Nude Hiking in the Alps

Naked European walking tour 2020 (NEWT 2020) – Nude Hiking in the Alps

It all started at a big house in Austria, a house with twenty bedrooms, a big dining room which seated all forty of us comfortably and a small commercial kitchen for the self-catering option which was chosen by the organisers in order to keep costs down.

As I mentioned there was forty of us, thirty men and ten women, some couples and some singles. We were given the coordinates of the meeting place and told to be there at 16.00 hrs. I was so keen I was two hours early, so I had to wait, and slowly people started to arrive. I wasn’t expecting to know anyone, so for me a little daunting, but all were very quick to introduce one another, a friendly lot, nationalities such as Irish, English, French, German, Dutch, Swiss & Slovakian.

It wasn’t long until full nudity, actually you could pick out the committed naturists a mile away. They stripped off immediately and set the tone for the dress code. I should explain that this house is on the edge of quite a busy road, with cars, buses and cyclists passing every few minutes. Some passers-by were surprised, some amused and as for the bus drivers, they just tooted their horns and brought our existence to the attention of his passenger’s. As friendly naturists we just waved back and smiled.

We were allocated to a team and each team had a turn at preparing a breakfast and a dinner and cleaning up after a breakfast and a dinner.

As we were in a narrow valley it was necessary to travel in cars to the location where we were going to walk (which turned out to be more of a climb) so unfortunately we had to dress for this journey. After a short drive we arrived at a reasonably remote car park and prepared for the first hike of the week.

We set off through the woods. The walking was easy enough, but not for long, since we climbed about 600 meters to the highest point of the walk where we had our pack lunch, which we made at breakfast time. After a short break we set off again (all downhill, thank goodness) and eventually got back to the cars after about 15 kilometres.

Day two and day three were so wet it was decided that it was too slippery under foot for hill climbing, so we all split up and amused ourselves, I went with the English couple Nick & Jane up in a cable car to play in the snow, they actually had a naked snowball fight, we also had some fun coming back down in the cable car.

It was Wednesday before the weather was good enough to get back to the walking, so we set off again for a short time in the cars and met up in another car park. The cloud cover was upon us at 1,100 meters when we set out, just as well I couldn’t see the summit or I could have chickened out, it was a long hard struggle for me, though I have to say the group were great at encouraging me to keep going. We climbed to 1,700 meters and again approximately 15 kilometres in length which took about six hours but only managing to be naked for the last hour and a half because it was so cold.

Thursday, yet another car park, beside a big dam connected to hydroelectric power station this time, the weather was hot and sunny, we stripped off shortly after leaving the car park, and climbed and climbed quite steeply all the while stopping to let people pass by, the general public in general paid no attention to the fact that the forty of us were naked, after about two hours we stopped for lunch and some stepped into the ice cold river to cool off, then after the twenty minute stop we set off again, not to the summit but the 700 odd meters at the shoulder was enough elevation for me, after another short rest we walked across the ridge only having to put on shorts before arriving at a hill top restaurant at 2389 meters. It was at this point that we took the best photo of the week.

All too soon Friday was upon us and the last walk of the week, the weather again was sunny and about 29 degrees, the elevation was about 700 meters but today was to be the longest at 17 kilometres. At dinner each evening it was normal to explain, usually in four languages, to make announcements and introduce the next day’s walk, so Friday was much the same except we had a presentation of a local picture book and the proceeds of a silent collection for the organisers Pascal & Clarisse.