By Stefan Dierauf Published on August 7, 2024

July Prologue - Family in Switzerland, Haute Route prep

Table of contents:

Ok, July, let's go. What even happened?

About a year ago, I made plans with my parents to do some amount of the Walker's Haute Route, a through-hike from Chamonix to Zermatt. My parents are big hikers, and have been coming to Switzerland every summer since I moved here. I was always fine with hiking, I liked doing it, but my nexus event was breaking my leg in January 2023, after which I have continuously felt impelled to gtfo and go outside as much as possible. My PT also recommended hiking as a great way to sneak in some non-boring physical therapy, and encouraged me to do it as much as possible. Anyways all that is to say, I think I'm the one who suggested to my parents that we should do a through-hike in Switzerland, so we planned to do it early in the season in 2024, in July.

A few more things ended up landing in July. My cousin planned to have his wedding in late July in (near) Yosemite, and Dani got us tickets for Taylor Swift for July 10th. On top of that, we found a new apartment in late April, applied, got the contract, and got the keys in late June. So July ended up being:

[Late June] Parents arrived in Switzerland
[June, the next day] We got the keys to our new place, start moving
Sister showed up for a few days
Taylor Swift concert July 10
Last day of work July 12
My parents and I start our section of the Haute Route July 14
Sister meets us partway, I finish the hike the afternoon of the 19th, they stay an extra day to go to Zermatt on the 20th
Fly to California July 21st
Matt + Shannon wedding July 27th
Fly back to Switzerland July 31st
First day back to work August 5th

Wow. Anyways we all survived, it was great, obviously very full month. Now I'm finally back and have no plans for a long time.

The rest of the ✨content✨ will be broken up into other posts, to keep this a bit organized. Here are some photos from that first couple weeks in July.

Picking up my parents from the airport:

American in the Eidgenössische Trachtenfest

Took them to the Alpstein the next day, from Hoher Kasten to Saxer Lücke. Some digital photos on the fuji (and iPhone), and then I also shot a roll of phoenix 200 with the Olympus XA which is why they look so strange:

Fälensee, one of my favorite lakes in Switzerland

Moving in to the new place:

My parents went to Ticino for a few days, and I went on a hike with Tudor and Lennox. It was kind of a Surenenpass out-and-back from Fürenalp. Strava link

At this point I'm trying to figure out what camera to bring for the haute route. I think I brought 3 film cameras on this hike.

Tudor and Lennox were not happy to be so close to the cows

A few snow crossings as we got towards Surenenpass

Sasha arrived!

...And we went back to the Alpstein, this time we did the Ebenalp -> Schäfler ridge -> Mesmer -> Seealpsee route. Strava link

So yeah, this was a ton of different cameras, mainly so I could figure out what I wanted to bring on the Haute Route. I wound up bringing none of the cameras used here!

Some bonus artsy shots around Zurich: