adventure – Vanie's View

Macun Lakes

March 14, 2025 by vaniecastro, posted in hikes, Travels

The Swiss National Park is a wonderful place to hike in autumn, when trees turn yellow and the ground into different shades of brown. Among the 21 hikes in the National Park, one of the most memorable I did (and there was many!) was the hike from Zernez to Lavin through the Macun Lakes (21 KM, 1550 m up and 1600 down, 8 hours, white-red-white).

As the technical details suggests, this hike is long and hard, but as with many hikes like that in Switzerland, it was all worth it. We started from our hotel in Zernez one fine sunny Friday morning. I read later that you could take a taxi to reduce the hike up, but we were too cool for that. Somehow, my hiking mate needed a mnemonic to remember our path. He came up with “Sir Nez had an affair with Avril Lavigne”. I guess it was effective because we still remember it now.

The walk up starts through meadows until we passed the tree line and then it’s pretty much rocky terrain until the top. It’s very easy to get lost in this part, so make sure to keep an eye on the white-red-white markings. Close to the top, there were chains to assist you to pull yourself up, but nothing dangerous that I could recall. On a few occassions, you might need to use your hands. The highlight of the hike is the colorful Macun lakes viewed from the highest point of the trail. Overall this hike is long and there’s no other trail that could make it shorter, but it was fun, pleaseant, and passes through various terrains.

There’s almost always a view to enjoy in this very long trail, and enjoy them we did. We took an unreasonable amount of photos that it took us more than 9 hours to complete the walk 🙂 We were lucky to have fantastic weather with us, and as it was a Friday, we only saw one other pair at the beginning of the hike. It did feel like we had the whole mountain to ourselves. The colors were amazing and unforgettable.

We did the hike on October 1, 2021, more than 4 years and X kilos ago 🙂 Norman took the train from Berlin a week after a very long phone call and after realizing I needed company. We went for a hiking-therapy long weekend in Engadine and took the steepest funicular ride to Pilatus. Until now, I have yet to return him that favor.

Kesch Trek++

February 26, 2025February 27, 2025 by vaniecastro, posted in hikes

Taken very close from Fuorcla Pischa on the way to Chamanna d’Es-cha

For the past 9 years I’ve been living in Switzerland, I estimate to have done more than a hundred hikes. In the early years, I would join hikes organized by the Hiking group of the Bank or friends including some when I would have been picked up in the morning in Basel and returned on the same spot in the evening. In the last couple years, I’ve been planning more of the hikes I do with friends and family. This process takes a couple of hours, sometimes days! What I realize over the years, is that there’s not a lot of content in English about hikes in Switzerland. Inspired by Wander We Go, I’ve decided to document the hikes I’ve done, if not for my future self, perhaps for someone who is need of ideas for what to do the next sunny weekend.

I will start with a week-long trip I did with my best friend on September 2024 at one of my favourite areas in Switzerland – Engadin. I found Kesch Trek on Wander We Go’s website but added a day to do the Joriseen lake hike and changed the last day’s hike. Spoiler: we didn’t manage to do see the lakes due to the unusual winter conditions in the area the week of our trip in September!

I summarize our plan below including the planned but had to cancel days. Note that the time mentiones below does not include breaks and photo ops 🙂

Day	Accommodation	Activity	Technical Details
1 – Planned but had to cancel	Flüela Hospiz, Passhotel	Jöriseen Lake Hike (Swiss Family Fun)	10.8 KM 750m up / 750m down Time: 05:05
1 – Actual	Alpine Inn Davos	Touristic activity and short winter hike from Weissfluhjoch to Höhenweg	Too touristic for technical details 🙂
2 – Planned but had to cancel		Hike from Flüela, Ospiz to Grialetsch Hütte	10.9 KM 1037m up / 885m down Time: 04:47
2 – Actual	Grialetsch Hütte	Winter hike from Dürrboden to Grialetsch Hütte	4.2 KM 558m up / 19m down Time: 02:27
3	Kesch Hütte	Hike from Grialetsch to Kesch Hütte	13 KM 857m up / 788 down Time: 04:37
4	Chamanna d’Es-cha	Hike from Kesch Hütte to Chamanna D’Es-cha	14 KM 1044m up / 1080 down Time: 05:26
5	Home	Return from d’Es-cha to close-to Porta d’Es-cha then down to Zuoz	10.66 KM 377m up / 1277m down Time: 04:38

Kesch Trek is a multi-day hike which have been marketed recently even outside Switzerland. In fact there were four other Dutch groups/couples doing the same path as us during our trip. We wanted to start with a bang by visiting the Jöriseen lakes and walking up a 3000-der peak on the way to the first hut of the trek – Grialetsch Hütte. We instead had to take a short but very interesting hike from Dürrboden. There was knee-deep snow in some places and I wished I brought my gaters. Otherwise, I was pleased to know that I could hike comfortably in these conditions using only my summer gear.

