Grosser Mythen

This is Grosser Mythen. It is 1900 meters tall. We started our hike up it at 600 meters and it took us 3.5 hours to walk straight up to the top. No flat areas on this hike!



Myself, Christian, and Nikko about a half hour into the hike. We had gorgeous views throughout this entire hike. It was worth all the pain.



Christian and Nikko are both PhD students in Martin's lab at the ETH. Christian is just about done and is going to move to Boston (where his girlfriend lives) hopefully by January. So we'll have more friends in Boston! Nikko likes to do crazy hikes. But there don't seem to be many hikes in Switzerland that aren't crazy.

On our way up we found a kitten having a morning nap on some paper bags. We actually saw a lot of cats on this hike, just hanging out in the fields around the farms. I'm sure there are lots of mice for them.



I post this picture not just because it's funny that Christian is so neatly rolling up his sleeves, but because the view behind him is nice.



Taking a break. The last 500 meters of elevation gain of the hike were straight up. It was like walking an hour straight up stairs (after walking 2+ hours up steep hills beforehand). I took a lot of breaks.



We finally made it to the top! Just in time too because I couldn't have made it much further.



There was a swell restaurant at the top where we got ourselves some beer and food.





From the top of Grosser Mythen you have 360-degree views of the surrounding countryside and mountains. You could see Zürich from there too! It was a little hazy though so the picture of Zurich didn't come out so well. It was close though because we were only an hour away by car. But here are some mountains:





You might be wondering where the huge crowds come from on such a difficult hike. Well, first off, we were the only people who started at the bottom and walked all the way up! Nikko said we had to do that in order to avoid crowds like the one you see in some of the pictures above. Most people parked in the parking lot half way up and then took the cable car some more of the way up. But, secondly, everybody had to hike the last 500 meters of straight-up rock to get to the restaurant. These people are Swiss. And they're serious hikers. Even a 90-year-old arthritic Swiss man could beat me up any mountain in Switzerland.

And then the boys had to have some coffee schnapps. Nikko said if you weren't able to see the spoon in your coffee schnapps then it had to be sent back because there wasn't enough schnapps in it. You could see straight through Nikko's but Martin kept his a little more opaque:



The boys, enjoying their coffee schnapps and the views:



Nikko:



A sign at the start of the steep top of the hike, telling of all the dangers on the hike. There were tons of little kids on this hike and every one of them was on a leash. I could've used one of those so Martin could have just pulled me up behind him.



One last view from our descent: