Hiking Fulfills Inner Need to Travel More Slowly

It was mid-July and the snows were gone from the ski slopes of the Austrian Tirol. We were hiking in the Alpine meadows near Igls, where only two winters earlier we had been cross-country skiing. Now the wildflowers of a late spring were still in bloom.

We ended our day’s walk at the Igls Sporthotel, which was just as much of a picture post card Tirolean inn in the sunshine of a late summer afternoon as it had been during the early twilight of winter. The sun glowed on the mountain crests high above us. From somewhere nearby came the music of a Tirolean band.

Our hiking day had started after breakfast in Innsbruck at the Goldener Adler, an inn that traces its history back to 1390. We walked through the Gothic Old Town of this city, lingering at the 28 bronze statues around the tomb of Emperor Maximilian in the Hofkirche, one of the historic treasures of Europe.

My wife Elfriede and I had spent much of the day on this leisurely hike. I carried only a light backpack for our overnight needs in Igls.

Through the Vienna Woods

Two days earlier we walked for most of a day through the Vienna Woods around the wine village of Grinzing, along paths Johann Strauss must have walked for many a day before he composed his “Tales from the Vienna Woods” in 1868.

Next autumn, when summer is approaching Down Under, we plan our own walkabout in Mt. Cook National Park along the crests of the Southern Alps on the South Island of New Zealand. Options for hiking and climbing range from the maps of “Easy Walks” furnished by the rangers to glacier climbs.

Hiking and walking, like bicycling, have become major trends in world tourism of this late 20th Century, and the reasons why go far beyond fitness. Most important of all in this High-Tech Age is the inner need to travel more slowly.

During a hike from Los Angeles to San Francisco we found that everything is intensified when you slow the pace of travel. Each view becomes part of your senses, and there is time to touch other lives, even with a wave and a smile. A butterfly flickers by in the glow of sunlight and is not crushed against your windshield.

Favorite Routes

We’d like to share with you some of our favorite hikes around the world, as well as to update some of the hiking tours offered for individuals and small groups.

Hiking tours or hiking on your own can involve camping trips or non-camping trips with a wide variety of accommodations. Above all, hiking can be priced according to your travel budget.

“The Civilized Way to Rough It” is the 1987 theme of hiking vacations offered by American Wilderness Experience of Boulder, Colo.

“If you like franks and beans,” this organization advises, “bring them with you. We serve hearty meals of steak, fowl, fish and pork with fresh fruits, vegetables, salads, Dutch oven biscuits, potatoes, homemade desserts and plenty of cowboy coffee.”

On Wilderness Experience treks, roomy tents are waiting and dinner is being prepared while you relax after a day of hiking.

Mountain Travel of Albany, Calif., will conduct camping and non-camping trips in many parts of the world this year. “Hiking the Haute Route” is a trek with about 12 days of hiking along the high route that crosses the Alps between Chamonix in France and Zermatt in Switzerland. Overnights include Alpine huts, pensions and mountain hotels.

Mountain Travel’s nine-day walk deep into the Japanese Alps finds each day ending graciously at one of the traditional ryokan inns of Japan.

Last summer in the Black Forest of Germany we followed trails that linked nine Wunderhiking Inns during treks of 7 to 10 days, depending on your pace. Each day our baggage would be moved from one inn to another while we enjoyed forests, meadowlands and fairy-tale villages.

The California Office of Tourism in Sacramento has divided the state into 12 distinctively different destination areas. Each has many byways that await the walker and hiker.

The Mammoth, Mono and June Lakes area, for example, is a wonderland for summer hikes as well as winter skiing. The visitor center on California 203, operated by the U.S. Forest Service, provides trail maps. One day could begin with a hike to Devil’s Postpile National Monument, with its basalt columns fitted together like the pipes of a great organ. Minaret Vista Nature Trail will introduce you to the grandeur of Inyo National Forest. Mono Lake so fascinated Mark Twain that he wrote of “Mono’s Mountains of the Moon.”

Stepping far back into history, we found that the Pyramids of Egypt can be part of an unforgettable hiking experience. The Avenue of the Pyramids from Cairo to Giza is a hike of only a little more than seven miles, but it is a walk back into the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, which built some of the finest of all the Pyramids about 2,500 years before the birth of Christ. When Napoleon stood here with his army he spoke of “40 centuries of history looking down upon us.”

As we climbed the great Pyramid of Cheops we knew that Mark Twain and Flaubert were only two of uncounted thousands who had climbed here before us to watch the sun rise out of the mist above the valley of the Nile.

