss custom, a restaurant awaited me, but I had no time for that. Snapped some pics of a small pen with pygmy goats for petting (sic!), did a final photosphere, and rode the benches down.
While dangling my legs in the air, I was furiously calling Garik to agree on tomorrow. The weather forecast had become more encouraging, though not entirely. In the past, I wouldn't have been able to do this — do everything on the fly, without thinking through escape routes. But experience comes with time, and with Google everything is done much faster. Maps, weather, booking, and transport — it's all become so fast that you can manage it while riding twenty minutes down on a ski bench. Almost.
In the end, I decided not to return to Baar, but to dash straight to the place where we'd start tomorrow, and spend the night. It was the town of Fiesch (that's how it's pronounced). From fatigue and pills, I was thinking slowly, and walking at random. I've been doing this often in recent years, and am constantly on the verge of a foul, but haven't crossed the line yet. This time I arrived at a cable car station, where I was informed that the next ride was in half an hour. I'm sitting in the sunshine, waiting calmly, listening to the soundtrack from the cult game Disco Elysium, thinking about my squandered life. And then it dawns on me that in this village there is not one, but a whole two cable car stations, not counting an unknown number of ski benches. And as luck would have it, I need the other one! Meaning, in order to get to Fiesch in a reasonable time, I have to go down the other side of the mountain! As you understand, a train or bus bypasses the mountain range in 3-4 hours. This thought gave me an impulse, so I jumped up and dashed to the other station. It's funny that a girl with a dog was running towards me, apparently with the same goal.
Did I make it?
Last photos from Stoos🦵🦵🦵
An evening road into the mountains on old trains
I made it! Made the cable car down, then coffee in the shop with no cashier, bus, train, another two transfers, and all of this quite hurriedly.
It's a little scary to travel in the evening to tiny mountain villages, where you seemingly have a hotel booked, but you never know what might happen. The higher I went, the less modern the trains became. The doors opened with a handle that you had to turn and push, there was no longer a display with stops or even the train number and route, the benches became narrow and hard, and the train itself — empty and rattling. When you get out at an intermediate station in the evening, everything is closed (shops close early here, around 7-8 o'clock, depending on the canton), there are few people, the lighting is quite modest. A complete feeling that these places are wild, and anything could happen. Though, of course, this is most likely a mirage, brought on by exhaustion and traits of borderline personality disorder, aka emotional lability.
I'm thinking I don't just eagerly rush off on some tricky route for no good reason. Yes, it's nice not to get up at six (I haven't done that for many years now), but perhaps the real reason is something else. There is an adventurer in me, thirsty for exploits in our predictable world. When you are rushing somewhere, and your route is complex, you feel like you are busy with something important, adrenaline and dopamine, all that jazz. And going to god knows where at night is romantic.
I got there fine, even if it took about three hours. I stepped out into a light drizzle, hobbled over to my refuge. A tablet on the desk awaited me there instead of a clerk, but the latter also showed up soon. Interestingly, he didn't ask for my passport, didn't ask for anything at all, really, but just handed me a huge lever lock key, like in a movie about the 19th century. In our moronic bureaucracy, on the other hand, you fill out a piece of paper nobody needs yourself. And yet you say the Swiss love order. Apparently, their order somehow works even without filling out stupid questionnaires. Or maybe it's just because the hotel was named in French: "The Old Boutique Hotel By The Glacier And The Post Office". Boutique means a pleasant, gentle approach, without filling out pieces of paper.
I didn't have time to buy anything to eat, 'cause I had no cash. The only food left in the hotel bar was two slices of cake and some free caramel cookies for coffee, and in the room there were also a couple of welcome candies. So I had that for dinner.
Hotel Wi-Fi and roaming in Switzerland
As usual, in the evening I needed Wi-Fi: I was trying to post some pics to my story, and download maps into my favorite map app OruxMaps (I sincerely recommend it, though it's not super easy to use). I didn't really want to dress properly and go down to the lobby, especially since I only had a small backpack with me, and barely any clothes.
Fortunately, near my room on the stairs sat an older man and woman, and I asked them for the Wi-Fi password. They turned out to be Americans from Colorado, and they were sitting on the stairs because the Wi-Fi didn't reach their room. A typical woe of ordinary hotels. In serious chain establishments, there are powerful routers with mesh everywhere, so that one and the same network works seamlessly across the entire hotel territory, including the parking lot, the courtyard, and the dining room.
In my room, the network worked passably well. Luckily, because Switzerland is not in the EU, and roaming prices here are draconian. On LMT, I think it's 13 euros per gigabyte. This is tolerable, of course, but only until you start uploading 4k videos and downloading 500MB maps. In this sense, it's funny to see that I have the same conditions in Belarus. Switzerland = Belarus.
Work pays for my phone, so by and large I didn't sweat it much. Nevertheless, by the end of the trip I had already spent about five gigabytes. A robot even sent me an SMS saying that I had exhausted almost the entire monthly fund limit allocated to an employee. Only upon arriving home did I figure out that my phone supports eSIM, that is, a virtual SIM card. Funny enough, you can buy it from the transportation company SBB. It turned out that for a more reasonable sum of 15 francs you get 5 gigabytes for Switzerland. Which is still extortion, of course. In Morocco, for example, good internet costs 1 euro per 1 GB. Moreover, judging by the reviews, the eSIM from SBB works far from perfectly. But on the upside, you can buy it on the internet by uploading a photo of your passport. In general, the Swiss protect their personal data, and don't like to spread it around, but when registering a SIM card they demand it, to fight hackers and other subversive elements.
Knowing that I walk slowly, in the morning I was planning to head out early so the guys could catch up with me on the way. I got up around eight o'clock, which for me is very early (fortunately, lately this is almost the norm). I went to breakfast.
Did I manage to pull off the plan?