The Kesch Trek is for sure one of the most interesting hikes I’ve done in Switzerland. The views are fantastic, the trail include unbelievably beautiful valleys, rocky terrains, breath-taking, and sometimes very steep passes (Fuorcla Pischa). We saw cows (of course), horses and lots of marmots in the valley. The trail difficulty is between T2 and T3.

All the huts we stayed in were renovated in the last 5 years or so and offered basic amenities including showers (not for free though). The huts were in fantastic locations, super clean, and the food we had was hearty and delicious. The weather during our trip definitely made it more special. At Chamanna d’Es-cha, we even met two of few mountain uni-cyclists in the world!

On our last day, instead of walking down from the hut to the train station, we did a return trip up to close to Fuorcla d’Es-cha. It’s officially a blue trail but I think only if you do the pass, which some crazy people did! It was not advisable, again because of snow on the pass. We walked very close to it until we didn’t see any reasonable path to continue on. Either because it’s a blue trail or a weekday, not many people were there. In fact, we only heard voices from the pass but didn’t really see them. The terrain up there is rocky and the view down is amazing on a sunny weather.

The Kesch Trek is designed such that you end at Preda, but we took Wander We Go’s advise and walked down to the closest train station instead. This way we could spend the time to do the return trip to the pass.

The toughest part of the trip for me was the uphill climb to Fuorcla Pischa. It was steep up and rocky, but I didn’t feel it was dangerous. It’s really more that you have to have the stamina to continue walking until you reach the windy pass. The view from there is definitely worth the effort. Otherwise, the rest of the trail was relatively easy and enjoyable although I should mention that whenever there’s an option to walk on a valley or a single-lane-path carved on the side of a mountain, we consciously chose the less exciting but much safer valley walk.

We built an igloo, and these happened.

March 3, 2018February 4, 2025 by vaniecastro, posted in Travels

Once in a while, we take trips that become part of the story of our lives. It’s the trip we tell others over and over again during lunches, dinners, and coffee breaks. Punch lines and embarrassing moments from them doesn’t become less funny over time. We recall memories from pictures of these travels when we are sick or couldn’t sleep at night.

I have been blessed to have visited many beautiful places in 2016, but the trip I talked about the most is the one I made with three other friends for a weekend to hike up in the alps, build an igloo, sleep in it, and hike again the next day. From fear of memories fading away, and to revive the life out of my own small cabin on the internet, I’ve decided to write about one special weekend when we built an igloo and these happened..

Brother : “But you are going to an Igloo Fest, right? So there will be lots of people there?”

Me: “Errr… no not really. It will be just be four of us.”

We met at 7:00 in the morning in front of the office. Packed with 2 days worth of food, clothes, water, sleeping bag, mat, duct tape, and a myriad of other hiking equipments, Girl A, Boy 1, Boy 2 and I drove to Melchsee-Frutt – a small village near Kerns, Switzerland. We took a quick gondola up a certain altitude and from there snowshoed our way to where we built an igloo.

Part I – Snowshoes

The first time I saw snowshoes was the day before the Igloo trip while renting them from the shop near the office. They are a pair of over-sized plastic (normally) with some metal spikes one wears under one’s hiking boots to be able to walk on soft snow without basically sinking. They are really cool, although as of writing, I’ve never snowshoed without a backpack behind my back and fully within hiking trails, so I could so far only associate snowshoeing with exhaustion and sledging. Why sledging, you wonder. I will get there in a sec.

Anyway, speaking of trails, Boy 1 is not much a fan of them. So instead of taking a normal hiking trail to reach our location, we snowshoed our way up and down to what felt like an eternity until they realized I probably wasn’t going to make it. Up to this day, I still don’t understand how we managed to get to our chosen igloo location without looking at a map.

Rescue number one – my loud breathing gave me away. As a first time hiker, I underestimated how much I would have to carry on my back for 2 days / 1 night of staying outdoors, considering I brought only things for myself. The relatively adventurous snowshoeing took its toll on my small Asian body and finally I couldn’t hide the fact that I wasn’t fit enough to carry everything on my own and walk at the same time. My hiking mates, whom I’ve known only for 3 months or so, decided to take everything that is not cotton or fleece from my bag and split my luggage among the three of them. For someone who has been living alone since 17, this was really embarrassing. But it is still less embarrassing than giving up and going home so I sucked it up and continue.

