Today's hike wasn't enough for me but the top of mountains were still covered by deep gray clouds. So I got on a short chair lift ride and headed to the top of the lower hill area.

I intended to start to hike from here and walked around behind the lake towards Riederalp following the path highlighted by the red line in this photo.

There were barely any hikers near the mountaintop because of the bad weather, but there were several hikers around the lower part of the hiking area close to the lake. I was very reassured when I finally saw other hikers because I had not passed any people on the trail today....

With Bettmer lake behind me, I moved on ahead.

As I walked on, I encountered a small hill between Bettmeralp and Piederalp. After going up the hill for a while, the town of Riederalp came into sight. I was almost there!

From here it looked like all that was left was a gently descending path to the town, which seemed like it would be smooth sailing grom here.

But, I was faced with a difficult problem! The hiking trail lead into a paddock and there were many cows on the trail! A big horned cow was sitting in the middle of my planned path and shot me a withering glare!! How scary!!
Eventually, I waited for hikers who happened to be passing by and followed them through the sea of cows....

By the way, there are many chances to pass through paddocks while hiking and electric fences like this one can also be found. Be careful when you go through one of these gates.

I went back to Riederalp safely without any rain.

Unexpectedly, the weather is holding out so I went hiking again after having a late lunch at three.

I headed to the Nature Reserve Center Villa Cassel which is located on Riederfurka. It holds regular hatural history exhibitions on the Aletsch Forest and a lovely cafe can aslo be found in the building.
The Villa Cassel could be seen from the town of Rideralp and I walked towards to it.

It was an uphill trail much longer than I could have imagined, by the time I arrived, I was defeated....

I finally reached the Villa Cassel!
The building in front of the Villa Cassel is a very popular restaurant for tourists.

I went back to my hotel as I had become dead tired. Even though the weather was bad throughout the day, I ended up being able to take a long walk around the mountain the whole day.

It was still cloudy...I hoped it wouldn't cloud up any more....