Broken bridges

Day 3 started out with the effects of Day 2 still very much lingering... broken bodies. Sleeping in the car, whilst having been a good idea the day before with the rain pouring down, was not in hindsight the best in overall terms.

I awoke feeling a bit strange... my breathing was really quite laboured and try as I might I couldnt slow down my breathing and catch my breath. I felt like i had when I had a chest infection in New Zealand... unable to complete a sentence without gasping for air. Being a nurse... with no adult training whatsoever... all kinds of weird and wonderful explanations arose. I woke Paul up with the words... I feel funny... I cant breathe properly. To be fair... he did look concerned even though he doesnt do mornings very well.
My phone has an app where you can check your saturations (amount of oxygen in your blood)... 94% ... so I wasnt dying. Better get up then.
I got out of the car and started walking towards the shower block... immediately I felt better and my breathing returned to normal. It was very strange indeed!

So because my breathing had normalised all the other aches and pains from the day 2 adventures seemed minor in comparison. The blisters... aching hamstrings... knees ... back.... the list goes on. It had been a hell of a walk.

The weather in the valley had completely closed in... it was lightly snowing and no mountains could be seen above the cloud.

Paul had survived his fall with nothing more than a slight bruise... a few scrapes and torn trousers but his list of aches and pains were as extensive as mine.

So given that... the weather... and the need for a slightly less adventurous day .. we decided to drive out of the weather and find a walk elsewhere. As we drove down the was a sign for Grächen... a place I had taken my step kids to quite a few years ago. In my head it had a few flattish walks. So we drove half way up the mountain and parked in exactly the same car park we had back then. The same gentleman came out for payment and he didnt look any older.

We set off up the path ... towards the chalet we had stayed. This path had stayed in my mind due to its extremely steep nature. 'It leads to a flat path at the top' I said to Paul.. hoping my memory served me correctly. I was sort of right but the path carried on up for a lot further than I remembered. We were walking up through recent snow and stopped to put on the crampon like grip things for our shoes. They certainly reduced the slipping and sliding somewhat.

We followed the path to Zum See... a small lake I remembered well. By now the skies above us had cleared a little... revealing the mountain tops to us whilst keeping them closed off to those down below. We were above the cloud line and way into the snow line. We followed the path to the lake... enjoying the bit of flat path. Our legs were now warmed up and the stiffness was beginning to wear off.
Therefore we decided to head up a little and followed signs to Seetlehorn.. a mountain I had climbed years ago. Given what we had encountered yesterday at a much lower level I knew Seetlehorn would be impassable... it was tricky enough in the dry with bright sunshine but we headed up gaining a few hundred feet in a very short space of time. We got to another flattish path ... the wasser weg or water walk. It wound its way through the forest... the smell of pine pervading everything.

Even at this lowish level.. well below 2500m .. the damage that the winter had done was very evident... and the clean-up process hadn't really begun here... meaning that we were regularly scrambling over fallen trees.

Given the experiences of the day before perhaps we should have taken the fallen trees as a sign re the path ahead. But even if we had ignored that... the sign posted on a tree... something about a bridge.. and impassable... should have stopped us. But we carried on.
It was a lovely path... some bits of snow with animal tracks in... some rocky bits to scramble over... but in the main.. flat. Along the way there were signs that (with my rudimentary German) seemed to be extolling the virtues of water... the sounds it makes and basically how you can get closer to the true meaning if nature...
A nice sentiment.

We passed an old avalanche chute... when Paul's eagle eyes spotted a family group of chamois on the rocks. I think it was the same place I had seen them all those years before. We stood there for a while watching them... they were unconcerned in this intrusion... presumably hugely confident that they could bound faster uphill than we could!

We continued on ... and came to a metal bridge. Now this bridge had been there for years but had seen better days. To say it looked precarious would be an understatement. The metal railings on the drop side were twisted and in some cases broken completely.
You go first said Paul
Cheers bro

So holding on to the intact side I inched across... not totally confident that it was truly anchored in place.
1/2 way across... Paul said
'Where are you going from there??'
Pointing to a gaping hole slightly beyond the end of the rickety bridge.
He had a point.
Where there had once been another bridge... and I can confirm that because I had stood on it years ago..
there was now a large gap with debris all around above and below. Clearly whatever had tumbled down had done so with enough force to take the bridge clean away!
Hmmmm

Unfortunately this meant i had to go back across the rickety bridge with paul standing safe at the other end.

Just as i reached him... he pointed out one of the bridge supports which had been twisted by some great force. Glad i hadnt seen that before going across.

So back we went... properly reading the sign this time... it did say impassable.

The views most of the time were blocked by the forest but at one point we were standing with a view of the top of the matterhorn... couldn't see the rest of it. Usually its the other way round!

We followed another forest route towards Niedergrächen and then curved back round to Grächen hitting the town at the bottom and therefore meaning another climb up back to the car.
Given that we had felt pretty broken the day before.. it was an all round reasonable effort.

We went back and immediately put the tent up... wisely determining that another night in the car would finish us off. Air beds blown up and then after a quick food trip.. back in the tent for an evening of cards...

Easy day tomorrow right bro!
Yup.. came the reply