Needless to say, we didn't loiter at the outdoor seating area or the col, and we continued on towards the small village of Trient, our final destination for the day. With its pink church and backdrop that gives a glimpse of the glaciated mountains above, Trient is a beautiful town. We needed to find a place to stay for the night, so we headed for the Relais du Mont Blanc, where I had stayed in 2005. We were a bit shocked when we were told that the cost of a bed was 50 CHF each; this was more than double* in the price (21 CHF/bed) that I had paid in 2005. We decided to check out the recently-opened Hotel La Grande Ourse next door. There, for a more reasonable 35 CHF per person, we got our own room (actually we had the whole floor to ourselves since for some reason everyone else seemed to be staying next door) and access to newly remodeled and spotless bathrooms and showers. The decor had a modern middle-eastern theme that was a bit out of character with the French feel of the town, but the owners were very nice and the rooms were very comfortable.
*The increase in prices—for lodging and also for the daily grocery bill—was something we would become used to over the course of the trip. In 2005, I had spent a daily average of 20 CHF on lodging and 12 CHF on food, while on this trip I spent an average of 36 CHF and 22 CHF on lodging and food, respectively, both figures nearly double the 2005 values. My parents spent even more since they bought meals at the hotels and huts. By the end of the trip, we probably wouldn't have batted an eye at the 50 CHF per bed price tag at the first hotel we went to in Trient.
Rested and caffeinated (my parents couldn't resist making coffee too), we began the downhill hike to Champex. Since Champex is a bit of a resort town, we had called ahead the previous day and made a reservation for a room at the Au Rendez-Vous B&B. We were pleasantly surprised by our cute room and private balcony overlooking Champex Lac. Furthermore, the lower floor was a restaurant so my parents were able to order dinner and have it hand-delivered so they could enjoy it on the balcony. We stayed in a few more room-above-restaurants over the course of our trip, and all of them were among the favorite places we stayed.
After dinner, I set out to explore the alpine garden above the village that supposedly contains more than 4000 plants. I was disappointed to discover it had closed for the evening, so instead I went on a short jog around the lake before returning to enjoy a book and hot chocolate on our balcony.
JOUR 4: July 19: Champex 
Sembrancher Le Châble 13 km / +104 m / -749 m
This day brought us on a pleasant pastoral walk and then valley stroll through the everyday working Switzerland. It was a pretty easy morning's effort, and we arrived in Le Châble shortly after noon. The previous evening we had called several hotels in Le Châble and had become rather worried when we discovered that everything that was reasonably-priced was fully booked; but a desperate call to the tourist office had revealed that rooms were still available at a place called Camp de Base, a hotel that had been built into some extra space at the lift station. Although not in the most aesthetic location (we walked right past the rotating lift mechanism to get to our room), it was a clean and reasonably pleasant place to sleep. Plus, there were plugs and wi-fi, which satisfied the day's in-town-must-find-wi-fi quest.
We spent most of the afternoon relaxing and reading in the lawn near the church, becoming spectators to an unexpected wedding ceremony. We also made sure to go to the local supermarket before it closed at 5:30 pm, since we needed to stock up on groceries since we wouldn't be passing through another town for a few days. My want-good-food-and-light-packs parents just bought snack food since they planned on buying meals at the huts, while cheapskate-heavier-pack-is-okay-I-like-instant-mashed-potatoes me had to buy enough to make all of my meals.
It was mostly just up-up-up the entire way. In fact—at least by Kev's quoted elevation gain and loss statistics—this day had more elevation gain than any other day on the trip. But without the downhill (which I find to be more exhausting than uphill) the day did not seem very difficult. We arrived at the Cabane du Mont Fort by mid-afternoon. We exchanged our shoes for comfortable clogs (all the mountain huts we encountered provided clogs for overnight guests since they don't want guests wearing their boots in the rooms) and enjoyed a few hours sitting on the outdoor patio, which became increasingly pleasant as the dayhiking crowds dissipated. Towards late afternoon, a now-typical late afternoon rain storm moved in, and we relocated to inside the cozy hut. After a hot dinner—for my parents, a four course meal complete with desert; for me, my standard staple of mashed potatoes with mozzarella cheese balls and cherry tomatoes—we headed for our books and beds.
