Hiking in Zermatt

Up early, we got the 7.34 from Bern to Zermatt via Visp to go hiking in the shadow of the Matterhorn. The two hour journey out went by in a flash, as the view was beautiful, even from Bern, and got more grandiose as we travelled. Changing in Visp after an hour put us at the mouth of the valley and the train journey though it had astonishing high peaks, glaciers and waterfalls as we travelled to Zermatt at 1600m.

This winter ski resort was heaving with summer hikers, and well resourced. We grabbed a coffee to plan for the day before setting off to Furi at 1859m. With a view of the Matterhorn ahead and the stunning valley below, it is difficult to capture the beauty of the region. At Furi, we hiked to Zmutt, a dammed lake at 1977m where we grabbed a light lunch of croissants (bought in Bern station) surrounded by a panorama of fantastic views. Doubling back, we went to the 100m-long suspension bridge above Furi before finding the Moos path back to Zermatt. Regardless of where we were, we had a view of the Matterhorn all day and a number of huge looming glaciers.

Across the course of the day we managed to walk 20km in beautiful weather (such that we were rather sunburnt on our return!), although not as unbearably hot as the Black Forest. We stopped in town to celebrate our hike with a beer and grabbed dinner from the wonderful Fuchs bakery including a fabulous sachertorte and Heidelbeer torte.

The train journey back was even more spectacular due to the old-style train carriage which had huge drop windows, allowing us to see properly out of the train (to the annoyance of a couple who wanted *all* the windows closed on the non-air conditioned carriage - the view was just too good to miss to do that!).

We had considered both the Glacier Express and getting a cable car at Zermatt - on reflection we were glad we did neither as the hike was just superb, and all the journeys today were included in our rail pass.

Beer Index (Zermatt) - 9 CHF/0.5lRead more