Engelberg is a popular spot in Switzerland for hiking, skiing and all sorts of outdoor sports in winter and summer. Whilst it’s probably worth covering all that Engelberg has to offer separately, in this post we’ll tell you about our mini winter walking adventure around the Trüebsee lake at Engelberg.
Time: 1 hr
Distance: ~ 3.5 km
Altitude: ~ 35 m ↑ 35 m ↓
Engelberg itself is about a 45 min train ride from Luzern and in less than 10 mins on foot from the train station you’ll find yourself in a massive cable car hall ready to be lifted up to Trüebsee where our hike began. By the way, if you’re interested Trüebsee offers a snowshoe hiking path as well and it’s a great spot to try snowshoe hiking if it’s your first time. Since we were with visitors without any winter hiking experience we opted for the easy winter walking path.
Once you get off the cable car, you’ll notice quickly that there’s no lake. Mainly because it’s frozen and dusted over with several layers of snow making it look like just a flat expanse of white frozen land. If you’re lucky though you could catch the lake frozen over without any snow on top – we’ve seen some lakes like this and it’s really a sight to behold!
Our winter walking path began at the Trüebsee cable car station – look for the purple winter walking signs. The path is generally very well-trodden and leads you down to the lake. We, like most people, hiked anti-clockwise around the lake but you’re a free soul so feel free to choose which way around the lake you’d like to go. At about halfway through the hike you’ll come to an idyllic hut ‘Hüethütte’ where you can grab a drink and enjoy the mountain views around you if you so fancy.
Now most signs and path guides say it’s a short hour’s hike, but we probably took double that time mainly because we stopped ever so often making snow angels, pitching snowballs at each other and generally just really having fun in the snow. To be honest, this was really all that we wanted after a busy working week and the usual humdrum of it all.
Next time though, we might choose a sunnier day and opt for the snowshoe hike which also starts at Trüebsee but takes us only halfway around the lake and then up to the peaklet of Chrüzhubel before looping back to Trüebsee station.
That’s all! 🙂
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Practical Information for this Hike
| Start & End | Trüebsee Cable Car Station |
| Time | 1 hr |
| Distance | ~ 3.5 km |
| Canton | Obwalden |
| Difficulty | T1 – easy |
| Altitude | ~ 50 m ↑ 50 m ↓ |
| Popularity | 4/5 – popular |
| Season | Winter – December to March |
| Highest Point | ~1800 m |
| Public Transport | To & from Engelberg train station: Lucerne 45 min, Zurich 1h 45 min, Bern 1 h 50 min |
| Parking | Loads of parking options in Engelberg. Closest is the ‘Titlis Bergbahnen’ – address: Gerschnistrasse 12, 6390 Engelberg |
| More Info | Go to https://www.engelberg.ch/en/ for cable car prices, your parking options & everything that’s possible. |
