More Than Cheese and Gnomes: One couple’s adventure of a long walking holiday across the Alps Mountains

Long ago, as refuge from a world moving all too fast at times, my wife, Cheryl, and I discovered something we call “slow, deliberate travel.” It’s a simple notion, born out on the wild and woolly steppes of Tibet as we independently hiked nearly 685 miles from Lhasa to Kathmandu, Nepal. The process is as “slow” as your feet alone can carry you. It’s “deliberate” in the sense that you travel with purpose, exploring and wallowing in the minutiae of everyday life, living as locals do, wherever you are—out on the windswept Tibetan plains or in modern-day western cities.

Now to be honest, it’s often far from easy but more satisfying than the fast-food smorgasbord of travel I’d tasted up until then. Over the years, slow travel has become my passion. Like a beguiled lover, I make every excuse I can to chase it whenever I can.

One year it meant hiking the famed Camino de Santiago across Spain. After that, it was a trek from Canterbury to Rome on the Via Francigena. Next came Norway’s St. Olav’s Way. Another year, it was re-creating the route of the First Crusades on a peace walk from France to Jerusalem. Finally, in 2009, it was a journey that would put Cheryl and me to our supreme physical and mental test.

The Via Alpina. Its name melted like Italian gelato on my tongue.

It all began innocently enough. We heard about new trails established across the Alps. The Via Alpina consists of five trails stretching from Trieste, Italy, on the Adriatic to Monte Carlo in Monaco. Combining a network of pre-existing, long-distance routes, the trails traverse the continent tracing the backbone of the Alps for more than 3,500 miles. As a European cultural itinerary, these new byways encourage travelers to discover Alpine beauty, culture, nature, ecology, history and cuisine in whatever region people choose for as long as they can get away.

As for me, I wasn’t satisfied with hiking only one small portion for a few weeks. No. I wanted to be among the first to hike the Via Alpina’s entire length across eight countries: Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France and Monaco—hoping to arrive at the Mediterranean before snow hid the trails. Besides, I figured it’d be great fodder for a new book.

In my mind’s (or stomach’s) eye, I envisioned it as a European Appalachian Trail—but with far better food and wine.

I knew the route was bound to be far more difficult than others I had trekked. One look at topographic maps showed that each and every day I’d have to climb 3,000 feet from valley to mountain hut, where I’d sleep. As much as I enjoy camping, if I’m out in the wild for months, I prefer having a bed, an occasional shower, and something better to eat than chili and peanut butter. This was a holiday, after all. Not an episode of Survivor.

Still, the Via Alpina sounded perfect—except for the continual “Val-der-EE, Val-der-AH” mountain goat aspect. So faster than you can say “schnitzel,” I coaxed my desk-jockey wife into leaving our cozy Hawaiian home to join me on this new quest. Together we’d prove the Alps are much more than cheese and gnomes.

Before leaving, there was a laundry list of details to face. At first, realizing it’d take five months to hike this trail, we knew we had to apply for visas. With the Schengen Agreement, Americans are allowed to stay in European Union (EU) treaty countries for up to 90 days total at a time, not per country, so we applied for elective residency visas in Italy. These would allow us enough time to complete the trek and then remain behind to write a book about our experiences.

On the downside, it meant we would have to leave our life in the islands, eliminate many of our possessions, and become Euro-nomads. (There are worse fates.)

We left for Trieste in June 2009, and set-off on what was to become a 111-day hike across the Alps. Unlike our historic trek across Tibet, we wouldn’t dodge bullets. But given the heart-pounding climbs, we’d sure miss Sadhu, our equine Sherpa.

Just like Tibet, from the very start, ours was an expedition of highs and lows. For example, even though we had 30 maps covering most of the route, searching for trail markers became a daily routine across Slovenia, a country that’s as bewildering as it is beautiful. When we found them, often they were on half-buried posts, mown down by avalanches or snowfall.

