My Best Snowshoe Hike

Do you like to snowshoe? I’ve been enjoying this sport for many years during the Swiss winters. It’s a great outdoor exercise. It’s peaceful and it’s free!

I ventured out last week to do a 3-hour snowshoe walk with two of my sporty girlfriends. We had a great time and got some good exercise! The outing made me remember the time Mike and I did the same snowshoe hike a few years ago. I decided to share that surprising experience in this blog post.

It was a beautiful mild day for February in Switzerland with temperatures near 14 degrees Celcius at the lower elevations. We decided to take advantage of the recent fresh snow and abundant sunshine. We headed up to the hills near our house (20-minute drive) for an afternoon snowshoe walk.

We got a late start at 2 pm because we love to sleep in on Sunday mornings and have our traditional two cups of coffee in bed while we peruse the internet to entertain ourselves. We arrived at the full parking lot of cars with only one spot left for us.

I had done this snowshoe trail (called Rathvel) the previous year by myself and remembered what a great view there was from the top – a 360-degree vista of mountains and lake. This time we opted to do the route in the reverse order.

We wanted to arrive at the restaurant next to the ski slope first. That way, we could have a late lunch and then head up to the top. Our goal was to enjoy the afternoon lighting and a possible sunset view.

At 3:30 pm we ate a delicious ‘croûte au fromage’ (melted cheese over toasted bread with ham and egg) for the energy we would need to get up the steep mountain. We left the restaurant and headed up at 4 pm just as all the skiers and everyone was coming down and ending their day.

After one hour of constant uphill, we arrived at the flat wide open space where we could see in the distance Lac Leman (Lake Geneva), and the silhouette of the French Alps. We could see for miles and miles in every direction as it was a clear, crisp day.

We made our way to the landmark cross and took tons of photos of the views in every direction. Oddly enough, we arrived at the cross at the same time as one other guy did (and we thought we would be the only brave souls to be out there so late in the day). He didn’t stay long and then we were all alone to soak in the beauty surrounding us.

We discovered that the sun was setting quickly and we needed to head down the mountain to not risk it being too dark to see (we failed to bring our headlamps with us, a mistake we won’t make again). But we were so in awe of the beauty up there and the changing sky colors, we would walk a few steps and then reach for our cameras to not miss the moment or perfect photo op.

As we walked along, we kept looking at our right to not miss the sunset. Then suddenly Mike said, ‘look left!’. I thought he may have seen an animal, but what he saw was the huge bright almost-full MOON. I couldn’t believe how pretty it was and so clear. Now we were really in awe of both the sunset and the moonrise at the same time! We didn’t know which way to look and which scene to photograph first.

We couldn’t bear to leave this magical spot but knew that once the sun went down, we had another one hour downhill walk to get back to our car.

The bright moonlight helped shine the way down the tree-lined path and when it was blocked by the trees, I used the spotlight on my iPhone to see where I was walking. Headlamps next time!

After our 5 hours of being out in nature, we safely made it back to the parking lot at 7 pm with a huge smile on our faces to have witnessed the most amazing snowshoe walk we’ve ever done. Unexpectedly awesome!

Link to the snowshoe route 8km, 400m climb, approx 3 hours

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