The Swiss mountains have us back again. This time, we decided to hike in the mountains in Valais near Zermatt, and we got us another quite adventurous trail straight up a mountain called Weisshorn. With an altitude of 4505 m (appr. 14.800 ft), the Weisshorn is the forth highest mountain in the Swiss Alps. Usually, alpine rock and glacier climbers hike up the mountain to a cabin near the top in order to set out in the wee hours of the following morning (that’s usually no later than 3 am) to climb through ice and snow up to the very peak. We, however, made the Weisshorn mountain cabin our hiking destination for the day.

After a rainy previous day, weather conditions began to change when we left home early this morning, and by the time we reached the car train we could see the sky turning blue. (Yes, you read correctly: a car train is a train on which you drive with your car, and it takes you through a very very long tunnel across an alpine mountain range; saves you a lot of time driving around all those mountains).

In Randa, a tiny town, deep down in the valley, we parked our car, and then set out on a steep path that would take us through a forest and straight up the mountain, across streams of water, and with a view that got more and more amazing the higher we got. (And need I say more breath-taking – in the literal sense – the higher we got?)

By 4 o’clock in the afternoon we reached our cabin, where we could rest, explore the surroundings and talk with other hikers and glacial climbers. And of course, we marveled at the scenery when the sun began to set slowly …

 

 

More pics of a great hike: