July 16 – Hiking, Valduz and Switzerland
One of the main things Patrick requested that he wanted to do on this trip, other than go to Lahr, was to do a hike with Sable in Liechtenstein. Today was our last full day in Austria and as the weather was not really co-operating earlier in the week (always calling for thunder and you do not want to be doing a mountain hike in that with very little coverage), so today was the day to head over to the Vaduz area to complete this bucket list item. As Tori and I were not going to do this with them, we spent the day exploring the town.
Waking up well before the sun (5:00am our time), we were on the road by 5:45ish to make the drive to Liechtenstein. Seeing the sun come up over the peaks was a very pretty sight. To do this hike, we parked our car at the end of the trail (best to have a car right there to just be able to get in and go) and took transit to where we needed to start the hike. For Tori and I, we got off the bus in downtown Vaduz while Patrick and Sable continued on to take 2 more busses to the trail head.
To give a bit of information of the size of Liechtenstein see this comparison:
Liechtenstein:
Total Area – 160 km2
Total Population – 41,237
Nova Scotia
Total Area – 55,284 km2
Total Population – 1,090,852
Prince Edward Island
Total Area – 5,660 km2
Total Population – 181,715
Esther & Tori’s Day:
We got off the bus around 8:00am in the middle of Vaduz (the capital) of Liechtenstein and very little was open. After a quick stop at a grocery store for some fresh made breakfast danish. We were off to explore the town while it still fairly quiet. To get around easy, we purchased an all inclusive pass for the town. This included all buses, some museums, train tour etc.
Got back early to book our ticket for the train tour (good thing we did as when we were waiting for it at 1:00 they were turning people away). After securing our spot, we headed to the pedestrian area to explore the gift shops. Switching from CAD to Euros was a shock, going to Swiss Francs is even worse. This will be an interesting week coming up as we will be spending all our time in Switzerland.
At 10:00 all the museums were open so went to explore the Postal Museum, the Treasure Chamber (probably only time to see a real Faberge Egg collection) and the National Museum. Once done here, we went back outside and were surprised as to how much it had gotten so warm. Tori decided to keep up with getting gelato from all places we visit and enjoyed a lovely mango one this time.
At 1:00pm, we headed out to do the train tour. It was interesting but if it wasn’t included in the price of the pass I would have probably been very disappointed in it. It is one that if you are not sitting on the right side of the train, you miss a lot.
Final official destination for use was a covered bridge that connects Liechtenstein and Switzerland. In the middle we got to be in 2 countries at the same time.
After stopping at a couple grocery stores, we made our way back up by bus to wait for Patrick and Sable to be done on the trail. We even did a small hike up to the actual trail head to cheer them on the last little bit.
Total steps 24,296
Patrick & Sable’s Day:
After getting off the 4 busses, Patrick and Sable were ready to head off on the trail. Here is the map from the Alltrails website to give an indication on what it looked like. Keep in mind this is an alpine/mountain hike that following ridge of an Alps mountain peak.
The ascent was divided into 5 stages ranging from .25 km to 2.32 km but even the .25 ones were very difficult to do quickly due to the rapid elevation changes.
Once we got to stage 3, we were right at the Austrian boarder and stopped to have lunch. Continuing along the border we finished the last 2 ascents and started our descent. The descent was just as hard as the ascent, due to having to very rocky/rooty trail conditions and steep descents. We encountered the following items to assist us on the trail: ladders to climb down rock faces & wire railings to help get up/down steep rock formations.
There was a restaurant on the way down but unfortunately, it was a sit down and we just wanted to get back to the car to head home for the night.
This was one of the most strenuous hikes we have ever completed. Total kilometers 12.8 in 8 hours 45 minutes.
