I get so excited when I start to see berries on the trail.

And it’s even more fun when I am walking with someone who shares my enthusiasm for picking them.

This past summer, we found blueberries, blackberries and raspberries on the Via Alpina.

And blackberries were absolutely everywhere along our summer hikes in England.

Such treasure!

Berry picking was a thread that ran through hiking trips from July to September this year.

I first sent Simon down the lane with his cousin in July to grab berries for a crumble after dinner.

Then Anna and I slowed everyone down with our constant raspberry picking on the first few days of the Via Alpina.

Once she left, I had some new berry picking comrades show up in my sister-in-law, Koko and my friend Jermaine. They were the first ones to spot the tiny wild blueberries along the path.

Our last week in Switzerland, we stayed on a farm and picked blackberries every morning to have in our yogurt for breakfast.

In September, I hiked with my parents and my dad and I picked berries together. They were absolutely everywhere by early September in our area. And then we met friends in the Lake District who were also game to stop for picking blackberries.

Koko even filled her water bottle with them to take back to her partner who couldn’t hike with us. I love her for that! It’s not enough just to pick and enjoy the berries yourself, but also you want to spread that berry love.

My sister, brother and I first picked blackberries with my grandparents in Arkansas. They lived out in the country. As kids, we would go stay with them in June and pick berries down the road from their house. Then my grandmother would make blackberry pie and blackberry jam.

Blackberry pie was always my favorite dessert growing up. I would request it on my birthday instead of cake.

Our early blackberry picking days were the inspiration for my sister’s restaurant when she opened it in 2012: Blackberry Market.

And now my brother has just opened one in North Little Rock, Arkansas. (You should definitely go visit.)

Though it can add a considerable amount of time to your hike, finding wild berries is always a good excuse for a stop on the trail.

Now, on these winter days,

when I walk by the sleeping blackberry bushes,

I imagine them full with berries again.

When the time comes, I’ll be ready with my pail,

and hopefully I’ll have a friend around who is willing to stop and share the joy picking blackberries.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here. Or subscribe to get stories to your inbox here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Picking Blackberries appeared first on Alison Chino.

Taido and I say to each other all the time that we want to keep hiking well into our old age.

Then this summer, only a few days into the Via Alpina, I was starting to think thoughts like:

I think this might be my last serious mountain climb.

It’s time for me to stick to the lower level routes.

All morning I had been counting steps up the mountain.

We could see the pass ahead of us and even better, we could spot that there was a restaurant on top, so we knew we were looking forward to a substantial break.

When we finally reached the top, I collapsed into a chair while everyone went inside to order.

Just grab me one of what you’re having, I said to Taido. I couldn’t take another step.

The restaurant on Hahnenmoos Pass turned out to be a whole beautiful resort, with comfy chairs and sun loungers.

While I sat in my barely-conscious state, I watched an older couple come up the hill.

They were taking their time, but they were not struggling. You could tell that this was not their first rodeo. I imagine they were life-long mountain climbers.

They walked inside and came back out with two espressos, which they sat down and quickly drank. Then they fell back into their chairs and fell asleep.

I don’t know where they were headed next or what their plans were for the afternoon. But in my book, they were winning life.

For the next part of the trail, they would be fueled up and rested.

I pointed them out to Taido and Anna.

Hey y’all, I said, Look…

Hashtag Life Goals. 

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here. Or subscribe to get stories to your inbox here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Life Goals appeared first on Alison Chino.

The Swiss Mountain Hut Breakfast might be my favorite Swiss Meal.

A close cousin to German breakfast, the offerings are both predictable and plentiful.

There will always be muesli, which is kind of like granola, but without any sweetener.

A staple of the Swiss breakfast table, muesli has dried oats, raisins and seeds.

I eat it with yogurt, but some folks use milk or even chocolate milk.

Other regular offerings in the Swiss Mountain Hut Breakfast include:

Dry cereals

Boiled eggs: you can have them soft-boiled or hard-boiled. You actually make them yourself, usually in a boiler that is set up on the breakfast buffet.

