Trans Swiss Trail...

I just caught on to a long distance trail spanning the length of Switzerland called the Trans Swiss Trail. I've found some vague info on it through some Google searches but no maps or anything close.

I'll be spending some time near Switzerland this summer and am interested in checking it out first hand.

Does anyone here have and info on it or know where to point?

Thanks!

-Al

I found some stuff pretty fast, but via a german language search text string (I used "wandern durch die schweiz", that turned up quite a bit).
For example,
http://www.wandersite.ch/TransSwissTrail.html
http://www.fernwege.de/ch/westost-1/index.html
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweizer_Wanderwege

The first link above does have a crude map at least (I didn't do any kind of exhaustive search; these were among the first few links that turned up).

From your search results you can perhaps come up with alternate german language search text options to try, for example, "wanderreisen durch die Schweiz", or "wandern in der Schweiz", etc.

Ah, and on reflection a perhaps better search string would be "Fernwanderweg Porrentruy - Chiasso" (this from the first of the above three links).

For the non-German speaker (reader), there are of course a lot of online utilities to do some crude translation of text (babelfish, etc), and in some cases you might encounter sites that offer an english language version of the site.

I spent a too-short time walking hut-to-hut in the Alps in Austria this September, and it was a great deal of fun. Certainly not an inexpensive place to hike, but it was great to experience that whole deal, and a lot of fun meeting people and seeing the sights, getting used to their system in general. The Trans Swiss Trail would no doubt be a hoot too.

Great!
That helps, definitely. The wandersite was the first thing I ran into followed by a vague explanation on Wikipedia. I don't speak German and translated it... Roughly. I'll keep looking and hope to find maps.

Thanks!

for maps of hikes in Switzerland perhaps this page has something http://map.wanderland.ch/
Here is the trans swiss trail http://www.wanderland.ch/en/routen_detail.cfm?id=317183

Maybe you should consider contacting the one of the Alpine Clubs. I know as a member of the German club you can get a key for the winter quarters/bunk rooms of the alpine huts. Their website also as a great search engine to find the alpine huts and their service levels. There is a UK club you can start looking at but I'm not sure if they have the same service. If not you could try and contact the German or Swiss club and see if they would accommodate a foreigner in some way. Oh, the Swiss website is even partially in English.

UK: www.alpine-club.org.uk
Germany: www.alpenverein.de
Swiss: http://www.sac-cas.ch/index.php?id=1&L=3

Good thought; at least in Austria there was a "sektion Britannia" of the alpine club, i.e., a branch in England. My wife and I "joined" that prior to our little trip, and got a fair bit of information in english, but still I think it was a lot better and/or more clear in some cases to look at the german.

If you're staying in huts more than just a handful of days, joining a club is likely a cost saving, as, again, at least in Austria, club "members" got discounted rates on lodging, plus sometimes a little off the meals in the huts as well, or at least whatever the current "Bergsteigeressen" was for the day if I recall correctly.

I would indeed start by looking to see if there's a British branch to the relevant alpine club, find their site and look round.

Another thing to consider is that english is becoming the language of the world; get yourself a Skype account and call first the British section of the club headquarters if such exists. Failing that, learn the german for "is there someone available who speaks english?" and call the club headquarters in Switzerland. This approach worked very well for my wife in setting up our trip.