During the last couple of weeks I spent quite some time planning for one of the most important tasks of my sabbatical: The E1 Project...
Introducing: The E1 Project
The E1 is the major European long distance trail leading 4900km/3044mi from Norway's Nordkapp to Italy, where it ends near Castelluccio. There are plans to further extend it to reach Sicily, but that is not done yet. The E1 is kind of the European
Appalachian Trail,
Pacific Crest Trail or
Continental Divide Trail even though a major part of it leads through regions, where you are not as far off any human civilization. So at least in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and Italy there is no way to avoid human settlements. The E1 experience is not as much "Into The Wild" as the aforementioned US trails. But for me (being a lazy bastard) this comes in handy: no wolves, no bears, no shitting in the woods (IMHO in terms of "leave no trace" practices a proper loo is something really really
useful). Occasional showers should easily be possible. I do not have to bring a tent or find a shelter, I just book some kind of accommodation. And I can restock food in a supermarket daily... :)
I always wanted to do a long distance hike crossing the Alps by foot. There are four major/"official" routes across the Alps:
- Munich - Venice through Austria
- Oberstdorf - Meran through Austria (European Long Distance Trail E5)
- Trans Swiss Trail through Switzerland (Swiss National Route 2)
- Triest - Monaco through Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France (Via Alpina)
The E1 is included in the (very well maintained)
Swiss hiking trail system and it does not explicitly exist as E1 in Switzerland. It rather consists of two parts of the Swiss hiking trail system:
- Swiss National Route 4 - Via Jacobi (Swabian Way) from Lake Constance to Seelisberg
- Swiss National Route 2 - Trans Swiss Trail from Seelisberg to Morcote
As I have been hiking parts of the Trans Swiss Trail (
Weg der Schweiz) as well as the Via Jacobi (around Rapperswil) and I am feeling closely connected to Switzerland in general, I decided to walk along E1 from Germany to Italy through Switzerland
Preparing Data
It was actually not very easy to find out about the E1 in the beginning. There are a couple of old and out of sale books on the E1 basically focusing on the German part. There is nothing like the trail conservancies known from the US, who take care of the E1 (in fact there is the European Ramblers Association, who officially takes care of the trail, but there still is
no information available).
But with the help of some modern technology, you will find
These provide the basic GPS trails. Then you find out about Swiss National Routes 2 and 4 and suddenly things become quite apparent and sort of easy.
The Swiss guys actually do a supreme job in terms of their hiking trail system. There are lots of descriptions of the different stages of each trail, lots of hints and tips regarding hiking in general and alpine hiking in particular, they provide links to accommodation and to public transport. It is hiker's paradise.
Anyway, couple of problems:
- the GPX files from Waymarked Trails are not very well prepared. You just get about 100 sections/tracks that make up the whole trail. But they are in no particular order and they come in different directions
- the GPX files do not contain information about the respective altitude (which makes calculating hiking times rather complicated)
Regarding the first problem, I just had to reorganize the whole trail. Quite a pain in the neck, but done within 2 days. Regarding the second problem I found out about a tool named
GPS Track Analyse.NET. This tool provides for the basic means to associate track data with elevation data and a lot of additional useful functionality to prepare proper GPS tracks. Furthermore it provides links to NASA's original
SRTM data and topology maps with even
a higher resolution than the official NASA ones (1 arc second vs 3 arc seconds outside of the US).
So I kinda prepared the whole track in the correct order and added elevation data.
Planning: Different Stages
For a long distance hike you have to come up with your own stages taking into account your physical abilities and speed for the overall approach. You have to think about a lot of stuff: How much time do I need for a certain distance with a certain ascent and descent? will I find accommodation there? Do I actually want to go there? What do I need in terms of stuff to carry around in my backpack? etc. etc.
With the completed track of the E1 I started defining the different stages. I soon found out, that there are two issues with the E1:
- finding appropriate accommodation in canton TG (beginning of the trail) is not really easy; I might just hike somewhere, then take a bus to the next bigger town, sleep there, next morning take the bus back to the trail and continue hiking (bear in mind: I do not want to bring my tent. Camping is okay for a 3 day hike, but not for 3 weeks of hiking.)
- a major part of the Trans Swiss Trail part of the E1 follows the highway to Italy. This hike might be more of the convenient pleasure trip type and it really is not about ultimate solitude and wilderness, but hiking along the highway (and even if it is not nearby but in the same valley) is not a nice thing to do.
Regarding 1.) I kinda managed to find, what I was looking for. Regarding 2.) I came up with my own route from scratch: the original E1 follows Erstfeld -> Wassen -> Andermatt -> Passo del S. Gottardo -> Airolo -> Osco -> Anzonico -> Biasca -> Bellinzona ... as of my current plans I leave the E1 main route after passing Erstfeld to then cllimb up the "real" mountains to go via Etzlihütte -> Sedrun -> Maighels-Hütte -> Cadlimo-Hütte -> Lukmanierpass and Dötra -> Acquarossa -> Biasca ... there is no way to avoid the highway between Biasca and Bellinzona. But these are like 20 out of 330 kilometers. I am going to be fine.
To plan stages accordingly you have to be able to calculate how much time you need for your hikes. This is not an easy thing to do. There are two basic approaches:
The Swiss invented their own - very complex - calculation approach, which involves not online the overall ascent and descent, but the actual incline as well. It is near impossible to do these calculations yourself, but in my experience they roughly match my hiking times. That is why I paid for access to the official SwissTopo/
SchweizMobil Plus website and app. They let you upload your tracks and you can get the official SwissTopo maps downloaded to your mobile directly. Furthermore, they are calculating hiking times for each track. This way I checked all my calculations to come up with feasible stages along the whole trail...