Pastries: croissants, pain au chocolat, muffins

Fresh bread with toppings: butter, jam, honey, nutella

Various cheeses (Emmental, Gruyère) and meats (ham, salami)

Yogurt

Fruit

Juice and milk

Hot chocolate, tea and coffee

I love the Swiss Mountain Hut Breakfast. I prefer it immensely to the traditional English Breakfast, or even American Breakfast, both of which I find to be too heavy to eat just before hiking.

I eat my yogurt and muesli first, then a soft-boiled egg and toast. I end with a couple of pieces of fruit, which I often have to just stick in my pocket, because Taido is ready to go.

It may be difficult to hike the Via Alpina, but at least you are well-fueled for the day.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Swiss Mountain Hut Breakfast appeared first on Alison Chino.

I know I’ve mentioned it once or twice but the hiking trails of the Via Alpina (and really throughout Switzerland) are impossibly steep.

Here’s how most days of our Swiss hiking days unfold:

You crane your neck all morning looking up at the next pass, hiking the relentlessly uphill trail and willing your body to just please go one. more. step.

When you finally reach the top of the pass, the relief is palpable. Your legs are still shaking from the workout but you are delighted to be on top of the world, especially if the sky is clear, because ohmygoodness THE VIEWS.

But the relief is short-lived, because thirty minutes after you start down, your knees are screaming at you for slamming them into the ground step after step after step.

You finally hobble all the way to your hostel where you have a seat, a drink, a shower, some food and some sleep before you wake up to do it again. Seriously, it’s both AMAZING and AMAZINGLY HARD.

And that goes for the uphill AND the downhill.

But it’s the uphill struggle that we tell people to prepare for on hikes in the mountains.

For months, I send out emails and texts encouraging folks to go walk the hills closest to them. Go up and down them as many times as you possibly can.  For people who don’t live near any hills, I suggest finding some stairs or at the very least, a stair master machine at the gym.

But no matter how many stairs you force yourself to climb, you probably won’t reach the equivalent of what you will climb in a day on the Via Alpina.

When you’re staring at the side of a mountain and wondering how much further it is to the top, the answer is always: further than you think.

So how do you tap into the place deep within yourself that pushes you to keep going further than you’ve trained to go?

I don’t know how other folks do it, but being a person that does not excel at “will power,” I have developed a system for how to bypass the part of my brain that is telling me to quit.

I’ve been flinging my body up mountains for a long time, and I’ve lost count of the number of times that I have reached the place where I feel that I cannot take another step.

And this is what I do.

I tell myself I don’t have to climb all the way to the top. I only have to take 100 more steps.

So I count to 100 steps, and then I stop and catch my breath for a count of 10.

And then I repeat.

I take 100 more steps, then stop and take 5 deep breaths. In (1) and out (2), in (3) and out (4)…until I get to 10.

And then again. And again.

When 100 steps begins to feel insurmountable, I drop to 50.

I reduce the number until it is the amount of steps to which my brain will say yes.

In the Colorado Rockies, where the altitude is high and my lungs cannot seem to catch the air I need, I have reduced the number of steps all the way to 10. 10 steps, 10 breaths.

A slow plod.

When I am doing counts of 100, I stop for a longer break after 5-10 sets. Drink a little water. Have a bite of an energy bar.

And this is how I get up the mountain, in little bite-sized chunks.

Importantly, the counting takes my concentration.

It fills the space that is usually buzzing with all my thoughts.

Like:

When will it end?

Whose idea was this trip?

Why didn’t I train more ahead of time?

I think everyone else here is faster than me.

Instead of this pattern of unhelpful thoughts, all I can think is: one step, two steps, three steps…

Once I start counting steps, I can even get in a sort of meditative zone. I’m just stepping, counting and breathing.

I love walking with others because of how the time passes. Sometimes someone is telling me a story while we’re walking and I don’t even notice how many miles we’ve gone. But on the Via Alpina, there comes a point when the trail is so steep and you’ve been at it for so long that no one is talking anymore. You can’t spare the oxygen for talking, so you are just left alone in your own head.

This summer I began to share my counting system with some of the others who might have been similarly struggling to climb the Swiss Alps.

