back from a rather unusual evening (for us, that is) — we went on a night orientation hike organized by the zindelspitz section of the swiss alpine club (of which we are card carrying members)! the hike started at the car park in innerthal in the lovely wäggital valley.

getting there was already an adventure in itself: we went by car (courtesy of mobility car sharing) from einsiedeln via sattelegg pass to vorderthal. that route is a seemingly endless succession of narrow curves, first climbing up to sattelegg pass and then (even narrower curves) all the way down to vorderthal. exciting — especially the first time round!

we got to innerthal almost right on time. each of the three categories — leisurely but reading skills required, classical orientation run, GPS run — had two groups of two starting. mrs d went for the leisure categories, i went (yes, you guessed it) for the GPS one. after initial confusion (my partner had left his reading glasses at home and mistook the compass reading for the distance), we managed to get out of the parking lot and were on our way to the first waypoint. the whole route was a cleverly arranged sequence of navigating to waypoints, taking coordinates from the map, backtracking on tracks, and following routes.¹

navigating via GPS to waypoints in the dark in unknown terrain — rather a challenge, but also quite a lot of fun! aside from from being paired with one of the formidable chaps who do the jungfrau marathon (gasp!), aside from falling into one of those cow-made holes and just plain slipping down a wood enclosed burn (luckily my rucksack cushioned my back!) we managed to do the entire course — and won the first prize in the GPS category (a voucher for a night’s stay at the sardona hut)!

afterwards we had a rather nice dinner in a local ski hut followed by chatting and swapping “war stories”

when we leave innerthal it’s about 0:30 and it has started to snow! we probably break the record for the slowest drive from vorderthal via sattelegg pass back to einsiedeln: unknown road, snow blowing against the windscreen.

all in all a very exciting and fun night! recommendable

• interested in the route: KMZ file