Hiking weeking in the Alpstein Area

Last weekend 4 friends of mine and me took a trip to the Alpstein Area located within the Appenzeller Land. We arrived on Friday afternoon at Bürlisau, parked our car at the cablestation and took the direct path up to Bollenwees and stayed there for 2 nights.

On Saturday we took the following route: Fälensee, Fälenalp, Häderen, Zwinglipass, Altmannsattel (where the good weather conditions ended, fog took over and temperatures dropped dramatically down to freezing 2 degrees celcius), Rosteinpass Cottage (don’t believe the sign that will tell you it’s just a 15 minutes walk down from Altmannsattel, for us it took close to one hour to get down), Oberchellen (aka Spitzstein),followed by another 300m up to the Widderalpsattel and finally (via Widderalp) back to Bollenwees.

There we arrived close to 7pm just in perfect time for dinner. Afterwards at 11pm, while party was still going strong at Boolenwees, we already counted little fluffy swiss sheeps :-)

Fog was (luckily – I guess every muscle was aching) still very present on Sunday Morning and so we skipped our planned trip to the Hoher Kasten and directly headed down back to our car, where we arrived 2 hours later.

All in all a very cool weekend with lots of Quöllfrisch - what a nice name, fog, hiking, sore muscles and fun.

Ohh, if you’d like to see how things could look with good weather conditions – just take a look at some of the pictures that my colleagues took 2 years ago.

Some tipps which might help you on your way:

• I recomend that you reserve your bed at Bollenwees. Otherwise (in particular on weekends) they might send you to another cottage which might be “just” another 500 meters in altitude

• There’s an ATM right next to the cablecar which leads to the “Hoher Kasten”

• At the ground station of the same cablecar you can get hiking maps for this area for very reasonable prices (they have maps with 1:25000 and 1:40000).

• The communal bunks of the bollenwees guest house are lined. Even though I recommend that you rent some extra bedclothes (I believe it’s only 5 CHF) or bring your own. Towels can be rented as well at very reasonable prices

• Bollenwees as well as the Rotstein Guesthouse both accept maestro / EC card. Furthermore you can easily pay in Euros.