It is also worth noting that this day was a Sunday. We found that Sunday is a good day to stay at huts because most stores in the towns are closed; also, since many people have to work Monday the huts don't seem to fill up as much as they might on Friday and Saturday nights.
Given that in late June 2005 my sister and I had encountered practically no snow on the entire Walker's Haute Route, we were a bit surprised to find long sections of trail obscured by snow. The three of us had opted to hike the route in sneakers rather than boots, so while the terrain was flat enough and the snow soft enough that we able to hike just fine in our sneakers, our feet got quite wet.
There were several people on the trail. At one point, I encountered an army of about a dozen hikers. I trudged behind them for a few minutes clearing my throat and scuffing my feet before becoming impatient and scrambling up onto the hillside and hiking cross-country until I could regain the trail on the other side of the army. I was a bit worried that all my passing would be for naught when I stopped and waited for my parents at the next col, but I hadn't been waiting long when my parents rounded the corner. "Can't stop long," my dad announced. "We hiked off trail for awhile to pass a giant group and we can't let them catch up to us now."
Finally, we arrived at the barren valley of the Cabane de Prafleuri. Originally built to house workers at a nearby quarry, the Cabane de Prafleuri is rather utilitarian and lacks some of the character of the other mountain huts along the route. As our day along the trail foreshadowed, the hut was rather crowded that night. But the hikers assigned to our dinner table were pleasant and spoke English, so my parents enjoyed chatting with them while I buried my unsocial nose in a book.
I always make an effort to rehydrate in the evening after a day of hiking or climbing. So I had probably drunk a couple of liters of water before I noticed the sign in the bathroom warning that the water was non-potable. Oops. I never did get sick and I somewhat wonder if the non-potable claim was related to the 8 CHF price tags I noticed on the 1.5 L bottles of water at the hut.
The walk that leads from the rather gloomy Prafleuri glen to Arolla is a true delight, full of varied terrain and beautiful scenery. We also had a couple of memorable wildlife experiences en route. First there were the ibex we saw bounding along the hillside as we descended from the Col des Roux. Then there was the run-in with the herd of licking cows on the hike along the shores of Lac des Dix. We were a bit startled when the first cow we encountered began approaching us rather than ambling off as expected. Next thing I knew there was a giant cow tongue in the viewfinder of my camera and then a wet smear of cow saliva on my lens. The cows followed us for quite awhile trying to lick us, apparently able to sense the saltiness of our sweat.
The standard route between Cabane de Prafleuri and Arolla goes directly from the Lac des Dix up to the Col de Riedmatten. An alternative and slightly longer route passes by the Cabane des Dix—which occupies a spectacular site with direct view onto the north face of Mont Blanc de Cheilon—and then crosses back to the standard route via the flat expanse of the Cheilon glacier. We chose the Cabane des Dix option and were glad we did. Cabane des Dix made a great lunch stop. We bought some cokes from hut's restaurant and enjoyed them along with the warm sun and views on the outdoor deck. I spotted a guide to flowers of the Swiss Alps on the bookshelves inside the hut, and I spent some time trying to identify the many different types of flowers we had seen so far. My dad topped off the lunch break with one of his 10-minute (re)power naps.
There are two ways to cross over the ridge into the basin leading to Arolla: the trail through the Col de Riedmatten or the ladders of the Pas des Chèvres. There are three ladders, each one vertical and securely attached to the rock, with one or two rungs so close to the rock face that only the toes of your boots can gain purchase. We chose to surmount the ridge via the ladders, which seemed more exciting than the trail.