My hike along the Sea of Galilee in Israel from Capernaum on its north shore to Tiberius, about two-thirds of the way down the western shore, was little more than a dozen miles. Yet this is a timeless walk, following what scholars believe is most likely to be the trail of Jesus as he left the life of a carpenter in Nazareth to begin his ministry.

The hike was a quiet meditation. Inside the dome of a chapel atop the Mount of Beautitudes are inscribed the words with which Jesus began his Sermon on the Mount. A shimmer of light rising from the Sea of Galilee softened the hills around it into pastels.

In Greece, the 26-mile route of Pheidippides is always waiting to be hiked, following in the footsteps of the original Marathon runner who created a tradition for Olympic athletes when he ran from Marathon to Athens with the glad tidings that the Persians had been defeated.

Without any attempt to set an Olympic record, it took me 11 leisurely hours to hike that route, through the poppy fields and olive groves beside the Aegean seashore, then over the foothills and sheep lands of the Penteli Mountains to Athens where Elfriede was waiting to pour me a sip of ouzo.

On Dartmoor Heath in England, through what may be that nation’s largest national park, we hiked together from early morning to darkness along the trail of “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” It was in this Devonshire wilderness that Arthur Conan Doyle set the scene for one of the most blood-tingling cases ever to confront Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.

Sometimes we were sure that the spectral hound--”gaunt, savage and as large as a small lioness”--was lurking in the shadows of the next woodland. Then an attractive English girl would come out of a country inn, point to the blossoms on the moor and explain, “We say that when the flowers are out like this the gorse is blooming, and when the gorse is blooming, kissing is in season.”

A palatial houseboat on Dal Lake in Srinagar, capital city of Kashmir, can be an island of retreat from the rest of the world, with luxury accommodations at moderate prices. It can also be a most gracious base camp for day hikes up into the foothills and valleys of the Himalayas.

A hike to the international ski resort of Gulmarg was for us a blaze of color in autumn. It is a tapestry of flowers in springtime and summer. One hike leads to the terraces, marble pavilions and fountains of Shalimar Bagh, the Garden of Love laid out 400 years ago by Mogul Emperor Jahangir.

On Western Samoa a hike up the rugged slopes of rain-forested Mt. Vaea always leads to one of the most moving and memorable experiences in the South Pacific. The hike begins at Vailima, turns left at a waterfall, then winds upward past ferns and banyan trees. At the top is the grave of Tusitala, as Robert Louis Stevenson was known to the Samoans.

This is where Stevenson wanted to be buried, on a mountaintop with the South Pacific at his feet. He was carried to this resting place by 60 young men of Samoa on a sad and rainy day in 1864. We sat there reading the poem he wrote for his own epitaph while surf played on the reef in the sunlight far below.

On the other side of the earth, Djurgarden Island is a day of hiking that will take you far back into the history of Sweden. From along the shore you can look across bays and channels of Baltic Sea waters to the skyline of old and new Stockholm. Giant oak trees have their roots in Viking times. One trail leads to the museum of the Wasa, the warship that sank in Stockholm Harbor on its maiden voyage in 1628. Skansen is Sweden-in-miniature on 75 acres of hilly slopes.

Mountain Travel for 1987 has scheduled trekking and hiking adventures in more than 30 countries, from Mongolia, to Thailand, Peru, the Caribbean and the Soviet Union. A private trip can be planned for families. A free brochure is available, and the complete 80-page catalogue is $5 by third-class mail. Write to Mountain Travel, 1398 Solano Ave., Albany, Calif. 94706. Telephone (415) 527-8100.

The American Wilderness Experience focuses its 1987 adventure vacations on “capturing the spirit and splendor of America’s great back country.” Hiking trips with llamas to carry all essentials are offered for the Colorado Rockies. Adventures also include horsebacking and white-water rafting. For trip information, write to American Wilderness Experience Inc., P.O. Box 1486, Boulder, Colo. 80306. Phone toll-free (800) 621-8385, Ext. 648.

For comparison, check another listing by American Wilderness Adventures of the American Wilderness Alliance, 7600 E. Arapahoe Road, Suite 114, Englewood, Colo. 80112, phone (303) 771-0380.

As examples of costs for guided hiking tours, the land price for Mountain Travel’s “Hiking the Haute Route” across the Alps from Chamonix to Zermott is $1,190 per person this year, in a groups of eight to 12 hikers, including accommodations during 12 days.

A seven-day American Wilderness Experience backpacking trip in Yellowstone National Park is $475 per person. You carry only your personal belongings and sleeping bag. All camping gear and meals are furnished.