The Easy Stroll: Zermatt Part Trois

Continuing our Zermatt Hiking adventure, we headed out our hotel door and chose an 'easy' route for our first hike. I wonder what has Mr. Wild Dingo's attention?

Oh that again.

After a while of hiking, we felt comfortable letting the cracker and criminal off-leash for their own explorations. As usual, the cracker keeps tabs on everyone, including the lagers.

The trail started on fire road but offered tons of tiny single track and some steep cliff side views, much to Mr. Wild Dingo's chagrin.

Even Juno took time away from critter shopping to appreciate the alpine wild flowers.

Wherever there is water, you will find my Sibe. I swear Internet, there's a gene missing in her DNA.

The first thing I noticed when driving to Zermatt were the waterfalls. The first one I saw, I was like, "Oh my GAWD! LOOK at that waterfall."  Because it was just dropping off a sheer cliff at full throttle. It was just jaw-droppingly beautiful.  Then there was another exactly like it. And another. And another.  Soon, they became oh-ho-hum. As if.  According to a Sibe, you can never have enough waterfalls or rivers to wade in.

We got plenty lost on this hike. According to Strava, (OMG, I'm addicted to Strava) we hiked 7.7 miles in 2.5 hours and climbed  2700 feet.  Now 2700 feet doesn't seem like a lot. Especially since I do 2 times that on any given bike ride. And 2.5 hours of walking didn't seem exactly unreasonable. Especially since we do more than that during the week sometimes.

But when we got home that night, we all felt like lumps and were too tired to venture to a restaurant for dinner, so we ordered in. And we all almost fell nose-first into our rosti dinner. Yes, the dogs got sausage and rosti for dinner as well. Still, I couldn't understand why we were all so tired. I mean, the dogs and I have been training for this. Every week, I alternate their workouts with 4-mile (50 minute) bike runs with long steady hikes of 5-6 miles  over 3 hours. That's only for their workouts. For me, I also include 8 hours of cycling and 3+ hours of yoga each week.

So why the hell was I so damn tired?

Thanks to Strava, I understood why. On our normal weekday hikes, we maintain a 18-20 minute-mile pace (3 miles/hour) for 4-6 miles and climb about 300 feet max. On this hike, we maintained the same pace for 7.7 miles and climbed 2700 feet. So more miles and waaaaaay more climbing. Duh. And we hadn't even done the difficult hike yet.

Sleep never came so easily to me that night.