Day 10 – Zermatt and the Matterhorn

This would be our longest travel day for the entire trip (aside from the trans-Atlantic flights, of course!). We left Brienz on the 6:30 AM InterRegional train connecting via Interlaken Ost and Spiez for Visp. In Visp we boarded a Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn cog train for a very scenic hour long ride up to Zermatt, arriving at about 9:15 AM.

Zermatt, with a population of about 5,600 people, lies near the upper end of the Mattertal or Matter Valley at an elevation of almost exactly one mile. Along the way to Zermatt you pass through the small towns of St. Niklaus, Randa, and Täsch. We best remember St. Niklaus as the place where we parked our rent car for the train ride to Zermatt on our honeymoon in 1985 – after navigating too many narrow mountain roads we were more than ready to leave the driving to somebody else! Randa is locally famous for having been the site of a major (and I mean *major*) rockslide back in the early 1990’s that effectively dammed the valley’s major river and caused subtantial flooding in the town before a breach could be opened. Täsch is best known as the end of line for car traffic in the valley as Zermatt is officially car-free. Motorists must park their cars in one of the expansive lots and take the train the rest of the way.

The names for Zermatt as well as the Matterhorn are derived from matten, the German word for the alpine meadows found in the valley. Originally called Zur Matte (“in the meadow”), this morphed over time into Zermatt. The town is constrained by the surrounding mountains and is rather densely developed. Most of the Alpine four-thousand meter peaks are located close to Zermatt; these include the Monte Rosa (Switzerland’s highest peak at 15,203 feet), the Dom (14,911 feet), the Lyskamm (14,852 ft), the Weisshorn (14,780 feet) and the Matterhorn (14,692 ft). While the shortest of the bunch, the Matterhorn is far and away the most dominant visually and is arguably one of the most easily recognized peaks in the world. Next time you eat a Toblerone take a look at the individual pieces – see anything familiar? Many years ago we were staying in nearby Saas Fee and as we were checking out the hotel manager asked where we were headed next. We said “Zermatt” and he said in a heavy German accent “Ah, the mountain …”.

After a stroll along the still-quiet Bahnhofstrasse – it was early on a weekday and the day-trippers hadn’t arrived yet – and a few stops to take photos of the Matterhorn from down in the village we were on the trail by 9:30 AM. It’s important to get photos of the Matterhorn when you can; the stand-alone nature of the mountain means that it tends to make its own weather and is prone to clouding over quickly on even the clearest of days. Good views of the peak came and went during this visit, but at least we got to see it – there are no guarantees of seeing the mountain due to the fickle nature of mountain weather.

Technically speaking we took two different hikes today, both of which were repeats of hikes that we had made and enjoyed on earlier trips. We chose these trails because we knew that we shouldn’t run into any snow pack issues, an important consideration because the resort’s ski operations had shut down only a few days earlier on May 31. We still saw some folks wandering around town with skis over their shoulders because you can actually ski the glaciers above Zermatt on a year-round basis if you’re willing to do it without lift assistance.

We started out with a circuit hike that took us up the valley from Zermatt and then back down again. We followed a clearly marked wanderweg to a small hamlet called Z’mutt. When I say “up” I’m being very literal as the trail was a real grinder! From there we crossed a bridge over the Matter Vispa river gorge and found a nice bench for a morning snack to recover from the climb. We then made a gradual downhill trek through the hamlets of Furi, Zum See, and Blatten. This stretch of the walk was very enjoyable partially because you get some great elevated views of Zermatt and the surrounding mountains but also because these smaller hamlets were composed almost entirely of rustic homes, barns, and miscellaneous farm outbuildings that would have fit perfectly into the Ballenberg Museum (see Day 7). We finished the circuit in Winkelmatten, an area that used to be a separate village but has long since been absorbed into Zermatt proper. This hike covered four miles and 1100 feet of vertical, essentially all on the first leg to Z’mutt!

Our second hike was point-to-point. From the bahnhof in Zermatt we walked north (down the valley) on the wanderweg past some surprisingly animated sheep (complete with rather ominous looking horns) and the Zermatt Heliport towards the portal village of Täsch. The trail roughly paralleled the tracks for Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn and kept us on the west side of the Matter Vispa river for most of the hike. We stopped at one of the ubiquitous tourist office trail-side benches for a pleasant lunch overlooking the valley and the snow-capped mountains beyond and then continued on our way to Randa where we planned to catch the train.

At this point we were starting to study the trail signs and calculate how long it was going to take us to reach Randa. At first it looked like we weren’t going to be anywhere close to the next train and we could probably throttle back a bit, but as we got closer and closer we realized that we just might make it. Sure enough, as we were entering the outskirts of Randa the 1455 train back to Visp came down the tracks – if we missed it we’d have to wait at least an hour for the next one, so we made a mad dash knowing only the general direction of the bahnhof and just barely caught the train before it pulled out. The Amazing Race has nothing on us …

The funny thing was that the train conductor never even bothered to check our passes; I guess that he figured if we were crazy enough to actually run for the train we must’ve had tickets. In retrospect I’m rather amazed that we were actually *able* to run with hiking boots and a backpack after 11 miles on the trail and at 5,000 feet above sea level!

After all of the connections for the journey home we finally reached Brienz about 5:30 PM. Before going to the chalet we visited the Coop store for our more-or-less daily grocery shopping, a ritual that we actually kind of enjoyed once we got the hang of it. After another of Cindy’s wonderful dinners in the chalet we sat back with a glass of Fendant du Valais for a quiet evening overlooking Lake Brienz and planning the next day’s adventure.

Map

Photos

Weather

Meals