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.

Photo of the Week - Very Cute Library

On Sunday I was in Zermatt for the day, the main reason was that I had won 2 tickets to see The Matterhorn Story. So wondering around the town we saw the library, it looks so nice and cute that it would make me go and visit it.

Zermatt - Huts

Time is going by quite fast and it already nearing the end of October, but back in September (last post on Zermatt) we went with my parents for a long weekend. I noticed these lovely huts not sure what they are used for but maybe storage.


Most seemed to be nicely decorated either with flowers or ornaments, but in any case all there stunning.

Zermatt - Gronergrat!

During our weekend in Zermatt we decided to go up the Gronergrat (Groner Ridge) which is just below 31oom. The Gronergrat railway goes all the way to the top and what a journey it is, wynding and twisting all the way up! Here again is the Matterhorn, we really had a wonderful view of it!


You can see from the top 29 peaks over 4000m quite unbelieveable! This is the Monte Rosa Massif and it has the tallest mountain in Switerland Dufourspitze at 4,634m. It is the second tallest in the Europe after Mon Blanc. Also you can see the Groner glacier at 14km in length, it is the second largest glacier in the Alps.




Once we had some refreshment we decided to walk down to Riffelberg station which is at 2582m. This is the view we had while walking down, it is not that easy walking downwards and our muscles were quite sore the next day.
This is Lake Riffel at 2757m it is said that you can see the reflection of the Matterhorn in the lake but sadly clouds had started to appear, so we could not see it.

Many people were out walking up and down, also we saw some mountain bikers, not for the faint hearted!

We see the end of our walk downwards the station Riffelberg, where we enjoyed food and drinks. We had a longish rest for our poor legs and got the train back to Zermatt.
It was a wonderful day, all those mountains surrounding us was very impressive, it really felt amazing to be so high up. If you want to go higher then the Klein Matterhorn is for you at 3820m.