National Geographic Traveller (UK)
VALAIS WHERE GLACIERS WHISPER
The Swiss canton of Valais is justly famous for its spectacular beauty and soaring peaks, with glaciers glinting in almost every direction. Add to this a burgeoning culinary and viticulture scene, and the result is nye on perfect Words: Nina Caplan
The Matterhorn stands tall on the Swiss-Italian border, and everyone I meet in
Valais is keen to assure me that it only looks so arresting from this side: the view from Italy, apparently, is pretty ordinary. Today, wispy clouds wrap around its summit, and my guide, Amadé, smiles mischievously: “When that happens, we like to say the Italians are smoking again”.
Scaling the peak is an arduous but exhilarating task that involves starting at dawn — but as it’s now mid-afternoon, we’re heading in the opposite direction, picking our way downhill to the Hotel Riffelhaus 1853. Author Mark Twain stayed in here 1878, and his verdict on the Matterhorn was: “Grand, gloomy and peculiar.” Looming on our left, jet-black and streaked with snow, it offers a stark contrast to the tawny undergrowth we’re walking through.
The walk down is beautiful — but the trip up was even better. The Gornergrat Bahn is an extraordinary feat of 19th-century engineering: a single-gauge trainline starting from the mountain village of Zermatt, at an elevation of 5,300ft, and chugging up to the Gornergrat plateau. The views are astounding; I stare transfixed by the Gorner glacier, its ice gleaming in the sunlight.
Roads came late to this mountainous region, which may be why the red trains of the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn are such models of comfort and efficiency. The first road only opened to Saas-Fee, my next stop, in 1951. The whole place is enchanting, its picture-book wooden cabins encircled by towering peaks.
My northernmost stop is Eggishorn, reached via a Matterhorn Gottard Bahn train to Fiesch, then two cable cars. I’ve come to see the Aletsch Glacier, the largest in the Alps. This trip is all about activity — but for now, as I look out over 11 billion tons of ice, I can only stand and stare. Nearly 15 miles long, and almost a mile deep at its thickest point, the glacier resembles a gargantuan racetrack carved through the mountains by a giant. The place is eerie: nothing moves, and a sound somewhere between a wind’s sigh and a rushing river haunts the air.