Once over the pass, it was a pretty downhill hike to Arolla. Although a tiny village, Arolla has several hotels which probably cater to a winter skiing crowd. We stayed at Chalet Les Ecureuils, a humble chalet on the edge of town that had only a small sign on the door noting that it was a place to stay. As a result, we had the place to ourselves, which was a welcome treat after the previous night's crowded hut. Already spoiled by having wi-fi on all of our previous nights in towns and noticing there was no wi-fi where we were staying, I set out to find a wi-fi signal in Arolla. I discovered a signal at the local café, so I bought a 4CHF coke and then politely asked for the password. When the usual late afternoon thundershower arrived, I headed back to our room to enjoy the sound of rain thrumming on the roof.
We arrived in La Sage in the early afternoon, with plenty of time to explore the town and also Villa just up the road. Based on my fond recollections from 2005, we chose to stay above the Café-Restaurant L'Ecureuil; the place had the same comfortable homey feel I remembered. My parents ordered and ate dinner on the outdoor patio of the downstairs restaurant, enjoying the wholesome home-cooked nature of the meal and the idyllic views that could be seen right from their table.
The second section of uphill is along a moraine crest to the Cabane de Moiry, which stands in a spectacular position on a rocky knoll overlooking the Moiry glacier. With a parking lot at the base of the moraine, the hut is a popular destination for dayhikers and overnight guests alike. Also, climbers use it as a base for nearby climbs. When I arrived at the hut, I was surprised to see a new addition that had not been there in 2005 (I later learned it had been built in 2010). The new addition added a magnificent glass-walled dining room overlooking the glacier, as well as some new accommodation facilities above. The atmosphere of the hut had changed from small and cozy to spacious and spectacular. My dad called it the "Disney World of mountain huts."
As with many of the huts we encountered along the route, there were signs saying that the water was non-potable. I asked the guy behind the check-in counter about this, and he told me quite seriously that the last person who drank the water from the taps had to be airlifted out in a helicopter. Notably, the guy behind the check-in counter was also the person who would sell me a bottle of water for 8 CHF. But I suppose he put a bit of fear in me about the hut water, since instead of drinking straight out of the taps, I hiked about 5 minutes down the trail to a stream to fill up my water bottles.
At dinner, we enjoyed the company of a friendly Swiss girl named Simone, who had been assigned to the same dining table and whose English was good enough to have an interesting conversation. My parents really enjoyed these relatively frequent opportunities along the route to meet people from all over the world.
This section of the route has some of the most downhill of any day, but it is broken up into two legs. The first leg is just the descent back down the moraine we had hiked up the day before, and goes quickly. The second leg is from the Col de Sorebois down to Zinal. Simone caught up to us at the Col de Sorebois, where we had stopped to have lunch. She joined me for the hike to Zinal. We chatted most of the way down, but as a result we missed the trail turnoff for Zinal, and ended up on a dirt road which led us downward in long gentle loops, with open views of the Weisshorn across the valley and the town below. The road dumped us out at the south end of Zinal about 10 minutes walk from the town center. I was a bit worried that my parents (who had taken the trail down) had been in town waiting and wondering for quite awhile, so Simone and I hurried towards the town center. My mom's bright pink shirt was easy to spot. It turned out that my parents had arrived in Zinal at about the same time that Simone and I did. They reported that the trail had been a knee-crunching descent, so perhaps the way Simone and I went was not a bad way after all.
Zinal has a nice supermarket with great selection and prices, so we stocked up on groceries. It was a good thing we did, since with a small town the next night, then a night in a hut, and then a Sunday, the next time we would have a grocery store would be after three full days. We stayed at the Auberge Alpina, which offered both room and doitoir (French for "dorm") options.
The thing I remember most about this day was that it was quite hot. At the Forcletta, we ran into a Swiss fellow who told us that this kind of weather pattern (i.e. unusually warm air on one side of the Alps which would inevitably at some point merge with cooler air from the other side) meant thundershowers and rain in the near future. We were a bit concerned, as the next few days were to entail some of the more rugged and lengthy sections of the route; and there were stunning views ahead that we of course wanted to be able to see.
