If you’re a couch potato who dreams of seeing the beautiful Alps without actually doing any hiking, you can thank technology for the unbelievable experience offered by WebWandern.ch.
Translated as Web Hike, this revolutionary website allows visitors to see the most beautiful sights the Alps have to offer, from the perspective of a hiker. To achieve the desired effect, the project initiators used real hikers to film HD footage of their mountain treks and uploaded the material to their website. All in all there are 10 stages that cover 130 kilometers of hiking, from Thusis (Switzerland) to Tirano (Italy). It all unfolds at normal speed, so it would take you days to go through the whole thing, but the best part is anyone can just jump through the footage however they like and see the most popular sights of the mountain range in a matter of hours.
To understand just how incredible this web hike really is, you have to check it out for yourself. The cameramen are absolutely silent throughout the whole experience, so you can only hear their footsteps and the nature sounds in the background. The camera is very steady, the quality of the footage is very good, and the perspective almost makes you feel like you’re actually there, only you’re in your underwear and munching on potato chips, not worrying about muscle aches. If you though Google Street View and those panorama-style pages were cool, this is going to blow your mind.
Although this virtual hike through the Alps allows anyone to see their beauty from the comfort of their own home, tourist chiefs in Switzerland hope this project will actually attract more visitors to the area. “We don’t think it will stop people coming to enjoy the real thing. You can’t experience the clean air and the pure countryside by being a couch potato” said spokesman Gieri Spescha.
http://www.webwandern.ch/etappen/ 
