Day 94 | Traverse Pass & Upper Traverse Hut
15 January 2023 | 23°C | 24km
It’s the first night on trail that I slept a little bit cold. Not a big surprise, our camp is at 1330m elevation. We pack up quickly and postpone breakfast to the next hut in roundabout 5km. It’s a narrow valley and the sun just reaches our campsite when we are about to leave.
It’s a lovely morning stroll around Lake Constance until we miss a turnoff that leads further up. Well, why not just walk around the lake whose water level is so low these days that it must be possible to walk around, we think. 🤔 But the water reaches up to the mountains after the next corner and even though we climb over some rocks we soon come to the point where moving further is not possible. We still don’t want to turn around and try to climb up to where the GPS shows the trail.
It’s very steep and I hold on to all kinds of plants and leaves in the hope that they are well rooted in the ground, if not I would directly slide down and fall into the lake. A realization that causes a big fear. Just do not panic now, I tell myself. A creek about 10 meters further left looks like a way out and once I get there, I can see that climbing up over the stones in the creek is pretty straight forward.
We take a deep breath as we realize how dangerous this unplanned morning adventure was. Soon we reach Blue Lake, apparently one of the clearest lakes on the planet. It’s not allowed to take water from it or even swim in there, but we use the nearby hut as our late breakfast location. The day flies by and we fuel up at West Sabine Hut before starting our climb to Travers Saddle in 1787m. It’s all up through forest, not too difficult.
Once we are halfway up I start struggling, my calves hurt and I find it mentally hard to keep moving without seeing any progress. The cutest looks the same no matter if I am 100m up or down. I start crying and get angry shouting that I don’t understand anymore why I am doing this.
We take a break and the map shows that we will soon be above tree line. What a relief! Once above the trees and able to look back, I pick up speed again and make it all the way up to the saddle in a short time. It’s already 7pm when we start the descent down to Upper Travers Hut just a couple of kilometers down.
There are still a couple of free beds but it seems so busy that we prefer to look for a campsite in the grass close by. After quite some searching - it’s not as flat as it seems - we find a spot and cook our well deserved dinner while the sun is setting.
