Arolla, Switzerland: hike hike hike.

The lunch breaks each day were about 5 hours long, leaving plenty of time for a hike, with lunch en route and a shower afterwards, even.

First Hike

The first hike I went on happened on the first full day of conference (which was the day after I got there), that Tuesday.  My stomach wasn't agreeing with me, so I stopped a lot and finally decided to turn back around. On the upside, the pausing meant time for pictures.

The view across the valley:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

and a little to the left of that

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

and zoomed in for awesomeness

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Here was my view at one point looking up and around the bend of the trail:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

and here's a cool split rock by the trail head:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

The downside of the hike was that I mis-stepped on the way down (most of the way down, actually) and dislocated my ankle. As I fell onto that ankle, it popped back in, and I landed having only had enough time to realize what was happened and be in pain, as well as relieved I didn't have to figure out how to pop it back in. I waited for it to hurt a bit less, re-laced my boots and kept going.  [I know that 'dislocating the ankle' is ill-defined since there are so many bones. But, I also know the symptoms of having dislocated something. So, to be technically correct, I dislocated one of the bones in my ankle. The upside over a sprain being that it mostly just kind of inflames/exacerbates the region, but is 'well' faster and doesn't hurt quite so much when walking on it after. Downside is that once I do it, it has a tendency to want to happen again, so I do have to favor it until it strengthens. ]

The river we'd easily forded on the way to the trail had in the meanwhile deepened and widened (I heard later that the relevant dam had had some water let out of it), so I waited for the others to finish the hike before crossing, to get some help and other peoples' opinions on where to cross. The water was whitish and fast-flowing, so hard to tell how deep/dangerous it was.

Second Hike

Despite the ankle, I went on an 'excursion' the next day (the afternoon contained no talks at all, to allow people to go on a choice of several longer hikes). I picked the 'easy'/sedate/rolling hills hike, or so I thought (and did everyone else I went with).


Step 1 of the hike:

Narrow steps by someone's garage? Totally legit. ;)

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

a better look at the heather:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Walking up through the heather to see mountains (at least, I think it's heather. Prior to being in Europe, I hadn't seen heather, so I'm not 100% on this):

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

and looking back over the group to see an even better view of mountains+ heather:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

another nice view of Mt. Collon:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

After the initial heather-coated landscapes, we had a somewhat gentle stretch which lead to a branch in the trail. Both parts lead to our goal, which was Lac Bleu ('Blue Lake'), but the left fork was labeled 'Chemin difficile' (difficult path).  Our leaders had been instructed very clearly to take the left fork, and there was a bit of an argument (in French) about all this. We ended up taking the 'Chemin difficile'. It involved stretches where one grabbed onto a chain tacked to the mountain to walk across the narrowed path. There were also points where you had to scrabble down a rock face on your butt, where all the rock and tree roots around had been work smooth from all of the previous people having done the same. There was a lot of up and down on this hike. I really feel for the guy who had his kid strapped to his back.

Eventually, things leveled out a bit, and I took this pic looking back the way we came from: 

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Most stream crossings were bridge-less. Some had really slippery stones and a drop-off off the mountain. Here are two crossings that actually had bridges:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

The latter also had a sign explaining that it was dangerous...to not use the bridge? (I think that was the warning). The yellow diamond was our trail marker.

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Past this second bridge, I think we took breaks at higher frequency for water and grumbling about how every person who passed us (with walking sticks in hand) told us it was "only another 15 minutes" to get there. Result of this was some more pictures.

Pretty green area. There was a sub-path that led you over to look at this rock. Not sure why.

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Here's a nearby other rock, that had some interesting color to it:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

After some more hiking, we arrived at our destination: Lac Bleu! (It took us 3 hours to get there, which is 1 hr and 10 minutes in Swiss measuring (well, the sign pointing back to Arolla said 1hr 10 minutes)).

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Time for a picnic. I sat down and enjoyed letting my faintly-throbbing ankle have some rest, and ingested some calories. Huzzah. Very pretty lake, too. It's that color because its glacial melt. You shouldn't drink it. Also, judging from the people who tried to swim in it, it was too cold for swimming.

Here's a closer view:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

A group of us decided that rather than try out the supposedly-easy path on the way back, we would hike straight down and catch the bus in. The trail that took us to catch the bus ended in a pension/hotel-and-bar-type-thing which seemed to offer some fluency in German, French, Dutch (and English?). They also proudly advertised that they sold several Belgian beers.

Google translate tells me that "Vlaamse Uitbaters" = "Flemish Owners"

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Hotel Mt. Collon and leaving Arolla

We had some really lovely dinners at the hotel, including a 'traditional Swiss food night'. I had the best fondue of my life. Maybe I should've picked raclette -- I wasn't able to find it on the menu at any restaurant I saw afterwards. Ah, well.

The women who worked there were mainly French (French French, not Swiss French, I was told), and spoke more English than the people in Luminy. I guess this was their summer job. 

The hotel had some...interesting decor. It had taxidermy scattered about. This little guy greeted you in the lobby-area that had the best internet reception: 

(Picture courtesy of Constanze.)

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

They also had a 'disco' room and ran a 'disco' for us the last night. I have no pictures, you'll just have to imagine what that was like. I went to bed early, and missed the interesting stuff, so I hear. 

Here's a view of my room (sorry it's a bit messy):

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

One of the other walls had a rather surprised looking panda on it: 

Why are you in here? Shouldn't you be out doing math? Or hiking? Or math-hiking?

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

There were two doors to adjacent rooms, one was locked and the other open. The open one was a room that had two people in it, and we shared their bathroom. 

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

I had weird dreams the first night about that wallpaper. I used it to barter for something in some weird alternate-world economy.

There was no way to take a shower without hosing the entire bathroom down in water.  I didn't feel...ah...inspired to take a bath, however.

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

I didn't touch it, so I don't know if it was spongy.

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Ok, that's the only not-positive thing I have to say. In their defense, the room on the other side was very nice and had a cute bathroom. So, maybe they're renovating one room at a time. Who knows.

On the way out of Arolla, we left on a somewhat-early-morning bus. The buses were run by the Post. Which was also a bank. In Germany, the post system is both the post and a bank, but not a bus company. I thought the combination was interesting.

The clouds were doing cool things in the mountains (much like my memories of Nordfjordeid):

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Clouds with the sun starting to poke through:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Here's a nice view of the clouds + hotel:

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

Some old signs on the side of the hotel. I wonder if they still accept American Express.

From Arolla-Switzerland 2012

We caught the bus back down to Sion, and from then began the purely touristing part of my trip. Stay tuned for my traipsing around Sion and then Bern.