Schiberg (2044 m) - start of the hiking season!

Yesterday while biking around Wägitalersee, I saw that most of the Schiberg south flank is already free of snow. So I decided to start the hiking season today. I brought my snowshoes for the upper part called Tschingel, but in the end they would not really have been needed.

Start of the hike at 9:30 AM. I followed the wrw marked trail up to Aberli, and past Hohfläschenhütte. At Hohfläschen (P.1472), I left the marked trail and headed up the grassy hillside on the east side of Almismattwald. Between elevation 1600 and 1800 m, the slope is generally 30° steep, and with the dry brown grass it was sometimes a bit tricky. There was barely any snow left before elevation 1800 m, and I managed to stay off the snow until elevation 1900 m, where I mounted the snowshoes. But in the end I only used the snowshoes for a distance of 200-300 m. It would have been fine without. The final and steepest part of the ascent to the summit was without snow.

At the summit of Schiberg, it was quite warm, and hardly any wind. The view to the surrounding mountains was great, even though there was a lot of Sahara desert dust in the air. I enjoyed my lunch at the summit and took quite a few pictures.

The marked trail going down from Schiberg to Furgge is still partially covered by steep snowfields, so I found it too dangerous to head down that way. Therefore I went down via Tschingel, generally following the same route as for the ascent. I did not mount the snowshoes, only the gaiters. I tried to stay on the snowfields for as long as possible. Therefore my route downhill was partially in the forest.

All in all a great start of the 2019 hiking season! I had not expected to hike to Schiberg as early as April. Surprisingly, I did not meet anyone else during this hike.

I refer to the enclosed GPS track for more details on the route.