A few of the gals took this system of counting steps and made it their own, developing routines of how many steps to take, when to stop for a water break and when to stop for food.

It gave me great joy to see that the system that I have used with success since I was a teenager was also helpful to others. If you ever find yourself on the side of a mountain thinking that you just cannot go any further, I encourage you to give it a try.

PS. Here’s a little video Taido took of the steep ascent of switchbacks getting up to Bunderchrinde pass (2382 meters) on the day we hiked from Adelboden to Kandersteg on the Via Alpina. You can see Anna and I waaaay below, making our way slowly up the mountain. And I can promise you that I am counting steps.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. During December, I’m inviting you to come along with me for a few minutes on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Counting Steps Up A Mountain appeared first on Alison Chino.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog a fabulous year of walking. Every day during December, I’m going to choose one photo and invite you to come along with me for a few minutes on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here.

The Massenlager

It’s a bit like Grandma’s Feather Bed, only without the hound dogs and pig.

We didn’t get much sleep, but we had a lot of fun.

At least I think we did.

The Massenlager is the Swiss German word for where you sleep in an alpine hut.

It’s not just a hostel, it’s a room with one or two long beds where you huddle up with your friends (and a few strangers) after a long day of hiking.

You’re allotted a pillow the size of a tea cup and one scratchy wool blanket. So between the fabric-covered bed and the blanket, you use a sleeping bag liner. The liner is a small, lightweight sleeping bag that you carry in your pack.

If you move around a lot in your sleep, you might find the sleeping bag liner to be similar to a straitjacket, especially once it twists and tangles around your body while you try to sleep.

A Massenlager usually holds 20-30 people, often with one long bed on the bottom and another long one above. With that number of folks in the room, the odds are pretty decent that someone is going to snore, loudly. So ear plugs are a must. I also recommend melatonin.

On my first night in a Massenlager in Switzerland, I was lamenting how little sleep I thought I would get, when my sister, who joined us for our first few days on the Via Alpina, made an interesting perspective-shifting point:

On a long-haul flight, you would pay a lot of money for this much space to sleep. 

This was  a strangely helpful thought.

I still didn’t get that much sleep, but I did begin to enter the Massenlagers at night with gratitude for the warm, dry space to stretch out. After miles and miles of marching up (and down) mountains, I was thankful for every hour of rest.

I actively decided not to be jealous of those who could fall right asleep in the Massenlager.

I found myself actually thankful for snores and heavy breathing around me, because it meant that at least someone was getting good sleep. (Maybe that someone could carry my backpack the next day.)

And then one night, when we walked into the youth hostel in Grindelwald and were assigned to rooms with bunk beds, all of a sudden the luxury of having an entire twin mattress all to myself felt like winning the lottery!

It was like we had checked into the Ritz-Carlton! I was several whole feet away from the next person, and could flop about in my straitjacket liner without disturbing anyone else!

Oh the deliciously deep sleep that I got that night!

The post Mini Walking Stories: Massenlager appeared first on Alison Chino.

Mini Walking Stories is a project I’m doing this month to catalog what has been an AMAZING year of walking. Every day during December, I’m going to choose one photo and invite you to come along with me for a few minutes on one of the walks I took in 2022. Read more stories here.

Fear of the Highest Heights (on the Via Alpina)

The scenery is more than magnificent from the top of Sefinenfurgge Pass. At 2594 meters high (8510 feet), you can see for miles.

However, as I sat on the narrow bit of rock that makes up the shoulder of this gorgeous Alpine pass, I was not focused on how beautiful it was.

I snapped a few photos. I celebrated with everyone else that we had made it through the hardest climb of our day. I gulped down some water and ate a snack. I might have even laughed.

But everything I was doing outwardly was serving to (unsuccessfully) distract myself from my laser focus on one thing:

My fear of going down.

I have a long-standing fear of heights. I dug my heels in deep when my dad tried to get me to do a ropes course at summer camp, and then again when peer pressure was strong to jump off a high dive at the pool.

But over the years, I have managed to overcome a lot of the ways my fear of heights could have stopped me from enjoying some of my favorite views. I can climb to the tops of hills and mountains, but when I am near a drop, I sometimes feel like I lose control of my legs. I begin to shake, and if I am already quite tired from hiking, the shaking feels an awful lot like almost falling.

