Chamonix To Zermatt

The Haute Route

August 16th 1994

Les Hauderes, Grimentz, and the Moiry Glacier.

Sole Searching

We really did fall in love with Arolla, a beautiful, small village high up in the Swiss Alps, but the time came when we had to leave. It would have been easy to stay longer, there is still more walking to be done at the top end of that beautiful valley and the Hotel Glacier was very comfortable. The food was excellent, I couldn’t believe how much of it was brought to our table and they probably couldn’t believe how little of it they took away (none)! Zermatt was beckoning, we were still committed to completing this walk, so it was time to make progress, but not before one more small episode of note on the morning of our departure.

For a few days now the inner sole of my right boot had been scrunching up inside and becoming rather uncomfortable. It had been beaten into a different shape by the constant pounding as I tripped lightly over the mountains. I have to say, I was a bit reluctant try and buy new ones, purely because I didn’t know what they were called in French and when it comes to this kind of situation, I have form and it’s not good. But the inner sole problem was close to causing some damage to my foot and the last thing I needed on a walk like this was a blister, or worse. There was however a very promising looking outdoor shop in Arolla and I thought it would be worth exploring, to see if I could spot some without having to go through the difficulties of asking for them. I seem to have a knack of getting drawn into this kind of conversation, where the only word I don’t know, is the primary subject of the conversation. It can get ridiculously impossible. I wandered around the shop, but no luck, I couldn’t see any and by now the assistant had spotted me and was homing in to ‘help’, oh no! So I pointed to my boots and said chausettes? which of course resulted in me being taken to see an extensive display of thick wooly socks. At this point I could have just said “merci”, smiled and left, but no, against my better judgement , I tried again. “Non non”, I picked up a boot from the display and ran my finger along the bottom edge showing quite obviously, or so I thought, that I wanted the flat bit that sits inside the bottom of the boot. The response was to offer me a tin of boot wax! “Non non” and I pointed inside the boot and wondered how I was going to get out of the shop without further embarrassment, but it was too late. I was now being offered a spray can for the inside of my boots to stop my feet from smelling! “Mais Non!” In the belief that there could not be many possibilities left I decided to persist. Still holding the boot in one hand, I ran my other hand out flat, next to it. My mime skills were being tested to the full. “Le plan chausettes” I found myself saying out loud. ‘The flat sock’? For goodness sake! I was scraping the barrel now, but it worked. “Ah” the assistant cried in a eureka moment, “le inner sole” We both laughed with relief and at how simple the answer actually was. Oh well, success in the end, but non, when the laughter died down, they didn’t have any in stock!

So struggling to keep pace with Irene, I limped down the track towards Les Hauderes, hopping every third step to keep up. At least I wouldn’t have to repeat that process over again, now that I know what to ask for. Le inner sole, obvious really, why didn’t I think of that.

As we had already walked up the valley from Les Hauderes to Arolla along the high path, just a couple of days earlier, we felt justified in taking the walk down along the valley bottom. This was not to make the walk easier of course, no, it was purely to give us some variation. It was a gorgeous sunny morning and we took our time, enjoying every single step of the way, or in my case every other step, along this little corner of paradise. We watched trout in clear pools by the wayside, photographed the wild flowers along the edge of the stream and took in deep breaths of fresh mountain air. Absolute bliss, just to feel the sheer joy of being alive on a day like this.  

As we walked down the valley we could see beyond Les Hauderes to the Col de Torrent, at nine and a half thousand feet, this was tomorrow’s crossing point that we would be taking into the next valley and to the village of Grimentz. It looked a long and steep climb, but aren’t they all and anyway, that was for tomorrow. Today we were enjoying the freedom of The Alps!

We passed through the small hamlet of Les Gouilles on the path down the valley, from Arolla to Les Hauderes.

We arrived in Les Hauderes in time for lunch and decided to check out the Hotel Edelweiss where we had pre booked a room for the night. We should preferably have been staying at La Sage, a very small village a few miles further up along our route, but the only hotel there was full. This would make tomorrow’s walk a little longer, but what is a few miles when you are getting fitter every day? That afternoon we decided to check out the route anyway and walked up to La Sage before returning back down to Les Hauderes for the night. It seemed like a good plan, however I didn’t realise that I had not been fully briefed. For me the plan would have meant checking into the Edelweiss and leaving our packs there, before our little sortie up to La Sage, but Irene would have none of it. We would keep our rucksacks with us, that’s what trekking is all about isn’t it? Well there’s rules and there’s rules surely? So, fully laden, we took to the trail to La Sage and on towards Col de Torrent.

It was a pleasant walk up to La Sage, first through forest and  then out into open meadows. The architecture around here is typically Valaisian, chalets and barns made of wood, turned a very dark colour through age and weathering, supported on staddle stones. The views back up the valley towards Arolla were wonderful and opened up the more we climbed up towards La Sage. At the top end of the village of La Sage, on a rocky outcrop, there was a chapel dedicated to St Christopher, so as travellers we felt obliged to pay a visit, if only out of curiosity. The views from here made the short climb up worthwhile. We sat on the small, flat grassy area in front of the chapel and enjoyed a nice juicy nectarine. It was the hottest part of the day and beginning to feel very humid. Just below the chapel and with similar views, there was a property for sale. It was just a small barn in a field, but with views like that, we couldn’t stop ourselves from dreaming.

Back in Les Hauderes I was allowed to take off my pack and check into the hotel. We wandered around the pretty narrow streets of the village, in search of ‘le inner sole’ and without too much effort, or fuss, we were successful, full comfort restored at last! We changed some travellers cheques at the local estate agents office and while we were there we saw a picture of the barn for sale in La Sage.  The asking price for the shell of an empty barn was Sf 90,000 roughly £50,000, enough to buy a decent three bedroomed house back home. Ah well, another dream that has passed the way of dreams.

 

Les Hauderes

The humidity was really building by now and large clouds were starting to grow, prospects for tomorrow were beginning to give us some concern. A quick check of the weather forecast confirmed what we already suspected, but didn’t want to admit. Tomorrow was going to be a total washout, with torrential rain and thunder and lightening thrown in. There was no way we could keep going in that! Or more precisely, there is no way it would be safe to head up into the mountains on a day like that. There was some irony in the fact we should have been crossing the Col de Torrent, but it is not a place to be in torrential rain and a thunder storm.

We visited the local mini supermarket for postcards and provisions, not knowing it would take me the rest of the day to check out. I was only third in the queue, but each customer was treated to several minutes of intense conversation between each item that was checked through the till. Added to that, the man on the till appeared not to know any of the prices, so for each item he had to go wandering off around the shop to find a price! I wish I knew what they were talking about, it had the air of gossip about it, because although I didn’t understand the words, I did recognise the facial expressions, the gestures, the hushed tones and the sideways glances and the knowing nods. It must have been gossip because when it was my turn I was whisked through in seconds. I had no juicy information to impart, no stories of intrigue to tell. I wanted to make contact and was indeed tempted to start a conversation, but the memory of the mornings quest for an inner sole was still fresh. So I stopped short of sharing pleasantries and satisfied myself with some inner peace, two postcards, two nectarines and a bar of Swiss chocolate.

