The weather is starting to turn cool here, and though we are months away from true ski season, we’ve had the itch to get back on the slopes. Most ski resorts are obviously still closed, but Zermatt is high enough in the Alps to house the Matterhorn glacier which is open for skiing year round (or so they claim). It was sunny and 60-degrees in Basel, but we packed up our skis, boots, and gloves and headed for the mountains on Friday evening. We got in pretty late but luckily still in time to visit one of our favorite watering holes, Paperla Pub (see Christmas in Zermatt post for more detail).
On Saturday, the weather wasn’t looking so great, so we decided that the play call was to hike rather than ski. Chris only really tolerates hiking, but Sarah has been wanting to do a well-known hike in Zermatt called 5 Seen-Weg (or 5 Lake Hike). Any day outside is better than a day inside, but there were still a few negatives. 1) We made a wrong turn in the beginning (literally the start of the hike) and ended up going 1.5 hours (almost all uphill) out of the way. We sort of suck at following trail signs. 2) The weather was so cold/foggy that we didn’t get the acclaimed views of the Matterhorn. 3) To call the hike the 5-Lake-Hike is a bit misleading – we decided it should be called 1-Lake and 4-Ponds hike. Perhaps that just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
On Sunday, we woke up early excited to finally go SKIING … until we learned that the slopes had actually been closed for three days due to high winds and would remain closed for the day. Womp Womp. Feeling a bit ridiculous for having wasted money on 2 nights in a hotel (not to mention having lugged our skis all the way there), we decided to stay local for the day and get in another hike. A bit of research led us to a hike which featured the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the world, The Charles Kuonen Bridge; however, not having done extensive research there were a few surprises. 1) The first half of the hike is a very steep climb, and according to our trusty apple watches, we actually climbed 229 floors (essentially two Empire State buildings) in approximately 1 hour. We are already pretty sweaty people naturally, but we were dripping by the time we got to the top. 2) We got “lost” again (mostly just turned around) and had to do some backtracking, sadly all uphill again. For two people who claim to have a good sense of direction, we aren’t so great when it comes to following the trail signs.
The weekend wasn’t a total failure, but it certainly wasn’t anything close to what we had hoped for. Here’s to hoping your Labor Day Weekends back home were a bit more successful than ours.
SASgoesSwiss 