Magical Zermatt

We only spent one night in Zermatt, but the following day (Wednesday) we spent the bulk of the day checking out the mountains before leaving town. Tuesday's heavy rains brought snow to the upper mountains! When we awoke, it was a clear morning and the light on the Matterhorn was just stunning from our hotel.

After a light breakfast, we set out walking toward a gondola that would take us to "Matterhorn Glacier Paradise". It proved to be a hard day to take a bad picture! You can't see it very well in this photo, but the Matterhorn was behind us. It was a cold morning and we were all bundled up, especially because we were going to the top.

Here are some photos of us in the first gondola; you can see the dense town of Zermatt behind us.

We took a second gondola, "Schwarzsee", which took us to an elevation of 2583 meters. This put us really close to the Matterhorn, and we got some stunning photos.

The Schwarzsee gondola was the end of the line, so we went back down it and, from the same terminal, took the "Furi" lift, a big cable car that held 125 people. It took us to "Trockener Steg", elevation 2939 meters. From here, we could see our destination up above, the summit of the "Matterhorn Glacier Paradise" ride. Check out the serious glacier to the left of the summit.

Here is the cable car as it was arriving, with a snowcat working below it:

Here is what the Matterhorn looked like from Trockener Steg:

Note the yellow crane in the photo to the right.

We did a selfie at this level:

So we took one more cable car, capacity 100 people, up to the very top.

When we got to the top, we walked up to an observation plaza where we got a 360 degree view of all the mountains around, including the Matterhorn. Note that the elevation is 3883 meters = 12,739 feet! It was simply breathtaking:

There was a helicopter doing some work at eye level:

People were mountain climbing up to the top of this cornice; they look like little ants in the photo:

In another direction, there were tons of people skiing up there! Here is a photo of the first lift coming out of the building:

We did a selfie at the top, with the cornice in the background:

This is what the town looked like from the top:

The Matterhorn looked totally different from the top, and less recognizable.

I took a good panoramic video at the top and am trying to figure out how to include that in this blog. Stay tuned.

On the way down, we met a young South Korean woman, Jong Kwa (her first name), who will be competing at the Winter Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, in moguls! She was training with two young men from her country. They went up early in the morning, did 9 or 10 runs, and then came back down. She was delightful! She had studied at USC, so her English was good. We wished her well in the Olympics. She had competed in two previous Winter Olympics but had not won any medals - yet!

It took over an hour to get up, due to our detour on Schwarzsee, and about an hour to get down! Once down, we decided to take a train up a different route. Here is what it looked like in the village:

It was a gorgeous day, and much warmer in the village than it was on top! I needed to shed my parka!

So the next move was taking a train to Gornergrat, elevation 3089 meters. We didn't realize it was going to be so high, and Brock was feeling the altitude, so we didn't linger long, but we still got some lovely photos. There is a hotel up there, believe it or not!

You could see a really large glacier from here:

If we had felt better and had more time, we would have tried hiking down a little ways from the top. There were many possibilities, so we would love to return and explore this area more. Instead, this time, we took the train directly down and searched out some lunch. We retrieved our bags from the hotel, took the main train back to Tasch, and reunited with Bella! By the time we headed out of Tasch, it was 4:00.

We were amazed by our experiences at Zermatt, and we wish we had more time to spend there. That is definitely on the list of places we'd like to return to.

We were also blessed by clear, sunny, great weather on the day we explored the mountains in Zermatt. The day before would not have been a good day!

We had a 3-1/2 hour easy drive to Geneva, our next stop, mostly on interstate highway, which seems to be in short supply in Switzerland. So we appreciated that! We arrived at 7:30 p.m. We stayed 2 nights in Geneva. More on our experiences in Geneva in the next post.