our plan today was to do a snow shoe tour from the wägital dam to schrähoger, then up through the schräh forest to bärlaui and then follow the terrain (a bit of freestyle snow shoeing) to nüssen. from nüssen we intended to go rosenhöchi, chli mutzenstein and fläschlihöchi back to lake wägital.

…well that was the plan. plan’s sometimes have a tendency to change direction. our plan did as well: the ascent from schrähoger through the schräh forest was at first a bit tedious, but then turned out to be winter wonderland at its finest nice powdery snow, everything adorned with a with cap. unfortunately, up at bärlaui the snow seemed to have had engagements elsewhere — very little was left and we make only slow progress. what should have been a matter of two hours takes 4 — and, yet, the higher we up we got the more snow we regained. when reaching the trail coming down from gross aubrig we have about 30-40cm of snow the last ascent up to nüssen is strenuous but fun!

we have our lunch break up at nüssen, leaning against a tree stump, enjoying the landscape and recovering from the exhausting climb up. while we are having our break the weather deteriorates: black clouds are coming in from the south west, more and more of the summits to the east (schieberg, bockmattli, zindelspitz, and friends) have their tops covered in gray–darkish cloth. considering the amount of time it took us to get here, adding in the weather which is looking anything but improving, we decide not to continue with our planned route but instead descend back via eggstofel.

we get back to innerthal at 15:00 and have a break at the gasthof stausee pub (nice, good grub, recommendable).

despite the long ascent it was a nice snow shoe tour!