And so I freeze.

The day before, we had come down from a steep pass that I had not been expecting. Navigating an endless number of ladder-like stairs was the only way to get down off the mountain, and on the sides of the ladders, there were sheer rock-faced drops. I could not look down, so I ended up turning around and going down backwards so that I could look up instead. My friend Jermaine, who has known me for more than twenty years, happened to be behind me. And my sister-in-law was right behind her. They took my poles, so I could use my hands and feet to crawl backwards down the mountain. Even after I got off the ladders, we found ourselves on a lot of trails that seemed precariously near the edge of a ravine, so I was a little more wobbly than usual for a good part of the day.

I had been a bit caught off guard by how much the descent had freaked me out, so at our hostel that night, I researched (probably unwisely) how many more of these ladder-lined passes we would be crossing on the Via Alpina. From my bunk in the Alpine hut, I discovered that we had a very similar ascent and descent the very next day.

The great thing about how exhausting it is to hike straight up into the Swiss Alps is that I had to use energy just to step one foot forward in front of the other that I might have otherwise spent in dreading this descent from Sefinenfurgge Pass. But the closer I got to the pass, the more I remembered how I had frozen at the top of the steps the day before.

I might not have stopped on the pass, but I was shaking too much when I reached the top not to sit down for at least a moment. Every second I sat at the top served to enlarge my dread of going back down the other side. The series of steps and ladders that made up the descent were right in my line of sight, and I knew that I wanted to get them behind me sooner than later.

So as soon as I felt that I had caught my breath, I started to make my way down. This time I put my poles away ahead of time and didn’t even try to start out facing forward. I turned around right at the top and began to crawl backwards again. Looking up, I noticed that my precious friend Jermaine had come along right behind me. Conscious of my fear from the previous day, she was ready with her calming presence.

You can see Jermaine in the above photo standing there behind me. You can’t see me in front of her going down backwards, and you can’t see her face, watching me and encouraging me: You have two more steps before the end of this set and then to your left, a new set begins. We have about ten of these left. There is a bend to your right in the next step. The rope you are holding ends in about two feet. You’re doing great. The next rope is right behind you to your right. You can hang on to it for the next four steps. You’re almost there.

Like this, she talked me all the way down.

Truth be told, this descent was not as bad as the one from the previous day.

But it didn’t matter in my head. Once I knew I would be going up and down ladders again, I became very afraid.

And also I was exhausted. We had climbed over 3500 feet to get to Sefinenfurgge Pass, and we would descend that same number again before we stopped that day.

During our time on the Via Alpina, Taido and I noticed that the grueling climbs and descents of each day meant that folks had less resources to hold themselves together to face other things, like hunger or thirst, or relationship dynamics, or a little fear of heights. When you push folks to their edge, you perhaps shouldn’t be surprised at what comes out.

But in the end, my moments on, what are for me, the highest of heights turned out to be a confirmation that I am going to be ok, and that I walk the scary ridges and descents the same way I have walked so many paths before me, one step at a time, and with a little help from my friends.

The post Mini Walking Stories: Fear of the Highest Heights appeared first on Alison Chino.

A little over a year ago, we packed up all our worldly possessions (again) and headed off to Switzerland before moving back to America. We said goodbye to our friends and rolled our suitcases down the street to the bus stop on an early morning in Tübingen.

And then we rode buses and trains to Engelberg, Switzerland, a familiar place we all love dearly.

It was pouring down rain when we arrived, and so we made our way up the hill to our friend’s house, where we took off wet clothes and breathed big sighs of relief.

Ben and Simon had just finished an entire year of German school. We would be headed back to the US in a couple of weeks to try and pick up where we left off in the summer of 2013, but for now, we would rest.

Everything else was far, far way except for this one thing:

Tomorrow there would be mountains to climb.

The next day was all blue sky and beautiful views.

We got up and wandered a few of our favorite nearby trails.

We returned to the abbey to buy the cheese that is made there.

We hiked high above the town on the little switchback trails that run behind the Swiss chalets.

