Getting to Zermatt

Day one - 3.5 kilometers / 734 meter altitude gain

I meet my friend at Zermatt Station - I am not able to arrive until 4pm, meaning we have 4 hours of daylight and 3.5 hours to make dinner.

I had flown into Milan, Italy which was the closest airport to Zermatt, and far and away the least expensive train journey into Zermatt at roughly US$80 for my last minute purchase.  Unfortunately the Italian trains are not as efficient as the Swiss trains on this day and I am delayed by an hour.    The train ride is something of a destination experience in itself - huge windows looking out on classic Swiss villages clinging to the edge of steep valleys that drop down to a raging rivers far below.  

So we set out on our adventure in high spirits but in some haste - buying only a loaf of bread, lunch meat, a tube of mustard, grapes and cookies to survive in the Alps.  In fact I only am carrying a medium-sized daypack for the entire 4-day mountain trek (one cannot really call this backpacking I suppose).  

The trails will prove to be extraordinarily well marked, but as is so often the case, it is the initial "trailhead" that is the trickiest.  In this case the "trailhead" sits between a restaurant and retailer along Zermatt's remarkably touristy main pedestrian street (see pictures) Today's 3.5k hike to the Hotel Trift is supposed to take 2-hour (2:10 according to the precise Swiss signs).  But we take numerous pictures and stop for the signature apple drink at our first quintessential Swiss hut - Edelweiss.  After 2 hours we are nowhere near Trift and at this point the wind picks up and the sky darkens.  A few minutes later we feel a few raindrops which is troubling given our limited change of clothes.  We find ourselves struggling up a rocky path into a harsh wind and heavy rain and soon the trail begins to turn into a stream. 

About the point that I am starting to get a bit concerned, we spot a Swiss flag in the distance and  rounding a bend we see a humble looking hut through the rain that much to our delight turns out to be Hotel Trift.  

The storm makes the arrival at the Hotel Trift a major triumph.  We step off the dark wet trail into the most welcoming scene imaginable. 

Hotel du Trift

As we step out of the mountain storm into the warm welcoming environment of Hotel du Trift we are welcomed by Hugo the proprietor in his booming Swiss voice

A blazing fire warms up the dining room where we are seated next to a convivial group of hikers from Belgium.  Hugo brings out dish after dish of Swiss food and mugs of cold beer.  We swap stories of previous treks we have taken - they tell us of hiking in Kashmir and we recount journeys up Vietnam's Mount H and Mount Kinabalu in Borneo.  

Hotel Trift is wonderful - I highly recommend the whole experience.  The facility is certainly rustic - the hot shower never actually worked for me and the bunk room was quite snug for 8 of us.  But given the picturesque location high in the mountains, the great food, warm fire, and any indoor plumbing at all (the toilets and sinks did work fine) seemed an amazing luxury.   Hotel Trift was built originally in the 1890s and restored in the last few years .  It cannot be easy or inexpensive to restore a remote Swiss Hut - we watched helicopters airlift building materials in for another hut expansion project.  

The next morning we wake up with the rest of the rugged European hikers at around 6am to fantastically blue skies and a breakfast of muesli, bread of coffee (is this a great breakfast setting or what?).  

We decided to stay at Hotel du Trift another nights and make Day 2 an assault on Metalhorn - a 3,406 high mountain that looms above Trift. 

Mettelhorn Ascent

Many of my climbing friends are veterans of assaults on peaks in the Himalayan and Andes and would not think of anything under 5,000 meters as really a summiting destination experience.  

But Mettelhorn makes for the perfect climbing one-day challenge during our comfortable Swiss trek.


The climb incorporates a whole variety of scenery, challenges and photo ops -- 

starting with picturesque Swiss open meadows, 

then spectacular ridge trails, 

a glacier crossing, 

alpine lakes,

a steep hand-over-hand final accent














and the reward of a panoramic vista.  

Schonbielhutte

We hike to Schonbielhutte on Day 3. We had been wisely advised to hike in the direction from Trift to Schonbuielhutte in order to experience the optimal views of the Matterhorn as we hiked.  

Today was hut-to-hut hiking at its best.  We stretch the projected 4 hour 10 minute hike to roughly 6 hours.   After another relatively leisurely breakfast we have a bit of challenging hiking to gain a few hundred meters of elevation, then the rest of the day is all Alpine paradise.

We arrive at Schonbielhutte at 2pm to a sunlit patio that is as good of place for relaxing in sunshine than any beach or cafe you are likely to find anywhere.  An international crowd - Dutch, French, British, Polish, Canadian -   relaxes on a patio surrounded by breathtaking mountain scenery.  The group exemplifies one of the major things that attracted me to hut-to-hut hiking -- the instant camaraderie that comes from the shared experience of making the journey to this remote setting.





We shower in Schonbielhutte's bathing facility (pictured here)





Our sun deck experience lasts right up until 6:30pm when suddenly the sun drops behind the mountain range looming to the west, the deck plunges into darkness and temperatures plummet.  The group reflexively files into the dining room for dinner.  After the luxuriously refined Hotel du Trift dinner, Schonbielhutte's meals are a more institutional process -- large metal bowls of salad and rice and curry are passed from diner to diner  (curry?  is that Swiss?)