Optimistic as ever, we decided over dinner that the thunder storm that was now crashing around us had come early and would therefore depart early. So tomorrow would be fresh and sunny after all, enabling us to continue over the Col de Torrent to Grimentz. And then we considered the what ifs, mainly what if we are wrong, what if the rain is still with us when we get up in the morning. We had to think about the unthinkable and start considering some contingency plans. It seemed we had three options. The first one was a none starter and the was to press on regardless of the weather, but that would be fool hardy. The second option was to stay put in Les Hauderes until the weather improved, but a day of hanging around in the rain, chomping at the bit, didn’t hold much attraction either. The third option was to catch the early morning bus to Sion down in the Rhone valley, then a train to Sierre, where we could catch another bus up to Grimentz.

We didn’t even have to get out of bed in the morning to know what the weather was like. Lying there in our hotel room, the darkness told us about the kind of day we had woken up to, exactly as the forecast had predicted. At breakfast we could hear the thunder rumbling around the mountains and the streets of Les Hauderes were awash. A quick dash to the village square and we were on the ten to eight bus heading for Sion.

To Grimentz...

I may go on about it from time to time, but I never cease to be impressed by the transport system in Switzerland. We travelled down the Val D’Heremence, along the Rhone valley and then up the Val D’Anniviers to end up at the other side of the mountain from where we had started out earlier that same day. A simple enough concept, but is it really so complicated that other countries struggle to achieve it with such precision and with so little fuss? The topography of Switzerland must make it one of the the most difficult places in the world to build a comprehensive transport network, but they have done it. It combines the railways, post buses, cable cars and water transport, all co-ordinated and connected, reliable and run with pride. A fantastic service that serves both tourists and locals alike.

The bus ride up to Grimentz was spectacular. As I looked up the Val D’Anniviers I didn’t think it was possible to proceed by bus and although it wasn’t specified on the timetable, I was sure at some point we would have to change to a mule train. We didn’t of course, a road had been cut into the sheer sides of the valley, not as a ledge, but as a groove! We had the road  under us, rock to our left and a rocky roof above us. I don’t like to remember too much about what was to our right, but every time I dared to look,  there was a lot of fresh air between us and the valley floor that was so far below us that it was only occasionally visible.

We arrived in Grimentz in a thunder storm, the same one that we hoped to have left behind that morning. In the torrential rain we ran into the first hotel we saw, it was the Hotel Moiry. This one gets my vote for the best room of the whole trip, oh, apart from the one would check into in Zinal. Okay, the best one  so far. The room was spacious, freshly decorated, clean, comfortable and best of all, very warm. The thunder storm had brought with it a drop in temperature of some fourteen degrees centigrade and when the rain stopped and the cloud lifted a little, we weren’t surprised to see fresh snow down to quite a low level. We could only imagine what conditions would have been like on the Col de Torrent. Our room also had a large, enclosed balcony, rather like a conservatory, where I sat with map and compass, identifying the landmarks around us, getting my bearings and generally getting to know our surroundings in this ‘new’ valley. Or I may just have been “pratting about”, it depends who’s version you choose to listen too.

Grimentz is an absolutely idyllic mountain village. It is everything you would expect a Swiss village to be. It is a bit of a tourist trap, but it is so far out of the way to ever get too busy. However, such an attractive place, combined with it’s good skiing facilities is bound to attract attention and the price that Grimentz pays for that is only 15% of the properties here are permanently occupied, with 83% being holiday homes. With a permanent population of just 385, Grimentz has a very gentle and quiet atmosphere.

The streets of Grimentz

About fifty metres up the road from our hotel there was a traffic free zone. The streets were so narrow that cars would struggle to negotiate the twists and turns and the overhanging upper stories of these old cobbled streets. Every building in this part of the village is like a picture from a calendar or chocolate box. Dark wooden chalets draped with red geraniums, carvings hanging from walls and balconies, ancient carved doors and crooked outside staircases. Some of the buildings here date back to the fifteen hundreds and now they are preserved in a conservation area, so that we can see the way that villages used to be built, tightly together for protection from the snow. Some of the buildings almost touched or overlapped at roof level, giving as much protection as possible from the elements. 

Wherever I Lose My Hat……

As a result of the inclement weather and our journey to Grimentz, this had been the first day without a walk since leaving the Chamonix valley, ten days ago. By the following morning we were desperate to be off walking again. We had booked into the hotel for a couple of nights to give us the chance to see more of the area. So you can imagine our frustration when we got up the following morning to discover that it was still raining. We listened carefully to the weather forecast on the radio and thankfully, it promised a rapid improvement in the weather in the early part of the morning. I have to admit that the conditions made me sceptical, but as we had breakfast, that rapid transformation took place. We wandered out of the hotel to discover that the rain had gone, clear blue sky everywhere, even if the air was still a little chilly.

You could be forgiven for thinking this was a day off, but we had other plans and we left the hotel before the sun had reached into the valley. It was icy cold and as we walked through the forest cold drops fell from the trees, causing us to shout out occasionally as they always seemed to find that little gap down the back of the shirt! Today we were going to cover much of the section that we had missed out yesterday and combine it with a walk up to the Lac De Moiry, then up to the Moiry ice fall on the Moiry glacier beyond the lake. Then we might continue up to the Moiry Hut, before returning back to the Hotel Moiry in Grimentz. You could be forgiven for thinking there is a lack of imagination around here when it comes to naming places.

We began to warm up as we climbed up beyond the tree line and out of the shadows in the lower valley. We stopped to remove our outer layers of clothing as the sun warmed the air and brightened up the day. We met three men coming down the path, they were checking the course for a stage in the mountain bike world championships that were to be held here in a few days time. It was soon after this point that Irene discovered that her much loved  and much travelled Manchester United hat was no longer with her. The immediate reaction was “oh no!”! This wasn’t just a hat that could be replaced, it was a personal possession with sentimental attachment, that had been a trusty friend on many mountains, both in Switzerland and at home. If it was lost she would have to start all over again with another one, a different one. We decided that she had probably just left it in the hotel room and it would be safe and not lost after all. At least that’s what we hoped, but I did have fears that it would be unusual for Irene not to have brought it with her. We decided to stay positive and not let it spoil the day. 

Looking back down the valley towards Grimentz from the barrage. Notice our route zig zagging up, on the left of the picture.

Soon the barrage at the end of the lake came into view and piled up high behind it a range of snow capped mountains. From our view point it looked like this huge wall of concrete was holding back the mountains. As the path switched back and forth up the the side of the dam we could hear marmots shrieking all across the valley, I think we must have been the first walkers to disturb them that morning. One particular specimen disturbed us too, I don’t know who got the bigger shock, the marmot due to his close encounter with us, or the start we got when it jumped up just twenty feet in front of us issuing a shriek loud enough to waken the whole valley!

 

Barrage de Moiry

We reached the top of this very impressive barrage, which was an altogether more pleasing shape than others we had seen along the way. The smooth curve of the dam with the valley dropping far below on one side and deep turquoise water of unknown depth on the other. Sometimes it is possible to see Ibex climbing on the almost vertical wall of the dam to graze on the lichens that grow there. On what looks like an impossible wall to negotiate, they manoeuvre higher and higher in their attempts to reach the lichen. Just watching them can be a real heart in the mouth experience! 

Lac de Moiry and Glacier de Moiry descending from the high peaks of Pointe de Brizola and Grand Cornier.

The water sparkled in the bright morning sunlight and the mountains that had earlier appeared from behind the dam, now formed a magnificent backdrop to this jewel of a lake. We walked along the length of the lake, constantly stopping to take more photographs as the perspective changed and more mountains and glaciers came into view. Beyond the top end of the lake there were two small, shallow lakes that act like settling pools where the meltwater from the glaciers slows down and deposits most of it’s sludge and debris. The water entering the lake is much clearer because of this and explains why the lake is a much brighter and cleaner looking than the Lac de Cleusson and Lac de Dix that we had passed a few days ago. It was almost impossible to know exactly when, the days now were a constant becoming a stream of extraordinary sights. It was almost overwhelming, as before one sight is fully absorbed, the next incredible view comes along.

The path continued along the apex of a lateral moraine of the Moiry Glacier, down below us to the right, the glacier ploughed on at an imperceptible pace and below to our left there were huge blocks of snow and ice, slowly melting in the warm sun, creating pools of water, fringed by wild flowers. On the hillside further up to our left we could see a female Ibex  with her young, but almost fully grown fawn, or whatever a young Ibex is called. As we watched them grazing we became aware that there were about twelve others, a little further up the mountain, some of them grazing, others just basking in the midday sun. It was the most Ibex we had ever seen together in one place.

As we reached the ice fall we marvelled at the sight of this great ice structure, with it’s high seracs and deep crevasses, twisted and contorted as it drops nearly a thousand feet in one step from the higher part of the valley. It is a fascinating sight and one of nature’s wonders to see a glacier that appears relatively flat and smooth at the top, suddenly plunge down in a chaotic mass of tangled ice and snow, only to appear smooth again when it reaches the bottom of the ice fall. We could see the Moiry Hut glinting in the sun on  rocky outcrop further up the valley. It still looked a good hours walk away. It was two o’clock and we had been walking for six hours, it was a longway back down to Grimentz, so fully satisfied with what we had seen, we turned to make our way back down the valley. We constantly looked back over our shoulders at the incredible natural drama of the Moiry Glacier. looking back too at the magnificent sight of mountains that were too numerous to list, but including the Bouquetins, Grand Cornier and highest of all, Dent Blanche at well over fourteen thousand feet.

A cafe at the side of the dam provided a welcome place for a brief rest and refreshment, but not for too long. Although we had come down considerably, to seven and a half thousand feet and the sun had shone brightly all day, the air was still cold this far up here in close proximity to the glaciers. During the latter part of our decent we kept our eyes peeled for any signs of a Manchester United hat, but we didn’t really expect to find it. After all, it was safely tucked away in a hotel room down in the village, either that or………. we didn’t even dare think about it!

The hat wasn’t there! It just wasn’t there! We checked and double checked everywhere. Every possibility was investigated and then investigated again. And so the post mortem began. The conclusion that we came to was that somewhere there was a mountain bike world cup marshal wearing a Manchester United hat! Well I hope he appreciates it and gives it a good home, as it is much missed by it’s owner. I went to a local shop to buy an immediate replacement and even though it had Grimentz writ large across the front, it was no consolation. After all, they’re not even in the Vauxhall Conference league!

That evening we had an informal review of how things were going, there had been a bit of ‘messing about’ from time to time. Things certainly had not always gone to plan, the robbery on the first day, not being able to find Prafleuri, the washed out day yesterday and the severe blow of a hat loss. But we were still on course and only a very small part of the route had been missed out, even if we had done some of it in reverse order. Most importantly, we were enjoying every single dammed second of this adventure. As I looked across the valley I could see the best part of the next three days walking and suddenly realised that five more consecutive days walking would take us to Zermatt. All we needed now was five days of walkable weather and for the first time on this walk, I could actually visualise the remainder of the task ahead. For the first time it actually felt within touching distance, close enough to complete. 

Spurred on by this realisation we telephoned ahead and booked the next three nights accommodation. We booked the Hotel Besso in Zinal for Friday night. The Hotel Weisshorn should have been our resting point for the next night but losing track of the days we had forgotten that it was a Saturday and of course the hotel was fully booked. The Hotel Weisshorn is an old hotel, built high on the mountainside with nothing else around it. This makes it a very popular weekend destination for walkers and would have been the perfect stopping off point for us. No room at the inn meant we had to book a hotel in St Luc, the village down in the valley, some 2,760ft below the Weisshorn, which also meant adding two hours extra walking at the end of the day and even worse, an additional two hours and a big climb at the start of our next day. However, we were lucky enough to get the last room at the Hotel Schwarzhorn in Gruben-Meiden for Sunday night. It was essential that we got into the Schwarzhorn because it was the only accommodation in the Turtmentaal valley and the Turtmentaal must be the only valley in Switzerland not to have any public transport. It was touch and go, the Schwarzhorn is in the German speaking part of Switzerland and my skills with the German language are even less impressive than my French linguistic dexterity. So when I rang the hotel to book I thought I could play it safe and ask if he spoke English. The reply I got was very brief and to the point “No” and then silence. I was on the verge of putting the phone down as the man on the other end said “goodbye”, but what else could I do? Giving up was not an option, we had to have a room there. “Parler vous Francaise?” I quickly blurted out, “Mais oui” came the reply. What followed was not a fluent conversation, but I did manage to book the last remaining room in the hotel. We felt very lucky and relieved that we had rung ahead rather than leave it to chance. By Monday morning we didn’t feel as though we had been quite so lucky, but that’s a part of the story for later on in our adventure on The Haute Route.

Chamonix To Zermatt

The Haute Route

14th & 15th August 1994

Haute Nendaz - Arolla - Lac de Dix

Neither of us felt there was much to be gained by going back up to the Grand Desert for another go at finding Prafleuri. We had seen enough of that little bit of Switzerland to last us a lifetime, especially as the reward for success would be another night in a hut and a fairly primitive one at that. With the wonderfully integrated Swiss transport system on hand to help us achieve our goal, we were once again ready for the challenge. 

