Aargau / Zürich · Saturday 25 July 2026

Lägern

A limestone ridge that runs east out of Baden and gets steadily narrower until you're walking on the edge of it. Baden to Regensberg, the whole crest, on foot.

Distance
13.5 km
Walking time
5h +
Ascent
≈650 m
High point
859 m
  1. 2 kmBrown Boveri Strasse, through the old town, then down the Promenadenlift — a public lift that drops 27 m from Bahnhofplatz to the Limmat promenade — and over the Holzbrücke into Ennetbaden. Today's covered bridge is from 1810, but this crossing has been bridged since 1242.
  2. +100 mThe stairs. Steeply up the Felsenegg to Schloss Schartenfels, a hundred metres above the river, and its restaurant. The crest starts directly behind the castle, past the oversized warning sign.
  3. 9 kmThe crest, west to east — the long part — to Lägern Hochwacht at 859 m
  4. 2.5 kmDown off the ridge into Regensberg, finishing at the Dorf stop by the Löwen — 617 m

Scroll

Before the first photograph

The bridge, and then the stairs

Brown Boveri Strasse to Schartenfels · no frames from this stretch

Out along Brown Boveri Strasse, through the old town, then down the Promenadenlift — a public lift that drops 27 metres from Bahnhofplatz to the Limmat promenade — and across the Holzbrücke into Ennetbaden.

The covered bridge is worth the stop. Thirty-nine metres, spanning the river without a single pier in the water, built to a competition-winning design by Blasius Balteschwiler of Laufenburg. It went up in 1809. But the crossing itself has been bridged since 1242, when the first structure replaced a ferry that had been running since the eleventh century and doubled as a toll station — the roads to Basel, Schaffhausen, Zürich and Bern all met at this one gap. Yours was at least the sixth bridge on the spot. Flood, ice and war took the other five. Until 1766 it was the only crossing between Zürich and the mouth of the Limmat at Gebenstorf.

It stands at the narrowest point of the gorge, between the Schlossberg and the Lägern — which is why the crossing has survived eight centuries of being destroyed. And the 1809 span rests on seventeenth-century abutments, stacked from massive blocks of limestone. The same Jurassic limestone that makes up the nine kilometres of ridge ahead. The bridge is built out of the walk.

Then the stairs. A hundred metres of them, steeply up the Felsenegg to Schloss Schartenfels and its restaurant. The crest begins directly behind the castle, past an oversized warning sign.

The first frame comes at 11:08, at 470 m — already in the trees above the castle.