The original plan for the three-day weekend was to do some mountaineering and climbing around the Cabane de Moiry. We cancelled that due to the crappy weather forecast for Sunday and Monday. This trip is our "let's take advantage of the good weather on Saturday" alternative. It's a bit dialed back from what we might normally due since greg is still recovering from a bad cold he had during the week. The hike is adapted from one of the "more interesting hikes" books.
We start with an early train-train-bus trip that ends up with us on the first (8:00) gondola up from Emmetten to the restaurant at Niederbauen. From here we follow the path towards the Niderbauen Chulm. The weather is beautiful, there are lots of flowers, the views are great, it's a really nice hike up. We briefly enjoy the views from the peak (along with a fair number of other people, not quite clear where they came from) before heading down, past the blue-white path leading down to Weid, down, to the turnoff to the Hundschopf, We ignore this and turn right to contour around back towards the gondola station. At Merlieggen we turn to follow the road a bit and then take the path steeply up, past the big erosion feature, and up, up towards the Faulberg. Once on the step we continue, now on a blue-white path, up towards the Oberbauenstock. Up, up towards the towering face, then around the West, across a scree field, and then up the face to the shoulder. The route is steep but easy (it even has cables) and, though we're slow, we make it up on to the ridge without problems. There's no danger of us getting lonely up here, it's a beautiful day, a nice hike, and not too difficult. We follow the ridge up the last hundred meters to the Oberbauenstock itself were we do a food break with very, very nice views. Some of the previous hikes we can see from here: Engelberger Rotstock, Brisen, Gitschen, Rigi Hochflue (twice), Eggberge, Krönten (just barely), Stanserhorn, Buochserhorn, Pilatus. The view is just great.
After lunch we head back and follow a very nice path along the ridge and to the saddle below the Zingel. Neither of us are at 100%, so we opt not to continue the ridge (though we'll have to do this at some point) and start our way down. At the devision point near Haseneggli we opt to head down through the valley to Emmetten instead of going to Stockhütte and taking the gondola. This starts as a nice path through the woods, next to the stream and ends up as a bit too long on the road, but we make it down to town with time to spare to grab some refreshment before grabbing the bus that starts the trip back home.
This was a great use of a beautiful day.