From Prafleuri the walk would have taken us on to the Lac de Dix, over the Col de Riedermatten, onto the Arolla, at 6,000ft, the highest village in Switzerland. Then down to Les Hauderes in the Val D’Herens. The revised plan now was to take the bus down into the Rhone Valley, where we could change to another bus that would take us up the Val D’Herens and back into the mountains. We could get off the bus at Les Hauderes, and continue on foot up to Arolla. We would effectively be doing the next two days in reverse order. Maybe not entirely conventional, but we would be covering the ground. So this afternoon we would walk the section from Les Hauderes to Arolla and tomorrow we could walk from Arolla, over the Col De Reidermatten to Lac de Dix, almost to Prafleuri, then along the full length of the lake and catch the bus back to Arolla. We would then resume the walk and complete the rest of it in the right order. This way we will only have missed out a very small section around Prafleuri, even if we have done a couple of sections the wrong way round! Not quite the way we expected to do this walk, but we had always known that we would probably have to think on our feet and adapt the walk to suit ourselves, or the conditions as we went and this little adaptation was just a part of that process.

When the bus pulled up in the square in Les Hauderes it was our cue to start walking up the valley towards Arolla. Hopefully no doubts about the route today, footpath all the way, on a route that was described in our guide book as “an easy day”. I think we have been lulled into a false sense of security by that phrase before. Of course we were doing this section the wrong way round, going up to Arolla from Les Hauderes, a gain in height of some one thousand eight hundred feet. So maybe coming down from Arolla would have been an easy day. As it was, it was anything but easy, but the walking was very pleasant and the views were improving all the time, widening as we climbed higher and higher. The path became steeper as we approached the Blue Lake, which we anticipated at the brow of every hill. We eventually reached the small mountain tarn, but it took much longer than we had been expecting, so much so that we were starting to think we were on the wrong path, but that would have meant we were lost and we don’t do lost! According to the guide book it looked like a short straight line down into Arolla, but as the path wound it’s way around the hillside on a switchback route, up and down, up and down, a short line suddenly felt like a long way. It was ten past five and we had expected to be in Arolla by now, but we still couldn’t see the village and once again fatigue was setting into our tired legs.

 

Arolla and Mont Collon

            

At last we saw a campsite down in the bottom of the valley. A quick look at the map confirmed that there was indeed a campsite at the bottom end of the village. Spirits lifted, especially when shortly after, we could see a hotel in the distance. A quick look through the binoculars confirmed that this was the Hotel Tsa. We had taken the precaution of booking ahead on this occasion but we had booked into the Hotel Glacier, it couldn’t be far away now. It didn’t take long to find the hotel in this tiny mountain village and by ten to six we were being guided up three flights of stairs to our room. The woman from the hotel apologised for the steep climb after our long walk, but it turned out to be well worth it. We looked out from our balcony at Mont Collon with it’s glacier capped peak and glaciers down both sides, it wasn’t difficult to see how the hotel got it’s name. As we relaxed and took in the view, the small alpine village of Arolla attached itself very firmly to our hearts.

We went down for dinner to see two familiar faces at the table behind ours, it was our French room mates from the Montfort Hut, I hope they have their own room tonight. They seemed as surprised to see us as we were to see them, or maybe they too felt a slight panic reaction. I’m sure they were no more ready to repeat the sharing experience than we were. It turned out that we were doing the same walk as them, but this was the last we saw of them. I wonder if they made it to Zermatt? I hope so.

There are some mornings in The Alps that you just cannot believe are real and Monday the fifteenth of August was one of those days. The sky was so blue, the air so fresh and clear, the colours so intense. The glaciers sparkled in the strong morning sunshine, days like this just make your heart sing! Days like this are just made for walking. We walked out of the village which sits at 6,000 feet and up towards the Col de Riedermatten at ten thousand, we had a long hard day  ahead of us. But it was a walk that could not be rushed, as so many photographs were just begging to be taken. More and more mountains came into view as we climbed higher and higher. Mont Collon (12,000ft) dominates the upper Val D’Herens, but soon it’s near and higher neighbour, Pigne D’Arolla (12,400) also came into view, followed by the succession of peaks around the same height, that form the chain of mountains that had been our barrier a couple of days ago. This time, the whole scene was totally uplifting and everyone that we met expressed it in some way, if only by their broad, warm smiles as they greeted us. Marmots played in the high alpine pastures and their shrill warning call startled us from time to time. The higher we climbed the more wild flowers appeared, most notably the edelweiss, the Swiss national flower which is now quite scarce and a protected species. This was undoubtedly a most spectacular day.

As the sun rose higher and higher, so did we and although it was getting warmer, we were getting close to ten thousand feet and with patches of snow and ice still around, it never actually got too hot. Of course this caused another mis-calculation on my part. Due to the cool feel of the air, I didn’t think I was getting sun burnt, but it should have been obvious from the extreme brightness of the light that I would be well cooked by sundown. The climb was steep, but eventually lead us into a high mountain combe filled with flowers growing all around us, between the patches of snow left over from the spring. Due to it’s high altitude, Arolla is one of the resorts where skiing continues until very late in the season.

Looking back we could no longer see down into the valley where the village sat far below us, but the view across the valley was one of the most spectacular of the trip so far. Mountains as far as the eye could see, with absolutely nothing else to interrupt the view. All we could see around us now was high, snow capped peaks, in every direction. It was an incredible feeling of being entirely in a natural setting, both exhilarating and slightly unnerving at the same time. A ridge of sharply pointed peaks faced us from across the valley, the most notably pointed being the Aiguille de la Tsa, which stands up above the rest of the ridge with, as it’s name suggests, almost needle like sharpness. Beyond them yet more snow covered mountains of breathtaking proportions, shape and beauty. The distant mountains included another glimpse of the upper slopes of The  Matterhorn, our ultimate destination. It would be day ten before we would have any further sightings of this great  and unmistakeable mountain. Each time we stopped to admire the view, we stared with renewed disbelief and wonder, at the spectacle that was spread out before us.

Looking down towards Arolla, the village invisible down in the valley.

As the path took us to the back of the combe, once again the gradient increased. At this point the path forked with the right hand option reaching the ridge at the Col De Riedermatten.  The left hand option reached the ridge a little further on, but slightly lower, at the Pas De Chevere which literally translates as the ‘path of the goat’ and they weren’t ‘kidding’. From this side the Pas De Chèvre looked the easier option, but the guide book had given us a good description of the two options. The Pas De Chèvre was a vertical drop on the other side, only made passable to mere mortals by the addition of two fixed steel ladders. Not only was that an unappealing prospect, but the ladders are apparently attached very close to the rock face, giving little room for a good foothold. The thought of descending these two ladders on tip toes, with the vast open view down onto the Glacier de Cheilon below, helped the decision making process. We opted for the Col instead. However, the Col De Riedermatten is something of a challenge too. It is not the conventional kind of col, but from this side just looked like a small ‘v’ shaped crack in the horizon. The full extent of it’s nature was not yet apparent to us as we approached. 

