Ice, flowers and snakes

Today we were woken up by the ringing of cow bells as the farmers walked their cattle through the main street of the beautiful little town called Elm. The locals are so friendly and the scenery is definitely breathtaking. Last night we stayed in a lovely hotel called Hotel Elmer. The owner sat with us for hours giving us advice about the route to Linthal. Locals definitely know best!

We ascended to Obererbs and shortly after passing though towards Erbser Stock we were greeted by the sounds of machine gun and cannon ball fire coming from the local army training base. At first we were confused because it sounded like thunder due to the echos between all the mountains. We passed beautiful stream the had crystal clear, ice-cold water that we drank from along the way.

It was a rather chilly day and it rained for most of the way which was  quite a welcomed change considering we had been walking in blistering heat for the past 3 days. The slopes were covered with hundreds of different coloured flowers which made for a beautiful climb.

We had to cross over numerous patches of snow that covered the path way, it was quite slippery and we almost landed up sliding down numerous times. We were minutes away from summiting but weren't able to because we didn't have the right equipment to cross the ice so we landed up turning around and making our way back to Elm.

So close to the sumit but yet so far

We stoped for a short break and lay in a field covered with the flowers we had walked by all day. As we were close to Hengstboden we came across a brown snake which, according to locals, is a very rare sighting.