A Quick Trip to Zermatt!

Outdoor Stage

This was my second trip to Zermatt and it was only for a day! I had very luckily won in a raffle two tickets to see a play called The Matterhorn Story. This rather special play was performed in the outdoors at 2500m at the station of Riffelberg.

The reason for the production of the play is that this year is the 150 years anniversary of the first ascent of the Matterhorn which happened on 14th July 1865. Edward Whymper and a group of others including Lord Francis Douglas, his Zermatt guide Peter Taugwalder, his son plus another 4 people. There was another group trying the ascent too, the Italian party and Edward Whymper obviously wanted to beat them and be the first up. They managed to get up without too many difficulties and were able to beat the Italians. Now they prepared the descent and that is when the problems begun and unfortunately 4 men fell off the mountainside.

Whymper, his Swiss guide and the son returned with the news of the deaths, then another group set off with the grim task of recovering the bodies. The body of Lord Francis Douglas was never found!
A tragic story, but very well performed, the languages spoken were English, German and Valais German. I have to say that trying to under Valais German was quite hard to say the least!

We were also very lucky with the weather is was not so cold considering we were so high up and the sun did shine. Plus we had rain gear and blankets to keep everyone warm, but in fact it was too much.