With our frequent stops for photography, many people had passed us on the way up to the col, so it seemed a little strange to see them all sat around at the top of the col as we got near. There must have been thirty or so people sat around a small area, some looking down the col, some looking at us as we approached. I was puzzled as to why they were all stopped at that point, until we reached the point where we could see down and I strode through the ‘crowd’, suddenly realising why they were all sat there. They were waiting for some fool to go first and I had just inadvertently jumped the queue! They were all sitting around very nonchalantly, as if they had always intended to stop there for lunch, but I knew what they were up too. I stopped abruptly, there didn’t seem to be anywhere left to sit, so I pretended to admire the view, but secretly, the view terrified me. I could see the way down  and turned to Irene saying “it can’t be down there!”, but she replied saying “go on there’s no other way, just keep going”. So with everyones eyes on us I entered the chimney like, narrow gulley. It was very steep and loose and although my eyes were firmly fixed on where my feet were trying to find a grip, I could still see the glacier far below us, just beyond the periphery of my boots and it was a little unnerving to say the least. As we edged our way down slowly, everyone else got up and followed us down, well I say followed, most of them were soon past us and on their way, without even so much as a thank you to the pioneers that had shown them the way and helped them believe in the possible. 

                                                               

 

Lac de Dix, just beyond the glacier.

Before long we were at the bottom of the gulley, two hundred metres below the ridge. We looked back along the ridge where we had come from and could now see the two ladders at Pas De Chevre. There appeared to be a tricky change over point on a ledge half way up and we watched as several people, with varying degrees of dexterity, negotiated this obstacle. We saw one couple appear at the top and look down, one of them got onto the ladder and came down a few steps before stopping. As he stood there, there seemed to be a discussion that followed with the person left looking over the edge. We can only speculate about the content of the exchange, but he soon climbed back up and they didn’t reappear. 

We sat amongst the boulders in this extraordinary place, the top of the Heremence Valley. We were on the moraine that runs alongside the Glacier De Cheilon and as we had our lunch we marvelled at the scene around us. The huge triangular face of Mont Blanc de Cheilon standing like a pyramid, just over a mile away to our left at twelve and a half thousand feet. Vast glaciers ran down either side of the mountain, meeting at the foot of the mountain just in front of us, to form the Glacier De Cheilon. Across from us was another twelve thousand plus mountain, La Luette with glaciers pouring from it’s summit towards us. In the middle of this great swirl of meeting glaciers was one small rocky outcrop, like an island in a vast sea of ice. The rock is known as Tete Noire and on it is built the Cabane de Dix, owned by the Monte Rosa section of Swiss Alpine Club it is one of the busiest refuges in the whole of the Alps. It is almost beyond my imagination to understand how, given it’s position in the midst of all this ice, made up of crevasses and seracs. But as we were watching, we could see six small dots moving across the glacier together, as another party of adventurers made their way to the refuge.

The landscape here is completely dominated by the glaciers and their colossal effects. Sitting on the moraine we were still quite high above the ice, but we were on the debris that had been thrust up by the glacier as it digs it’s way down the valley. The unexpected thing about the moraine was that it was all rock, like an enormous great quarry tip. This rock had been thrust up from the earth’s crust by the glacier and no soil had formed here yet. This was a new landscape, a work in 

                          

Glacier de Cheillon

progress, as the glaciers carved out new valleys and new shapes from the mountains around us.  Fortunately the route was well marked with flashes of paint, because we were stepping from rock to rock and the feet that had passed this way had left very little impression on this new and harsh landscape. The surprising thing was that occasionally, between the rocks, there were flowers growing. Not prolific by any stretch of the imagination, but that they were there at all, in this extreme environment is a miracle in itself. They were unusual plants too, Mont Cenis bellflower, Alpine rock Jasmine and moss saxifrage, plants that we have only seen a few times in remote places.

As we progressed down the valley, little by little, the terrain gradually began to change. As we moved away from the more active area of the glacier, the moraines were older and had started to grass over, plants were growing and a path was forming. We came across an area that was covered with edelweiss, that emblem of the alps that has become so rare in many places, was actually prolific in this small area of the Valais.

Eventually we reached the place where the glacier meltwater gushes into the Lac De Dix with tremendous force, creating a deep gorge that we had to cross. Fortunately there is a newly constructed steel bridge. It looked like it was under tension as it spanned the gorge, stretched out like a large, steel preying mantis about to pounce. The two hundred metre crossing was not a comfortable one, as it is quite high above the gorge and has a steel grid footway, giving a clear view of the drop down to the torrent of water, way beneath our feet. It was a narrow bridge too, that had a gentle swaying motion, just to add good value to the experience as we made our way across. 

All we had to do now was an easy walk along the lakeside to the barrage where we could catch a bus back to Arolla. It was only now that we began to wonder about the frequency of the buses. We had learned at some point during the day that it was a public holiday and we suddenly realised that this might have some impact on the bus service that we were relying on to get us back to Arolla. Still, all we could do now was to keep going, it was mid afternoon and although the lake didn’t look too long, the map confirmed that we still had five miles to walk. Distances can be hard to judge in the Alps because the scale is so different from that of our normal experience. The eye can be fooled, but the map is always reliable, another lesson from our Prafleuri experience. The path along the lakeside passes through a series of tunnels that seemed to be getting progressively longer. The longest ones had lighting that had to be switched on at the tunnel entrance. The lights were on a timer that allowed five minutes to get through, we hurried, but we always seemed to get through in plenty of time. It was too cold in the tunnels to hang about and quite a contrast in temperature and light levels, from bright sunshine to dim electric bulbs took a little while to adjust.

The dam, or Barrage de la Grande Dixence to give it it’s full title, is the world’s highest dam at nine hundred and thirty feet high and the best view of it is from the cable car that runs from the rim, down to it’s base. By now we were not in the best frame of mind to fully appreciate this engineering marvel. We were very tired, it had been another very long, hard day and we were ready for a rest and some refreshment. The lake is a very popular place on a sunny public holiday and the journey down in the cable car gave me a good appreciation of how sardines must feel. When we were released at the bottom it was just after four o’clock and a bus had just left, fortunately there was one more, at ten to five. That wasn’t the complete answer though as this bus would only get us back to the right valley and we would need to make another connection with a bus that would take us the last ten miles back to Arolla. I was feeling distinctly uncomfortable by this time, my shoulders and legs were burning and I was shivering too. Not a good sign after a full day in the sun.

