Day 123 – 4. Blüemlisalphütte – Oechinensee

Sleep doesn’t seem to be one of the things that work very well on this trip but in exchange, the weather was awesome again. Blue sky, no fog, no clouds and an incredible view of the surrounding mountains from this perfectly exposed 2880 m viewpoint.

As today’s trip was very short again, we walked to the glacier again after breakfast and I started climbing the “Wild Lady”, the mountain peak behind the hut. I only followed the white-and-blue alpin track until it got to the bottom of the first steeper elevation, where there were memorial plates of 5 mountaineers that had been killed in accidents on this peak. Although I didn’t make it to 3000 on this trip, the views from 2900 meters over all the different peaks, over three glaciers and the valley were incredible.

Our descent to the other side of the mountain started at the same point where we had arrived yesterday and we could finally see the steep stairs we had walked up yesterday from above. When watching these stairs and taking some photos, we saw a capricorn that was climbing through the rocks a few hundred meters beneath us.

Slowly, we started descending towards the left. For about one hour, the path was rocky and steep, some parts stabilized with stairs and ropes again. I also made a little D-tour on a different blue-and-white track which made me really want to get into serious mountaineering in the future (not an entirely new idea of mine). After about 1,5 hours, grass and flowers came back and we entered a little high valley with a beautiful, blue, and clear glacier-river and a waterfall. On a little plateau, there was a little alp with a hut, cows, chickens, some tables and banks and we sat down for a drink.

Today was the first of August, which is the Swiss national holiday, and on this altitude we could clearly feel this. Many day-tourists were coming up towards the alm and the place was pretty crowded compared to the last days.
We left our table early and descended 50 meters just to sit down again on a rock. The Oechinensee lake, our destination for today was already visible from here and the views quite impressive.

From here on, the path was very secure and easy to walk, clearly made accessible for the “normal people”, of which there were plenty.

Another 45 minutes of hiking downwards took us right to the beautiful turquoise lake and our hut for tonight.

After checkin, our first action was to jump into the cold lake and take a swim with a view on the surrounding mountains and glaciers. After this, there was a real shower and it was really necessary. It was pretty cold but warmer than the lake and it did the job and I felt like new.

We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting next to the lake on the rocks and watching the day-tourists paddling around the lake with little boats and Stand up paddles.

Dinner was pretty problematic and not trustworthy at all, which sucked because I really needed food. In the end I had only the salad and the fruit salad and afterwards a bag of chips and an apple when we went back to the lake after dinner. Almost immediately after sitting down next to the lake in the setting sun, it started to rain lightly and we moved to a very small wood shelter that was empty enough to sit down beneath it after removing the wood.

We were pretty tired and cold but hopeful to see some high fires that were supposed to be lighted to honor the national holiday on some of the huts. So we sat down in the common room for a while playing cards and went out to the lake later.
The setting in semi-darkness was still impressing but everything was really quiet. There was only one little fire next to the lake but after a while there was a huge fire lighted on a very high hut up in the mountains and we could see the sky being orange around the hut where we had been yesterday, although we couldn’t see the fire from down there.

We “checked” fires off the list and finally went to sleep.