The ‘All Saints Day’ (Nov 1st) is a public holiday for some parts of Switzerland. And because I’m lucky to live in that part and because it could have been one of the last days with excellent hiking conditions, I wanted to hike a trail which has been on my bucket list for a very long time: the ‘Gratwanderweg’ (ridge hike) on the Stoos.
Ridge Walk
The trail features a permanent 360° stunning view to the mountains and lakes in the area. And features the highest restaurant in the Canton of Schwyz, on the peak of the Fronalpstock.
One way for that tour is to take the cable car (Stoosbahn) up to the car free village of Stoos (1272 m). Than after a short walk, use the chairlift up to the Fronalpstock (1920 m). From there hike the trail to the Huser Stock and then to the Chlingenstock, and from there it is possible to take the chairlift down back to the Stoos. Because it was late of the year and the chairlift to from the Chlingenstock was not running any more, we decided to hike directly down back to the Stoos after the Huser Stock. With time for pick-nick and resting it takes around 6-7 hours.
Gratwanderweg Stoos (Map source: https://map.schweizmobil.ch)
A new cable car track is now under construction:
New Stoos Bahn Construction Site
Because it is not ready yet, we took the ‘old’ one. With a cable car it goes up from the Stoos base station up to the Stoos village:
Cable Car Tracks
Stoosbahn
After a short walk, we used the chairlift up to the Fronalpstock:
Sesselbahn auf Fronalpstock
From the Fronalpstock, a stunning view to the Lake of the Four Cantons with Lucerne in the background:
View from Fronalpstock (click to enlarge)
Fronalpstock with view to the Mythen (click to enlarge)
Hiking Trail Signs
Fronalpstock and Glarner Alps (click to enlarge)
The goal is to go up to the Huser Stuck:
Huser Stock
View down to the Lake:
Urner See (click to enlarge)
It was a sunny day, but part of the trails were still snow covered, frozen or muddy if not frozen any more.
Snow Covered Trails
The snow has been meltet away on the sunny side. The trail requires good hiking equipment plus better your are free of giddiness and you are not scared of heights:
Sunny Side
The trail goes down to the Fureggen and then up to the Huser Stock:
View to Huser Stock (click to enlarge)
Alp Fureggen mit Huser Stock
‘Gratwanderweg’ means ‘ridge walk’, and indeed, this is what it is: a ridge walk with stunning views:
Gratwanderweg (click to enlarge)
Ridge Walk (click to enlarge)
Fronalpstock Gratwanderweg
Grat zum Huser Stock (click to enlarge)
With probably one of the of the most scenic pick-nick place I know:
Picknick Platz beim Huser Stock
Ridge Walk Trail
Then we reached the top of the Huser Stock (1904 m):
Cross on the Huser Stock
View from Huser Stock (click to enlarge)
After a break, we started our descend.
Descending from Huser Stock
The areas which do not get much sun are still snow covered and frozen:
Snow covered area
Mythen in the background (click to enlarge)
Alp Firnboden
Stoos von AlpUnterbäch
After one more hour, we returned back to the village Stoos.
Stoos
And with the cable car, we returned back to our starting point.
Stoosbahn
I hope you enjoyed that ridge walk.
Happy Gratwandering 🙂
MCU on Eclipse 
Really stunning images Erich. I find it curious that one side of the mountains is covered in snow, while the other one isn’t. Could it be because it’s exposed more to the sun or to stronger winds? Perhaps the inclination? Looks strange to me.
Thanks for sharing!
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As the year enters Winter, the sun is more South with a shorter arc/day, for the Northern hemisphere, so the side of the mountain facing North gets no sun at all, if it is steep enough. Here in the Southern hemisphere (Australia), the sun is North in our Winter, so the South side is the side in the shade.
Put another way, most our best ski runs are on the South side of the mountain.
Great pic’s less res then you normally post though 😦
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Yes, correct: the north side of the mountains don’t get as much sunlight as the side exposed to the south.
About the picture resolution: yes, I did not post the full resolution images, because WordPress started charging me more money because of disk space used by this blog :-(. So I simply wanted to use less space, and you noticed. Maybe this was a bad idea?
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Spectacular! Thanks. 🙂 Happy Hiking!
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