We were exhausted by the walk, but the bus arrived early, so we expected that we would be able to get a good sit down on the bus whilst we awaited our departure. The group of people wanting to get on the bus was growing, a small crowd gathering around the door of the bus, but the driver assiduously ignored us. He sat, smoking his pipe, occasionally picking up his binoculars to have a look around the distant mountains. He seemed to be totally oblivious to the crowd that was growing with each passing minute, refusing steadfastly to acknowledge us and let us onboard.

The journey down the valley was uneventful and I was enjoying the rest, but starting to feel concerned about the time and the possibility of a connecting bus. We got off the bus in Vex and a quick check of my watch said that it was five twenty-five. An anxious look at the timetable at the bus stop told us that the last bus was at five twenty! No sooner had we read this information and without having had the time to panic, the bus shot past us, as if trying to make up the lost five minutes. But the driver had spotted us and thankfully brought the bus to a halt just around the corner. After a walk where we had climbed up four thousand feet and descended four thousand four hundred feet, walked eleven miles in eight hours, we nevertheless made an effort at running and climbed onto the last bus, by the skin of our teeth! Not a care in the world now, my thoughts turned to tonights menu.

 

 Chamonix To Zermatt

The Haute Route

August 12th & 13th 1994

Verbiers to Cabane de Montfort to Haute Nendaz

The day started quite unpromisingly, with a lot of low cloud and the odd hint of rain. Between the guide book and tourist information centre, we had conflicting information about the length of the walk up to the hut, it was anything from three hours on the one hand, to six hours on the other. Just to be on the safe side Irene persuaded Mad Max the aeronautical hotelier, to get up early enough to give us breakfast at seven. So, we got off to a flying start!…….(sorry).

The Cabanes, huts, or refuges, they go under several different names, nearly all belong to the Swiss Alpine Club. The SAC is split geographically into sections and each section owns and maintains one of these mountain outposts, not usually in their own area, but for use by their members. The Montfort Hut is run by the Jarman section of the SAC. The huts are also open to all, mountaineers, walkers, lovers of nature, everyone is welcome, either as a day visitor, or for a small fee you can stay overnight and enjoy the unique experience of waking up in the high mountains. The accommodation is fairly basic, hostel style, but friendly, warm and comfortable and how else could you enjoy a night above the eight thousand foot contour. If it’s a hotel you are looking for then this isn’t for you. The huts are not open all year round, so check if you plan to visit one, but when they are open they will have a guardian and possibly a small team of helpers. But the huts rely on visitors being respectful, looking after themselves and most importantly clearing up after themselves. It is possible to get a meal and a drink in the huts, but the cost usually reflects the difficulty of getting supplies up to their remote location. Understandably the huts operate under quite strict rules and you should acquaint yourself with them before arriving. One of the first rules to take note of is the ‘no boots in the hut’ rule, look for the boot rack and swap your boots for a pair of indoor shoes, usually a strange pair of wooly slippers.

As the guide book had promised the path worked it’s way steeply through the forest. We stopped to fill our water bottles at the standpipe by the trough in the farming hamlet of Clambin. It was a beautiful, cool damp morning. Everywhere was dripping wet from the overnight rain, the early morning air was cool and still. Clouds drifted gently around the deep valley below as if trying to find a way out.

Verbier

As we cleared the tree line the path levelled out and we began to contour around the mountain alongside an ancient bise. A bise is an irrigation channel dug out around the side of the mountain to provide water for crops growing in the fields below. The glacier covered mountain of Grand Combin was directly across the valley from us, but it was playing hide and seek behind the clouds. Every now and then it revealed tantalising glimpses, but never the whole mountain at once. To our surprise, at 10.30, the Cabane du Montfort came into view, about an hours walk away. Suddenly my caution seemed to have been a little excessive. 

We stood looking at the hut and wondered what we would do with the rest of the day and as we did, light rain began to fall. We decided to have a break and took shelter under the eaves of a small chalet just off the path. We sat eating from our usual, but to most people unusual, menu of  reblochon cheese, nectarine and Swiss chocolate. We first discovered the delights of reblochon when holidaying in the Aravis mountains of the Haute Savoie in France, the area where the cheese originates from. It has a very distinctive creamy, nutty flavour and actually has it’s own AOC which determines that it must be made from the raw milk of three specific breed of cow. It’s origins go back to the fourteenth century and the ingenuity of the Savoie herdsmen. The farmers were completely dependent upon the landowners who levied a tax on all the milk produced. At milking time, in front of the landowners overseer, the herdsmen would pretend to complete the milking but when the overseer had gone, the farmer would go back to the task and carry out a second milking, or re-milking, re-blocher. The milk that was left was far creamier and from this second, creamy re-milking they made their cheese, Reblochon.

The rain stopped and the sky brightened up enough to warm the air slightly. This was the sign for a family of marmots to venture out of their burrow onto the grassy hillside and sniff the air, less than fifty metres away from us. We watched the weather, we watched the clouds, we watched the Grand Combin, we watched the marmots feeding and playing together and the marmots watched us, very, very, vigilantly. But as long as we stayed still, they carried on as if we weren’t there and by the time we got up to move on, a full hour had passed by almost unnoticed.

Cabane de Montfort

We checked into the Cabane du Montfort at 13.00 hours, left our boots on the boot rack and the sign on the rack invited us to ‘chose a pair of indoor clogs to fit’. Well I don’t know who they fit, but it certainly wasn’t me. I felt like I had chosen two left feet as I manoeuvred into the warmth of the hut, never quite feeling like my feet were in the right place! We were shuffled along to our bedroom, or room bed. Bedroom room bed, a room for six, a bed for six, it was all the same really. It was a room measuring six feet by eighteen feet and a mattress of the same dimensions, six pillows on six folded blankets told the story. At the moment only two sleeping bags and they were ours, fingers crossed that it would remain that way.

After lunch we swapped our clogs back to our boots and headed out, further up the mountains behind Verbier. This was a bonus that we hadn’t expected, our early arrival at the hut gave us the chance to explore the higher mountains at leisure and unencumbered by our rucksacks. The higher we went, the more interesting the flowers became. High up here in mid August, the spring alpines were still in flower, not as prolific as earlier in the year when spring arrives in the valleys, but still beautiful all the same. It was one of those wandering walks across the mountainside that took us from one patch of flowers to the next and the next….. Until eventually we reached the ridge and total shock! The view from the ridge was what can only be described as a total disaster area. The mountain was subject to a rash assault from every kind of earth moving equipment you can possibly imagine. The scene spread out infront of us looked like a construction site for a new motorway, but was in fact the creation of a new ski station, restaurant and piste. It was an unbelievable and distressing sight, here at over nine thousand feet up in a mountain wilderness, the mountain was being torn apart. On the opposite ridge there were huge cranes employed in the construction of new buildings, the whole valley had been scorched, removing all life and huge bulldozers were rearranging the more permanent features of the natural landscape. I stood for ages, just looking. I couldn’t take it all in, the scale of it all and the amount of money that must be supporting this devastation of nature. I just could not understand how anyone could bring themselves to desecrate a mountain habitat in this way and still live with their consciences.

