Five stages, four days: St. Moritz to Splügen

Every year I plan one hike that is deliberately a bit too much, and I invite everyone I know. The numbers do the filtering: most people read the kilometres and the climbing and quietly bail. This time three friends said yes to the first five stages of the Alpine Passes Trail, 87 km and 5,400 m of ascent from St. Moritz to Splügen, in four days.

The route had just been redrawn, so we were walking the new opening stages. A cable car lifted us out of St. Moritz to the trailhead, which felt like cheating for about twenty minutes. Then the trail took over: a missed sign at the first lake that cost us a hundred metres of climbing to win back, a rocky pass just under 3,000 m, and a stone hut two valleys from the nearest road, where washing meant a sink of freezing water and my message home went out by the hut's satellite phone.

Day two is the one everyone still complains about, which is how I know it is the one they will remember. Terrain like the moon, a pale blue lake against clay-coloured rock, then hail and lightning right at the top of a pass. We spread out, made ourselves small, and let it sweep through. Soaked, we kept going: past Alp Flix, where sensible people stop for the night, to a tiny hut where dinner was raclette and every bed was spoken for.

Day three the knees complained down a long descent. Day four we were done by lunchtime, swam in the river at Splügen, and caught the train home. I had a sixth stage planned as an optional extra. Nobody wanted it. Including me.

Walked at this pace, it hurts more than it needs to. Split into its natural weekends, this is some of the quietest, finest hiking in Graubünden, and that is exactly how the guides carve it up.