Zermatt, Valais, Switzerland
With another day of good weather forecast, I decided to stay
in Zermatt an extra day for some more hiking and the Matterhorn from yet
another perspective. The Sunegga-Five Lakes hike is described in many places as
one of the best for some of the most classic views of the Matterhorn from
across the valley, especially when reflected in the Stellisee, a high-altitude
tarn with clear water that doesn’t contain glacial silt.
Getting there is part of the fun. The Sunegga mid-station on the mountain is
connected to the center of Zermatt by a funicular. I’ve never been on one of
these contraptions before. It’s like a train built at a 45 degree angle that
you board from a set of steps after walking through a tunnel quite deep into
the mountain. It then rapidly rises through a tunnel in the mountain, another
marvel of Swiss engineering. From there Peter, my Swiss roomie at the hostel and
I took a gondola about 300 meters (1,000 feet) higher up to a station called
Blauherd at around 8,000 feet altitude. From there it was a short nearly level
walk to the famous Stellisee.
The view was great despite a few high clouds
around, but there was a bit too much of a breeze to get the mirrorlike
reflection of the Matterhorn in the lake.
Beyond that I wasn’t too impressed with the Five Lakes walk,
the remaining lakes or sees being little more than alpine ponds. They were also
on both sides of a canyon with some ups and downs. Overall I found it less
impressive than my two previous days of hiking. We mostly continued down toward
Zermatt through the old wooden chalet villages of Findeln and Findelbach, a
relatively short four-hour walk in total. That was all I needed for the day,
and I felt ready to call it quits with hiking for a while.
I should mention a second reason for staying an extra day.
The dinner entrée for Friday night at the hostel was listed as “Cholera”. I
thought it was some kind of a joke, but they insisted not. I looked it up
online and, sure enough, Cholera is a local specialty dish of the Valais
region, a large puff pastry pie filled with a mixture of potatoes, apples,
onions, leeks, bacon, and raclette cheese.
It was pretty good, although I could
have gone for a larger portion of it and one with some bacon in it. Always having
to cater to those damn vegetarians!
Peter and I went out on the town drinking for our last night
in Zermatt, so needless to say, I didn’t get a very early start in the morning.
It was nevertheless impressive how long it took me to get back to Chamonix by
public transportation over the distance I effectively walked over about 12
days. Transportation in Switzerland isn’t cheap unless you qualify for some
kind of a discount, costing almost 100 francs to get back and involving three
trains, the first down the Mattertal to Visp, the second on the main route
through the Rhone Valley to Martigny, and the third on the Mont Blanc Express
to Chamonix. Except the latter one only went as far as the border, at which I
had to change to a bus for the way down on the French side because of work
being done on the rail line.
It felt good to be reunited with the rest of my belongings
in storage for two weeks at the alpinists hostel in Chamonix. I also felt a
sense of coming full-circle, of my Haute Route adventure of the last two weeks
finally coming to closure, maybe somewhat more so than I felt when I arrived in
Zermatt four days ago – just another one of Warren’s big adventures.
2025-05-23