The temperature started to drop as we turned and headed back towards the hut. The Montfort Hut has a very welcoming look as it sits comfortably on a rocky outcrop high upon the slopes of Mont Gele and we were glad to get back into it’s cosy warmth. The clouds were lifting and the skies clearing, so even this early in the evening, the temperature dipped to well below freezing. But Grand Combin still hung onto it’s clouds, still shrouded in mist, so we still didn’t get a clear view of this grand mountain.

All was going well, but still there was something niggling in the back of my mind. Two more rucksacks had appeared in ‘our room’. Okay, that’s not too bad, but will there be anymore next time we look? Eighteen feet divided by four isn’t so bad, but eighteen divided by six is getting a bit too close for comfort!

The Montfort Hut has been there for a hundred years and the interior is exactly what you would expect of a rustic, high mountain chalet. The soft tones of it’s wooden interior and the warmth of the log fire are very welcoming. With the meal over we had a few beers to help us sleep, we went outside one last time to view the stars. It was very cold now, but the non existent light pollution meant the view of the universe was stunning. All we could see was the outline of snow capped peaks and stars that went on for evermore. It was 19.45 and by 20.00 we were tucked up, or to be more precise, cocooned in our sleeping bags. I couldn’t help but be amused as we lay there, ready for a night’s sleep, I thought about home and deducted the hour’s time difference and had the strange thought that back home there was still half an hour until Coronation St came on the tele. All of that seemed so far away as here we were settling down for the night in a wooden chalet eight thousand feet up in The Alps. Our companions for the night followed a discreet few minutes later, but no matter how discreet, it is impossible to ignore that there are two strangers trying to sleep very near by, with only the symbolic barrier of a couple of rucksacks between us.

I don’t know if it was us or our French room mates who were first off the starting blocks, but at ten past six, with the first light appearing in the dark sky, it felt okay to start moving without disturbing anyone or causing offence.

There are some special moments in life that are so spectacular that they remain with you forever. It is unfortunate but true that you cannot hold onto the entire feeling of those moments, but you do remember some of that feeling and the impact it had on your senses. This was one such moment. As we stood together that morning on the terrace at Cabane du Montfort, it felt like the whole world stood still. Standing there in the chilled morning air, watching as the early morning light illuminated the Mont Blanc Massif. Thin whips of mist drifted out of the valleys where it was still dark. The first light of morning spread a warm glow on the highest peaks and slowly, the early morning light moved down the mountain side turning the snowy slopes a shade of pink. I stand transfixed by the vision, trying to drink it all in, to soak up as much as I can, knowing that in it’s transience it will soon slip for my gaze like a half forgotten dream. I turn to go, but immediately feel that I am already losing some of that view, so I am compelled to go back again and again for more. But it is futile, the moment moves on as the sun starts to appear, I try to hold the moment, but it slips away, out of reach. But something of this moment will stay with me forever, because it is impossible to witness such a sight and then remain the same, untouched by it’s overwhelming, but transient beauty. A moment that we shared and will speak of from time to time throughout the rest of our lives.

Soon it was back to the reality of making progress and our destination for today was another hut, the Refuge de Prafleuri, one of the few privately owned huts in the Swiss Alps. The facilities at the Prafleuri Hut were reputedly more primitive than at Montfort and it was unclear if we could get a meal. It is fair to say that we weren’t exactly looking forward to staying there. We now had a choice of three routes to get to Prafleuri. This section of the walk had been a major obstacle for would be Chamonix to Zermatt trekkers for many years. A long chain of high mountains stretching up to the twelve thousand feet mark, with a succession of glaciers along it’s northern side meant that a direct route was not possible and a significant diversion was necessary to get around these mountains and their attendant glaciers. That was until the retreat of the Grand Desert Glacier. It was now possible to get across the foot of the retreating ice, quite safely, in the summer…. reputedly! The first option involved a long contour around the mountain on a narrow path with a high degree of exposure and subject to rock falls and landslips. We were already feeling a little put off by that route! The second option was the route over the high Col de Louvie, before crossing the foot of the retreating Grand Desert glacier, which supposedly was pretty much free of crevasses by now. The phrase “pretty much free” left some uncertainty and the very nature of crevasses meant no one could guarantee that they were no longer there. From the glacier it was a mere three miles uphill to the Prafleurie hut. No, that route didn’t appeal to much us either.

The third option was to take one of two cols to the north, up behind the Montfort hut, down to the Lac De Cleusson where we would have to almost double back to head south east. This would take us up past the Grand Desert, over the Col de Prafleuri and up to the hut. Not the most direct route, but we felt happier and more comfortable with it, especially as we chose the Col Des Gentianes which had a cable car that would deliver us almost down to the lake.

We left the Montfort hut behind us as we headed up towards the Col Des Gentianes, our spirits were high. Maybe it was because of that wonderful view, maybe it was that early morning in the high mountains feeling, or maybe we aren’t really that keen on huts and we were glad to be away from it. The trouble is, it wasn’t really over because there was another hut waiting for us at the end of the day, but there was another wonderful day’s walking to enjoy before that little challenge would trouble us. For now we were enjoying the moment and the moment was truly wonderful.

A stiff climb of around fifteen hundred feet, past the retreating Glacier Du Montfort took us up to the col at a height just short of ten thousand feet. According to our information there was a cable car that would take us down to Tortin and the nearby Lac de Cleusson. With typical thoroughness we had checked the opening times and the seasons and we were on course to catch the nine o’clock service down the mountain to the valley bottom. On arrival at the col we were a bit puzzled to see a closed sign on the departures board, the place did have a closed look about it, but it certainly wasn’t locked up. Further exploration was required, this could be a serious set back as it would not be possible to walk down to Tortin due to the Tortin Glacier blocking our route. The Tortin Glacier is a huge and impressive obstacle, covered in enormous seracs and crevasses, not even a consideration as a walking route. We headed down the stairs to the ticket office, no one there. In fact the ominous sign of the ticket office being used to store furniture was a little concerning. We continued all the way to the gondola without being challenged or seeing anyone. We could hear people around somewhere, maybe maintenance workers, it wasn’t looking very promising, they obviously weren’t expecting any customers. I was beginning to think about another night back at the Cabane du Montfort and how that might affect our plans for the days ahead. We eventually found a workman who tried to explain what was going on and although the detail was lost on us, it was quite clear that the cable car was closed! The dismay and disappointment must have shown on our faces because he then said that if we were prepared to wait a little longer he would take us down. 