We arrived in Gruben by mid-afternoon. Gruben is the first German-speaking Swiss town on the route, and suddenly I felt rather lost without my reasonably-serviceable French to rely on. We stayed at the Restaurant Waldesruh at the north end of town, a converted childrens home that was just as quaint as I remembered it from 2005. As we had already discovered, it was convenient to stay above a restaurant, since it solved the "where do we eat?" problem for my parents. The place did not have wi-fi, however, so I set out on my usual gotta-find-internet quest. I managed to get the access code for the wi-fi at the Hotel Schwarzhorn (located on the other end of town) by walking up to the front desk and asking "Haben Sie Wi-fi?"
Notably, on this day we crossed the single downed tree on the trail on the entire route. Perhaps this doesn't sound significant, but to someone coming from the North Cascades where some early-season hikes have a dozen blow-downs on a single switchback, we noticed how few downed trees (or evidence for blowdowns that had already been sawed through) there seemed to be on the trails.
My parents got detained at Augustbordpass by the talkative Swiss guys from the day before while I continued onwards, so we hiked separately for most of the day. We regrouped at Jungen, an idyllic hamlet clinging to the hillside high above the Mattertal valley with Dom and the Grubenhorn rising on the left side and the Brunegghorn and Weisshorn towering on the right. I had plenty of time to walk up and down the streets of Jungen. When my parents arrived, we enjoyed a coffee (for me and my mom) and beer (my dad) at the hamlet's small restaurant, and then headed down towards St. Nicklaus.
We could have stayed the night in bustling St. Nicklaus, but since we planned to hike to Zermatt via the Europaweg (a challenging section of trail stretching 31 km between Grächen and Zermatt which maintains a route high above the Mattertal with one great view point after another), we would be better situated for the next day by staying in Gasenried. Located on the hillside opposite the one we had just descended, Gasenried is a two-hour uphill hike from St. Nicklaus, or a 20-minute (and 4.20-CHF) ride by post bus. My parents opted for the post bus. I hemmed and hawed a bit over the idea of not wanting to "cheat," but it was already edging towards late afternoon—thundershower time—so I decided to join my parents on the bus. The first post bus that arrived at the St. Nicklaus bus station went to Grächen, a town that was also up on the hillside but to the north of Gasenried; not wanting to wait another hour for the next bus (it was a Sunday so the bus service was a bit more reduced than during the week), we decided to take the Grächen bus as far as Niedergrächen and then hike the remaining 30 minutes to Gasenried.
As of 2013 at least, the only place to stay in Gasenried is Hotel Alpenrösli, where I had also stayed in 2005. It was a good thing we had made reservations a few days previous, since the hotel was pretty full that night. We had reserved the matratzenlager (German for "dorm"), and we were pleasantly surprised to discover this meant we had the entire basement—a large dorm room, two bathrooms, and an entire gutted out barroom area—to ourselves. We capped off the good day with a beer (my parents) and ice cream (me) on the outside deck of the hotel. As we were sitting on the deck, it started to become quite windy, and the dining locals warned us that the next day would be rainy. Perhaps we hadn't avoided the weather system after all. While the weather was still fair, I set off for a bit of exploration, discovering a pleasant stroll along a trail that looped above and then back through the town.
So we spent the morning hanging out in the basement of Hotel Alpenrösli, darting back and forth to the small-yet-surprisingly-well-stocked grocery store across the street for fresh bread and other goodies, and obsessively refreshing the weather forecast. By 1pm the weather forecast was still showing clearing by evening, and a lull in the drizzle encouraged us to decide to go for it. Decked out in our rain gear, we began hiking. At least we would have a warm and dry place to stay that night at the Europa Hut.
We were joined by a pair of young American hikers (Chris and Margarita) who had started out that morning but had turned around during an episode of thunder and lightening. The weather seemed to get worse before it got better, as about an hour into the hike it began to pour. At one point, it even started to snow. But we were making good time, as keeping moving was a good way to stay warm. Fortunately, the weather did start to improve by late afternoon. Not quite the sunny skies that had been forecasted for the evening, but at least it stopped raining and allowed us to dry off. As the weather improved, some wildlife came out, and on a few occasions an ibex or sheep quickly soared (the ibex) or furtively ambled (the sheep) over the trail in front of us.