Sleeping is also a bit more of an institutional process.  13 hikers are packed into the small dorm room on this peak-season night.  I sleep fine with my eye mask and ear plugs, and manage to shut out the surrounding cacophony of snoring and farting.  It is only the next morning coming back to the room from this magnificent moonset that I realize how much the air quality had suffered after another hiker had closed the windows.


Breakfast is the most institutional and perfunctory process of all at Schoenbielhutte.  I am determined to eat as much breakfast as possible before the long day of hiking ahead.  Growing up in America, a hearty and leisurely breakfast was highly encouraged.  Surprisingly, eating a hearty breakfast did not seem at all important to the European hikers - after a quick cup of tea and a slice of bread it seemed the hut quickly emptied out with hikers throwing on their backpacks and head down the trail in the crisp morning air.  The hut staff seem a bit taken back as I repeatedly return for more yogurt and muesli before heading off to our next hut destination.

Hornlihutte

Hornlihutte is the staging hut for climbers ascending the Matterhorn.  Instead of the relaxed sun-splashed patio party at Schunbiel Hut, we find a determined, base camp atmosphere at Hornlihutte.  Grizzled climbers in technical gear, check their equipment, and talk about different routes and conditions.  

From a distance, the hut seems to barely cling to a narrow ridge (pictured)

The Matterhorn may be a Disneyland ride -- and its name does not strike fear in one's heart like an Eiger or K-2, but as we begun the climb up its lower flanks, the mountain looms above us like Mount Doom in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.


The climb to Hornlihutte is truly spectacular -- stairs and ropes, sweeping views of surrounding mountains, and finally a steep series of switchbacks.

The Hornlihutte itself is not so impressive when we encounter it on this August 2013 afternoon - a major expansion is in progress - and the building is a mess of building equipment and porta-potties, and there is no room at the hut for us. 

We had been warned of the construction at Hornlihutte, and had booked space at a Hut back down in the real world -- Hotel Schwarzsee.  

Hotel Schwarzsee

Our final Swiss hut experience, Hotel Schwarzsee, is a sudden and jarring return to civilization from the  remote, placid and other-worldly, Alpine trails.

While it sits high enough in the mountains at an altitude of 2,583 meters to quality as a "mountain" hut, the fact that a cable car from central Zermatt whisks visitors right up to its doorsteps means that the vibe is wildly different.

We approach Hotel Schwarszee in the mid-afternoon, and a few hundred meters away we start to hear a cover band's version of the Eagles's "Hotel California" blaring across the field.  Then a group of young American military-looking types ride by on mountain bikes with over-sized tubes, followed by groups of Japanese hikers, pairs of college-aged looking Americans on Eurail summer tours, and finally flocks of Chinese speaking tourists snapping pictures.

The Schwarszee hotel patio itself is pure, indolent hedonism - plump tourists dressed in summer business casual, baking in the sunshine, and ordering plates of fried calamari, french fried potatoes and pricy bottles of wines.  I am horrified, particularly by all the loud Americans (I am from America), by the dreadfully selected 1970s soft rock, and by the stark contrast in the atmosphere and conviviality vs. the other huts. 

But at around 5pm the last cable car heads back to Zermatt. And, click, just like that, the mountain hut world we had grown to love returns.  The hotel itself only accommodates a few dozen guests and we share dinner with our serious, kindred hikers (well, we like to kid ourselves that we too are serious mountain climbers) --  some of whom had hiked in from Italy that day, camping in snow and ice.  

I do have to appreciate the actual creature comforts at Scharzsee - the relatively spacious, private rooms, the indoor toilets, the hot showers..  And dinner is good too - some sort-of Swiss enchilada..

Descent back to Zermatt

Day 5

From Schwarzsee we have a leisurely final hike back into Zermatt.  We traverse down a series of switchbacks through wide open fields cleared for skiing.  At this point the signposts indicate we only have a 1 hour 15 minute journey back into Zurich.  However, once again we consume roughly twice the predicted time allotment as we experience several highly-recommended Zermatt attractions:

Rosti - We stop at one of the trail-side cafes where we are strongly encouraged to eat Rosti, a Swiss national dish primarily comprised of grated potatoes - and in the Zermatt hiker version, topped with ham and cheese and egg.

Blatten's Gorner Gorge - Definitely worth the detour for this deep, narrow, rocky gorge.  You walk along an intricate series of wooden bridges crafted over 100 years ago, with whitewater roaring through the channel below you. 

Plus many of the quintessential Switzerland mountain images  - picturesque wooden buildings with overflowing window flower boxes, meadows of purple flowers and marmots, shops selling chocolates and ultra-luxury goods, 
and herds of cattle with huge clanging cow bells (we wonder if herding cattle could possibly make economic sense in a town like Zermatt, or if some national tourist agency flies the cows in during the summer for the great pleasure of us tourists).



Even after this full final hike we are able to catch a mid-afternoon train out of Zermatt.