Switzerland: Valais Region

📌 We departed our Airbnb early as we wanted to beat the crowds to the popular oeschinensee lake walk. We arrived and found the lake still pretty quiet with some keen hikers also there. The walk was tough, it was only approximately a 7km loop but it was steep and through patches of snow or crossing waterfalls, so it was quite technical and easily quite dangerous. Despite this, it was an amazing walk, the steep cliffs and beautiful blue lake was awesome, even though recent snow had made it harder, it added an extra layer of beauty on the landscape.

📌 We finished the walk feeling quite satisfied and interested in the drive ahead, in order to get to the Airbnb we were getting the car on a car train. We drove on the train, you sit in the car and then the train essentially drives straight through a mountain range for about 15 minutes in pitch black. It was fascinating that we were travelling under huge mountains and we popped out the other side saving us hours of driving.

📌 The main reason for visiting the valais area was to do the aletsch glacier hike. We started early again and had another day of great weather. The glacier was insane, it is about 20km long and 1km deep. We walked alongside it for about 5km whilst being able to see many 4000+m peaks. Given the weather was good we decided to detour to the top of one of the smaller mountains, the eggishorn at 2927m. It was a tough steep and slow climb with very rewarding views of the glacier and surrounds. We had to hurry down in order to make the last cable car but it was very well worth it, we finished the day doing about 20km hiking, so we're quite exhausted.Read more