This book showcases over 100 of the best hiking trails in the Swiss Alps focusing on the Valais, Bernese Alps, the Engadine and Davos.Switzerland boasts a stunning collection of majestic, glacier-clad peaks soaring above idyllic valleys cloaked in emerald green meadows and lovely forests. An extensive network of well-marked and maintained trails allows hiker's easy access to this spectacular alpine scenery.Day hikers will delight in the variety of base camps, ranging from villages and small towns to world class resorts, each with great trail systems containing more than enough hiking for a weeklong vacation. The country's excellent trail network connects the various base camps creating sensational point-to-point multi-day hiking trips.The trails in this opinionated guide will appeal to day hikers who like to go high and walk 5.0 to 12 miles/day. Elevation gains range from negligible to over 4,000-ft. Many of the trails offer intermediate turnaround points for hikers seeking shorter days. All the trails include detailed trail description with ratings, elevation profiles, maps and photographs.Hiking areas covered in the Valais are centered around Zermatt, Saas Fee, Zinal, Gruben, Les Hauderes and Arolla. Trails in the Bernese Alps feature trail systems near Grindelwald, Lauterbrunnen, Griesalp, Kandersteg, Adelboden and Meiringen. This section also includes hikes in the Glarus and Uri Alps near Altdorf and Engelberg. Featured hikes in the Engadine Valley focus on St. Moritz and Pontresina in the Upper Engadine and Scuol in the Lower Engadine along with nearby Davos.Sections also include multiday hiking opportunities along the Walker's Haute Route in the Valais and the Alpine Pass Route (Via Alpina) in the Bernese and Central Alps.

Walking in the Engadine contains detailed route descriptions for 100 day walk routes that vary from 4 to 16km long in length. The routes cover a variety of terrain from luscious meadows and craggy mountains to glaciers and snowpeaks. Most of the walks described in this guidebook have been chosen with a particular viewpoint, lake, alp hamlet, hut or pass as the destination, while the principal objective of each walk is to enjoy a day's exercise among stimulating scenery. There's something for every walker's taste: gentle valley rambles for a family outing; craggy mid-mountain walks for the more adventurous; high-level routes that lead across glacier, snowfield and rugged passes for the experienced mountain trekker. Tucked away in the south-east corner of Switzerland, the Engadine is a region of lakes and mountains, home of the country's only national park, guardian of the Romansch language and location for some of the most sublime villages in all the Alps.

This comprehensive book is an excellent planning resource for those who wish to venture into the Swiss Alps. Whether you are planning a walk, scramble, climb or ski tour this larger format guide describes each mountain area throughout Switzerland - the peaks, passes, valleys and bases - to help readers identify the best destinations for their chosen mountain activity. Dozens of individual valleys are described, together with the mountains that wall them, with recommendations given for their finest walks, treks and climbs. Working eastwards across the country, this guide is divided into seven chapters: Chablais Alps, Pennine Alp, Lepontine and Adula Alps, Bernina, Bregaglia and Albula Alps, Bernese Alps, Central Swiss Alps and the Silvretta and Ratikon Alps, each devoted to a specific range or group of connecting ranges. However, this is not a route guide and detailed descriptions are not provided. The aim of the book is to inspire as well as inform; to show first-time visitors just what the Swiss Alps have to offer and provide a new perspective for those who have been before.

An inspirational larger format guidebook to 20 summer treks in the Alps across Italy, Austria, Switzerland, France and Slovenia, including the classics such as the Tour of Mont Blanc and lesser-known routes like the Traverse of the Slovenian Alps. Perfect for planning, the treks included are: Tour of Mont Blanc, Tour of the Matterhorn, Tour of Monte Rosa, Walker's Haute Route, Tour of the Jungfrau Region, Tour of the Vanoise and Dolomites AV 1 & 2; (longer trans-Alpine routes) GR5 (Lake Geneva to Nice), Eastern Alps E5, Italian Alps GTA and the Traverse of the Slovenian Alps; and (for the Alpine adventurer) Alpine Pass Route, Tour of the Oisans, Tour of the Queyras, Tour of Mont Ruan, Stubai High Route, Zillertal High Route, Gran Paradiso AV2 and the Ratikon Hoehenweg. Outline schedules for each trek allow you compare the routes and become inspired to take up the challenge. Basic day-by-day route descriptions for each route are illustrated with maps and profiles, helping you choose the best routes to walk.

Part detective work, part treasure chest, full of history and scandal, The Gilded Chalet takes you on a grand tour of two centuries of great writing by both Swiss and foreign authors and shows how Switzerland has always been at the center of literary Europe. Two centuries after the Romantics went there to invent Gothic horror, the lure of Switzerland hasn't left us. Writers from the Fitzgeralds to Fleming, Highsmith to Hemingway, Conan Doyle to le Carré, came to escape world wars, political persecution, tuberculosis. They came for sanctuary (from oppression or the tax man), for fresh air and nude sunbathing, for scenery resembling, as Rooney puts it, 'Mother Nature on steroids.' Patricia Highsmith spent her last years in a granite home in Ticino with a fridge containing little but peanut butter and vodka. Hermann Hesse had himself buried to the neck as a cure for alcoholism. Nabokov chased butterflies and played tennis on the hotel courts. When it comes to literature, it seems all roads lead to Switzerland. Padraig Rooney peers through the chalet windows and discovers how Switzerland has influenced some of the greatest authors and characters of literature.

John begins the trip back home for the coming school year. Suddenly, John finds himself up against the greatest challenge of his life--lost in the Rocky Mountain backcountry amidst unforgiving elements and the battlegroud of his own mind. Will John survive?

Buff men in front of an impressive backdrop: Men in the Alps gives us a slew of outdoorsmen in sexy poses between mountain stream, farmstead, and summit cross. Men in the Alps is a successful charity calendar brand. This volume features the best pictures of the recently concluded series in a hardcover book.