Nude hiking gets cold shoulder in Switzerland

From the San Francisco Chronicle :

Appenzell, Switzerland -- The Swiss like their secrecy, particularly in banking. At other times, they are more open. Take hiking.

In recent years, it has become fashionable for a growing number of Swiss and some foreigners to wander in the Alps clad in little more than hiking shoes and sunscreen. Last summer, the number of nude hikers increased to such an extent that the hills often seemed alive with the sound of everything but the swish of trousers.

In September, the police in this mountainous town detained a young hiker, whose friends will identify him only as Peter, wandering with nothing on but hiking boots and a knapsack. But they had to release him, because in Switzerland there is no law against hiking in the nude.

The experience alarmed the city fathers of Appenzell, population 5,600, who worried that the town might become a mecca for the unclad. Suppose families with children were out hiking and encountered a group of nude hikers, officials asked.

"We're not in Canada, where you can hike for hours in vast forests," local government spokesman Markus Doerig said. "Here you meet other hikers every few minutes. It was bothersome."

Hiker Konrad Hepenstrick, 54, counters that he almost never meets people who are bothered.

"You greet them, and they greet you, though in winter, of course, many ask, 'Aren't you cold?' " he said in a nearby restaurant.

In winter, he said, he has hiked for hours in freezing temperatures, though he does concede the need for a hat and gloves. He has hiked in the nude for about 30 years, he said, and has crisscrossed the hills and mountains around Appenzell, as well as in France, Germany, Italy and even the Appalachians.

Why does he take off his clothes? "There's not much to discuss," he said. "It's freedom. First, freedom in your head; then, freedom of the body."

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