Mythen and Engelberg

Monday the weather turned back to rainy so spent most the day inside except for a quick walk by the lake to Lido and got drenched. On Tuesday it was time for a haircut by what must have been the only non-english speaking hairdresser in town, followed by lunch with my cousins. In the afternoon the weather was looking better so went for a walk from the hotel across the hill to the little town of Adligenswil, through the Meggwald forest to Meggen and then followed the lake back to Luzern. Still a bit of rain about so couldnt see much of the surrounding alps but was nice to get out nonetheless.
On Wednesday morning the weather was starting to look better so took the train over to Schwyz. The bus driver at the train station said there wasn`t a cablecar but I didn`t beleive him since it was clearly on the map and I`d been on it previously. Walked through town and stocked up with some rations and then on to Rickenbach only to find that they were busy tearing down the cablecar. Now my quick 10 ride to Rotenfluh turned into a 2.5 hour, 1000m ascent up the side of the mountain. Passed through all the farmers paddocks and through plenty of mud to finally make it up to the top of the ridge. Followed it along to Holzegg which was meant to be the start of the walk up the Grosse Mythen mountain. With only 3 hours until the last bus was leaving from Brunni I didn`t have time to make a dash to the top. Instead I followed the panoramic trail for a while and had lunch looking out to the snow capped mountains across the lake. They were properly covered in fresh snow after the heavy dump they had the day before. In the afternoon I caught the bus from Brunni down to Einsiedeln. Here there was a huge monastery hosting some conerts in the evening so checked that out and then got the train back to Luzern.
Today the weather was finally perfect with clear blue skies... an opportunity I wasn`t going to waste. I jumped on the next train straight up to Engelberg, the starting point for the tourist cablecar route up to Titlis. But I went up the Brunni cablecar (www.brunni.ch) on the opposite side of the valley. From here I trekked up around towards Rickenbach but just after the Älplerbeizli Rigidalalp restaurant, near Tüfelstein the snow got too deep and I had to take the trail up to the Brunnihütte (1860m). Here the views to the snow covered mountains of Titlis and the other peaks were amazing. Here there was another restaurant and the little lake of Härzlisee, setup with a foot massage walk where you went in the water and back out walking on different timbers and stones. Followed the trail around past Walenpfad where there were great views to the back of Pilatus and Stanserhorn, and then returned past Ristis and Flübmatt back to Engleberg. Checked out the walk over Jochpass that I also wanted to do but it was really snowed over, but hopefully will be able to do that in a few days once the snow has melted away a little.