Part II – Sledging

Somewhere along the snowshoeing up and down off-trail came a fence-like border of rocks which we had to step over and continue from the other side. The other side, however, was not exactly flat. And one needs to slide a little bit to the left while sitting down after the fence of rock in order to be able to walk on two feet again. In this very small “slide”, I manage to screw up and instead of sliding to the left where Boy 1 was waiting, I just slid straight, 50 – 100 meters down say a 30 – 45 degree slope. (These numbers might be exaggeration, forgive me). It’s tough to assess exactly how long it was for the only thing I could remember is that I tried not to scream and when my snowshoe has gathered enough snow to stop me from sledging “free” further, my heart was pounding and I couldn’t move or do anything. Not because I was hurt, but because the experience was completely new to my brain. 5 year olds would probably call it fun, but for me it was a life and death situation.

Rescue number two – thanks to my unreasonable fear (at that time) of the beautiful powdered snow around me, Boy 1 had to run towards me, take my backpack and walk me back to the path we chose to take that day.

Part III – Igloo Building

Shortly after lunch, we finally stopped at a location where we would build our “organic” accommodation for the night. We wasted no time and started our work immediately. I don’t recall any proper lunch break after the exhausting snowshoeing part of the day. Fortunately, as a woman, there’s not much really I could do building the igloo because 1) I do not have the power to saw blocks of ice from the ground 2) I do not have the strength to carry blocks of ice sewed from the ground 3) I do not have the engineering capacity to build an igloo from blocks of ice. What I could only do was assist Boy 1 / 2 in providing powdered snow as glue to connect the blocks of ice together or in polishing the igloo with powdered snow as soon as the blocks are in place. I also provided assistance in handing their water / food when necessary.

At the end of the day, we managed to build a sturdy igloo with a small cooking and dining area in front.

Part IV – Sleeping

We were very luck with the weather for the sun was always out and the sky was blue the whole day. As soon as the sun sets though, the temperature dropped too low to the point that it’s not safe to stand still anymore, rather better to move around in order to keep one’s blood circulation going. We cooked vermicelli noodles with chili con carne for dinner (not very good combination, never having it again), boiled water for some tea and decided to call it a day. Oh wait, we managed to do some star gazing but at some point got dizzy using an iPhone app to match which constellation we could see from our visible share of the night sky.

We retreated to our well made sleeping beds and tried to sleep. Yes – it was cold. Very cold. Perhaps it was because on my left was Girl A, and on my right was big wall of ice. Above me was also a ceiling of ice. I tried the fetus position, wrapped myself with 3 layers of clothing (which I know now as also a big mistake), but still couldn’t sleep. It was cold, very cold, but I couldn’t complain because 1) It is not in my Asian nature to do so 2) No one forced me to be there. It was too cold, however, to believe that I could survive to see the sun the next day.

So I looked up at the ceiling and recall thinking “Boy 3 was right (He didn’t join after experiencing the 1st igloo fest) – I’m going to die tonight.” I wanted to say goodbye to my new friends so I turned to my left to see if anyone else was awake. Indeed. Boy 1 was already looking at my direction, waiting for me to send the signal of defeat for God knows how long already, and asked me the question “Are you cold?”.

Rescue number three – (continuing the draft after a year or so). Apparently, I should have changed my clothes before getting inside the sleeping bag in order not to sleep with all the sweat, which will be cold water if not ice, I accumulated during the day. I was too shy to do this given there was no proper toilet around. So instead of asking to have the igloo to myself for 5 minutes to change, I simply ditched the suggestion. I then had to change in the middle of the night with everyone in the igloo. My igloo mates provided me with extra socks, hand warmers which I had to use as feet warmer and fed me tea. We switched positions so I get to be in the middle of two warm persons. With all these help, I finally managed to sleep. Until..

After two hours, I woke up again. This time, the father instincts of Boy 1 and 2 kicked in immediately and asked me if I was still cold. “No.. I’m hungry”. I ate my trail mix as quietly as I could, had some tea, and all of us managed to fall back to sleep fast enough until..

At 4:30 A.M., in the middle of the Swiss alps, inside an igloo built with our bare hands, with no heating except for a candle, no electricity, and no WIFI, my alarm from the day before set off waking everyone – again.

The funny thing is, despite all the hassles I’ve caused to these three people during the trip, they ended up to be the best buddies I would have in this foreign land I called home for the past 2 years. We went on to have more winter, summer, and autumn hikes together. As a matter of fact next week, fingers-crossed, we will attempt to have Igloo Fest 2018 🙂