Hikes with little climbing: 500 metres or less

Ascent is the number that, more than any other, decides how tiring a day in the mountains will be, far more than distance: ten flat kilometres are a stroll, a thousand metres of climbing are something else entirely. On this page we have put all our hikes with no more than 500 metres of total ascent, a threshold that, in our view, anyone who walks fairly regularly can handle without special preparation. Little climbing does not necessarily mean short or dull, though, and some of these outings are among the finest we have described.

The clearest case is the Aletsch Glacier, the largest in the Alps, which you walk alongside with 460 metres of ascent in four and a half hours; the balcony path from Silvaplana to the Maloja Pass, 470 metres above the lakes of Silvaplana and Sils, is no lesser. Shorter still are Rifugio Cristina at Alpe Prabello in Valmalenco, with 230 metres, Alpe Giumello and Monte Croce di Muggio above Lake Como, Cima di Morissolo with the tunnels of the Cadorna Line above Lake Maggiore, and the circuit of the Antrona lakes. The list is completed by the Herzogstand in Bavaria, the igloo bivouac on Monte Due Mani and the protected path on Monte Barro, which is short but graded EE: a modest ascent says nothing about technical difficulty, and it is always worth checking the grade as well.