We watched clouds roll across the sky.

For a week we rambled around Engelberg.

We went on long hikes in the morning and shorter wanders in the afternoon.

We sat around the house in the sunshine nursing our sore feet in the pool.

We found new trails and hiked old familiar ones.

We missed those who had been with us the last time we were in Engelberg.

And we enjoyed being together.

Just the other day, Simon said to me, “I miss walking in the forest.”

“Yes!” I said, “I miss it too.”

In the last year, we haven’t spent nearly the amount of time in the forest as we did in Europe.

So I dug out these pictures to remember our epic hikes in Switzerland.

I remembered how I love trailing behind my boys while they are running down a mountain.

I can feel their glee as they bound down a trail.

And I remembered how I love tea and treats after a long hike.

At the end of our first week in Switzerland, we did a large group hike up Mt. Titlis.

They had stations set up all along the way where we could fill up our water bottles with hot soup or tea, because it was super cold.

It was by far our hardest hike of the week, pushing me for sure to my limits.

The weather played chicken with us all day, and I was frequently ready to give in to it.

But then the sky would clear in places and the most amazing views would appear.

Sometimes the views below were just over the edge of some pretty harrowing clifftops.

But it was gorgeous.

The other hikers snaked above and below us. It was amazing to me that so many folks had come out for such a hard hike.

It was by far the highest I have hiked in Switzerland.

As part of the hike, we got to ride the gondola back down the mountain, saving my knees from the descent.

For our second week in Switzerland, we had friends from Scotland join us.

It’s always fun to share a favorite place with friends. Our boys had especially looked forward to the arrival of the Fitches, a family with three boys!

We took them first to maybe our favorite valley in all of Switzerland.

We hiked to a small hut for drinks and cake.

We had gorgeous weather for most of our time, with full views of all the mountains.

The next day we hiked up to the alpine lake above Engelberg.

Then we came down another gorgeous valley, a hike we did with all four of our kids in 2014.

On another day we took a gondola up to a mountaintop restaurant.

Just above the restaurant is the perfect spot for family photos!

Then we hiked back down to Engelberg after lunch.

We did one cloudy day hike in the lower hills of Engelberg.

This trail led us to a lower part of the river that runs out of Engelberg.

And then there’s a trail along the river that leads back up the valley, over a suspension bridge and back into town.

Taido and three of the boys managed to squeeze in a via ferrata one day that looked particularly harrowing.

Proud fellas.

For our final few days in Switzerland, we took the train to a different part of the country.

Lauterbrunnen.

We stayed in a hostel for just a couple of nights, so we could get in an epic hike before heading home to the US.

We started early in the morning. The boys are all pointing to the sign telling us how long it will take us to reach our destination, Kleine Scheidegg.

Higher and higher above Lauterbrunnen we climbed.

After a while, we started to get views between the clouds of Jungfrau, Monch and Eiger.

No matter how high you hike in Switzerland, there are little villages and huts.

And we crossed several times over where the trains climb up.

We constantly marvel at Swiss engineering while we hike around the country.

The temperatures dropped as we got closer to the tops of these mountains.

Finally we could see our destination, as well as the helicopters bringing tourists in and out. After lunch, we hiked down a different (and longer) way to another town (Grindelwald) before taking the train back to Lauterbrunnen. All in all we hiked well over 20 miles on our last day in Switzerland.

The next day we took the train to the airport and headed back to America with sore legs and loads of memories!

Goodbye Switzerland. And goodbye Europe!

The post Return to Switzerland appeared first on Alison Chino.

Well, my month of posting about Switzerland has come to an end, and next week I will be turning the page on the summer and begin sharing all the fun from my latest adventure of walking Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Trail with my friend, Diane.

But my memories of Switzerland would not be complete without these images of the gorgeous house where we stayed and its surroundings. We spent hours and hours enjoying this space, inside and out, and these photos will always conjure up for me memories of cool, calm mountain summer mornings and evenings.

I imagine that for many years to come, Engelberg will be the happy place I go to in my head when life gets too stressful. And in case I forget, I can always come back to these Snapshots of Engelberg to remember.