In Austria, we faced inclement weather. The Alps are as unpredictable as love. At 6,900 feet, it can be sunny, raining, snowing and fog-laden—all on the same summer day. Then came the pelting rain, horizontal at times. And how could we forget those dry Föhn winds. Blowing long and hard, they’re known to drive folks crazy. (Though as a long-distance trekker, you’re already halfway there.)

The terrain itself was always a supreme challenge, even for light-hikers like us, carrying just 15 pounds each. Early on, even in the comparatively gentle Julian Alps in Slovenia and northern Italy, the trails were slow going. Often ice fields blocked our paths across otherwise narrow, slippery scree in June. Let me tell you, it’s a long way to the bottom of those valleys.

You may have heard of Ötzi, the 5,000-year-old hunter recently discovered in northern Italy buried beneath a receding glacier. We didn’t want to end up like him, no matter how tempting it is to remain ageless.

Still, even though we took it slow and steady, within that first week Cheryl found herself dangling precariously over an abyss, anchored to an ice flow by only one slender Nordic pole. Although she survived, in the process she badly injured her knee, which threatened to end her Alpinist days then and there.

But no, we continued. For the record, over the next three-and-a-half months we ascended and descended almost 700,000 feet total—the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest from sea level 12 times.

However, it was far from pain and peril as we hiked in the shadows of legendary mountains like Mt. Blanc and the Eiger. Little could compare with the rarefied beauty and wildlife we discovered one-step-at-a-time. Steinbok, chamois, ermine and roly-poly marmots appeared when we least expected them. We reveled in legends, such as the one told by a grand old lady who managed a hut in the French Alps. She regaled us with the tale of Mt. Jolly and the jilted shepherd whose tears froze to form the glacier at the base of Mt. Blanc.

As usual, there were the eccentric folks such as one hiker, an Irish wolfhound of a fellow, who insisted on stripping down to his skivvies to bathe in fancy Lac de Tigne resort’s glacial lake. Or the welcoming dairyman who helped us escape a hailstorm to “schlafen in stroh” (sleep in straw) in his barn above the donk-a-donk cacophony of 80 bell-toting cows.

And how could we forget the food and wine, as varied as the people. One of my fondest memories is of a certain blustery night at another shepherd’s hut. First, the grizzled fellow fixed a lip smacking Niçoise socca, a thin, pan-fried chickpea meal crepe, served with cool rosé wine. He followed that with wild nettle and potato soup, roast lamb with herbed onions, and four kinds of fresh handmade cheese for dessert. It was a magical affair—a culinary Brigadoon—savored in a mountain cabin by firelight.

These journeys are always introspective. We learned to face fears, appreciate simplicity, revel in nature, rediscover balance, and disconnect from the distractions of the world. For folks seeking peace in difficult times, there’s no better getaway.

Hiking the Via Alpina is unforgettable; but you don’t have to walk the entire route. In fact, it’s better that way. Trekking end to end as we did is too big a bite for most people. Like Gorgonzola, it’s better savored in small, delicious bites. Concentrate on one region for a week or two and match the route to your own physical condition. Revel in the head-clearing scents and rarefied air; celebrate the lung-wheezing exhilaration of reaching a lofty summit; surrender to the relief in reaching the coziness of a mountain hut at sunset.

It’s an empowering and enlightening journey. Incidentally, there’s no better weight-loss plan!

Each night I chronicled our adventures, the victories and “agony of de feet.” I hope our tale will help open this trail to other European travelers who naively think they’ve already “been there, done that.”

Brandon Wilson is the author of the Lowell Thomas Gold Award-winning book Along the Templar Trail (Pilgrim’s Tales, 2008) and Yak Butter Blues: A Tibetan Trek of Faith (Pilgrim’s Tales, 2005). His adventures on the Via Alpina are chronicled in his new book, Over the Top & Back Again: Hiking X the Alps, published in October 2010, also by Pilgrim’s Tales available at: http://www.amazon.com/Over-Top-Back-Again-Hiking/dp/0977053628/ref=ntt_a...

PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRANDON WILSON