I was surprised at how much the trail on this leg of the Europaweg had deteriorated since I had hiked it in 2005. Some sections were completely obscured by rock fall and slides. Previously on the route I had scoffed at signs warning to move fast and watch out for rock fall since in general the "rugged and dangerous" terrain on the Walker's Haute Route would be thought of as relatively benign terrain in the North Cascades; but I was put back in my place when a sizable boulder rolled down a gully right in front of me. The first leg of the Europaweg is undeniably more hazardous when wet conditions loosen the slopes and make the boulder field crossings more slippery.
About five hours after we left Gasenried, we rounded a spur and there was the Europa Hut! Within half an hour, we were all in dry clothes and enjoying a warm dinner inside the cozy timber-built cabin. One benefit of the weather was that it kept the usual crowds away from the Europa Hut, and we enjoyed our stay there much more because of that.
TAG 14: July 29: Europa Hut (Randa) Tâschalp Tufteren Findeln Zermatt 18 km / +348 m / -962 m (with detour: 25 km / +1521 m / -2171 m)
Over the previous week as we had gotten closer and closer to the completion of the Walker's Haute Route, we had started to hear rumors about the suspension bridge on the second leg of the Europaweg being closed due to rock fall damage. Sure enough, soon after leaving the Europa Hut we encountered detour signs. The detour involved descending about 600-700 m towards Randa (Randa is actually on the valley approach to Zermatt, so this allows access to or from the Europaweg), crossing the gully that the damaged bridge spanned high above, and then hiking steeply back up to regain the Europaweg on the other side of the bridge. This detour added about 1.5 hours to our day, but since it occurred right away, we were back on the high route by mid-morning. With the added distance and elevation gain and loss of the detour, this was probably the longest day of hiking of the entire two weeks from Chamonix to Zermatt. But we were too distracted by the sunny skies and the views to notice. For the first couple of hours of the day the massive Weisshorn towered across the Mattertal, while for the last couple of hours of the hike towards Zermatt, the Matterhorn pierced the skyline and made all of the effort of getting there worth it.
It was late afternoon when we arrived in Zermatt. As the biggest town since we left Chamonix two weeks previous, Zermatt was initially a bit overwhelming. The first thing we needed to do was find an (affordable) place to stay. We beelined for the information office and were given a list of "low priced" hotels with availability. We hiked over to the first one on the list, but before committing to this one my mom wanted to scope out a few more options. ALL of the options, ideally. So we wandered up and down the hot and crowded streets of Zermatt in a seemingly endless quest; eventually, we found a hotel my mom was satisfied with: the first hotel on the list, the very first one we had checked out a couple of hours previous. Ah, it was nice to finally take the packs off!
With our arrival in Zermatt, it set in that the amazing fortnight hike that we had been planning and anticipating for so long was now over. Completed. Checked off the to-do list. It had been such a marvelous adventure, so full of memories that the first days of the trip seemed like the distant past rather than just two weeks ago, obscured behind the experiences that had happened since. I felt an overwhelming urge to grab a paper and pen, and write things down before I forgot. So that's exactly what I did. Fortunately, I was somewhat comforted by the knowledge that I had hundreds—thousands actually—of photos that helped capture and preserve as much of the experience as possible.
My parents spent a few more days in Zermatt doing dayhikes and exploring the town. Unfortunately for me, conditions on the Matterhorn were not ideal for the solo attempt I had been considering. But I had made plans to do some climbing in the Dolomites with a friend from Munich, so before I knew it I was on the train leaving Zermatt, one adventure finished and another in the making.
Photos:
From the Family Photo Albums: "Our Swiss Holiday, Aug 9-Sept 1, 1985"
Twenty-eight years before hiking the Walker's Haute Route with my parents, I had made my first visit to Zermatt with them. I was 2 years old and my sister was 8 months old. Some photos I scanned from the family photo albums are given below.