Peaches and oatmeal on the porch.

The pond out back.

And the way the sunshine made the trees sparkle in the water.

Sunny morning yoga on the tile patio.

Beautiful in the clouds.

And beautiful on blue sky days.

Walking to town.

Picnics in the park.

Going to the local abbey to buy cheese and bread.

Hearing the abbey bells.

And of course, the train station. The train whistle and the abbey bells kept time for us every day as the hours of summer slowly slipped by. Engelberg, I’m holding you close.

The post Snapshots of Engelberg appeared first on Alison Chino.

Our last walk in Engelberg began like so many others. Heading up, up, up into the forest.

Morning light catching the forest floor and making me wonder if I was going to be too warm in my long sleeves.

Then we would emerge from the forest and be up high, where we could see a new bit of the area.

And catch a view of Engelberg from another angle.

Schwand is really just another small settlement down the road from Engelberg.

There is a restaurant there and a small hotel.

And a lovely chapel.

And more cows ringing their bells.

We were fortunate on this, our last long day of hiking, to have gorgeous clear skies and unobstructed views of the mountains.

After we made it to Schwand, we walked back down into the valley, deep where the river ran.

Then we slowly made our way up the river, stopping more than we had on any of our walks. There was an unspoken understanding that we would not hurry. That we were coming to the end of our dreamy month in Switzerland. And since we weren’t chasing daylight or weather or our next meal, we took as long as we wanted.

We took time to notice things. Like these funny little carved gnomes.

I love that someone took the time to put these along the river.

We also found more wild raspberries.

The kids asked me if I would make a pie if they picked enough for one.

“Of course,” I said, “but we don’t have anything to put them in.”

Problem solved.

I collected stones from the river. Striped rocks marked by the glacier cut valley.

And the kids kept picking berries.

Further up the river, there was a little shelter area for hikers and campers, complete with tables, firewood and pots and pans. So clever!

The end of the trail had several bridges as the path crossed back and forth across the river.

The suspension bridge was a bit high for Simon’s taste and you could feel it swinging a little.

It was impressive.

We loved this trail to Schwand and back and hope we get to wander along this river again some day!

This was our 36th walk in my year of walking, and our last hike  in Switzerland. Only 12 more to go now. Feel free to join in and walk with us for the rest of this year!

This week I am walking the epic Coast to Coast walk in England with my friend, Diane. Follow along on Instagram or Twitter.

The post A Walk to Schwand {Switzerland} (35/48) appeared first on Alison Chino.

I mentioned yesterday that we walked to and from the village of Engelberg several times every day. Sometimes we went for groceries and other times to the visitor center to use the WiFi.

Most days we walked through on our way to another hike in the area or to reach the local abbey to buy their freshly made cheese. But other days we wanted to play at the playground or go to the bakery. Whatever the reason, I was always up for a walk into town.

The walk to Engelberg always began at the top of this hill. On a clear day you could see the mountain that was called “The Rooster.”

Sometimes the Rooster was shrouded in clouds.

And sometimes it was hiding all together.

But then on some rainy days, you could still see the Rooster.

It was the same walk every day, but it always changed just a little bit.

In town we would walk under these banners, and run our errands.

We would walk past hotels.

And up to the abbey.

And maybe the train station.

On the way back up the hill we always passed my favorite yellow house.

The one with the cute little garage covered in tiny shingles and ivy.

I took a picture almost every time I walked by. Ben asked me why I kept taking pictures of it over and over again. The kids would run past it and on up the hill but I always stopped. I’ve never been that taken with houses actually. Trees and rocks and rivers are what usually stop me in my tracks, but there was something so enchanting about all the Swiss cottages and their flower window boxes. Talk about curb appeal!

All our walks to Engelberg ended up back here, in our own borrowed dreamy little Swiss chalet.

This was our 35th walk in my year of walking, and one of many  walks in Switzerland. Feel free to join in and walk with us for the rest of this year!

This week I am walking the epic Coast to Coast walk in England with my friend, Diane. Follow along on Instagram or Twitter.

The post A Walk in Engelberg {Switzerland} (34/48) appeared first on Alison Chino.