Twenty minutes later he invited us onto the gondola and soon we were passing over the Glacier de Tortin, a private service and all without charge. What a nice thing to do, what a nice man. From the rather cold and desolate Col Des Gentianes we swooped down to Tortin in the valley bottom, a sudden loss in altitude of over three thousand feet. I couldn’t help thinking about that loss, as now we had to start regaining the height in another valley and we had already climbed fifteen hundred feet from Montfort to the Col de Gele. Tortin was a lush green place compared with where we had just come from, warmer too, but still in the shade, it was cool enough to make us want to keep moving. After a short walk down the valley we turned right and entered the valley of Haute Nendaz, and once again we started to climb, this time it was up to the barrage of Lac De Cleusson. The climb and the sunshine forced us to stop so that we could remove our jumpers and long trousers, it was getting very warm at last. 

The barrage towered up infront of us, an enormous wall of concrete, part of the grand hydro electric scheme in The Valais region. The scheme links three lakes, Lac De Dix, Lac De Moiry and Lac De Cleusson, all were on our route over the next few days. The Lac De Cleusson part of the scheme was added between 1993 and 1998 to increase the scheme’s capacity. It was however closed down for nine years, just two years after commissioning, when a nine metre by sixty centimetre hole appeared in the section of the pipe between Cleusson and the Lac De Dix. A huge outflow of water surged down the valley and could not be prevented from reaching Nendaz and Fey in the valley below. One of the incredible facts about the scheme is that it is mostly underground, or under mountains to be more precise. The numbers that describe the scheme are mind blowing, I might quote some of them when we reach Lac De Dix, but for now we were heading for an uncertain route ahead.

Cleusson was not the most picturesque of the three lakes by any means. The water was a green, grey, milk like substance and being about twenty feet below capacity, there was an ugly scar right around the water’s edge.

Lac de Cleusson

According to the map, the footpath was due to fade out soon after we had walked past the far end of the lake, just as we entered the area recently vacated by the glacier Grand Desert. I rather hoped that it was wrong and the path might have become more established since the map was published. For the same reasons, the guide book was also a little vague about the way ahead. Of course I should have known better, it’s probably sacrilege to even consider that a Swiss map might be wrong. Even so, in this case, I was hoping…. 

Non Compass Meant Us

We sat on the high ground above the end of the lake, looking down on it’s strangely coloured waters. We took the opportunity to combine a sun cream stop with a lunch break. Reblochon, nectarine and chocolate was becoming our staple midday diet, along with as much water as we could manage to carry. Most of the top end of the valley was now visible to us, as was the Col de Prafleuri, our crossing point into the next valley. Unfortunately I didn’t take the opportunity to confirm with a compass exactly which dip in the horizon we were heading for and with the footpath about to run out on us, things were about to get difficult. At this point everything felt very comfortable, maybe because the scenery hereabouts, did remind us of The Lake District, probably because there was even a pack horse bridge, the kind that can be seen around the Cumbrian fells. The similarity was fleeting and as we climbed up into the top of the valley and entered the recently glaciated bowl where it’s true Alpine nature revealed itself to us.

The remains of Glacier Grand Dessert and somewhere up there is the Col de Prafleuri.

We looked at the map and it appeared that if we followed the left hand tributary of the stream, it would take us in the direction of the col. It seemed a good plan, but as the stream split time and time again, it became obvious that there were far more tributaries than the map could show. So which one were we following? The walking was tough. With the path long behind us we were left to make our own way, sometimes from boulder to boulder, sometimes scrambling around in loose moraine. There was little or no vegetation in this newly formed landscape, everything was a pale shade of grey, which reflected the sun mercilessly back at our tiring bodies. It was now after two o’clock and we had already been walking for seven hours and climbing about four thousand feet. We struggled on from boulder to boulder, but doubt was inevitably creeping into our minds and once it’s there it can only be wiped out by some very positive confirmation that we are going the right way. Those confirmations just weren’t happening and the dreaded, creeping doubt started to sap away our energy, erode our spirits and weaken our resolve.

We climbed to the top of yet another moraine and anxiously looked around, but now nothing looked familiar, nothing looked as we had expected it to, nothing to re-affirm that we were in the right place, or heading in the right direction. What we had thought looked like a path up to a col, now as we got closer, looked like a steep and impassible scree. As we scanned the horizon none of the potential ways up looked possible anymore. We read the book again, studied the map again and scanned the horizon again. Why had I not checked it out with my compass when we stopped for lunch? Everything seemed so straight forward back then, so it hardly seemed necessary, but it was too late to take a bearing now because I could no longer be precise about our current position on the map. We stood looking at the huge piles of glacial moraine, some of them hundreds of feet high. We looked at the semi circle of high peaks surrounding us, knowing that somewhere, there was a way through, but where was it? 

We changed direction again to see if we could find any indication at all of the way forward, a painted mark on a rock? a path? or even a signpost? Nothing, it wasn’t exactly a busy route, we hadn’t seen anyone else for four hours and that just added to our feeling of isolation as the doubt crept further in. Suddenly a moment of high hope, a paint mark on a boulder and a hint of a path! At last, back on track, but then the ‘path’ disappeared after just a few metres. We retraced the path and wandered backwards and forwards along it’s length, looking all around, but there was no more path and no more painted rocks. We climbed up  a great heap of glacial debris in the hope of spotting a route, but still we could not see a way forward. 

Now, there have been occasions when it has been suggested that I have been lost, so I think this would be a good point to clarify this. How could we be lost when I knew where we were on the map, give or take an inch or two? How could we be lost when if necessary, I knew exactly how to retrace our steps back to safety? How could we be lost if I knew where we were going? In this case we were going to the Col de Prafleuri, I just wasn’t sure where it was right now. So we weren’t exactly lost, we were just looking. I prefer to think of it as ‘temporarily misplaced’ rather than lost. No, it wasn’t us that was lost, it was the col that was lost and we were the ones looking for it. After all, no one was looking for us were they? well not yet….

It was beginning to feel like decision time. We had to take a cool and logical look at our situation to ensure that we didn’t walk into anything more serious. We had to keep sight of the fact we were above eight thousand feet up in the Alps and it was a good two and a half hours back to any kind of habitation. In the back of my mind there was the thought that we might have to go back the way we came, but I was trying everything I had, not to make that decision. Feeling hot, tired and frustrated with the situation, perplexed by the lack of an obvious solution, we weren’t in the best frame of mind to make a good decision. However, we were struggling to find a safe way out of this vast bowl of glacial debris, other than the way we had entered it. It was only two thirty, plenty of daylight hours left, but realistically it had been a long day already and we were tiring. We could try to find another option, but this would entail going downhill off this pile of moraine, before setting off uphill yet again and still there would be no guarantee we would find the col. I was beginning to doubt if we would ever find the small Prafleuri Hut over the other side of the ridge, in this vast landscape of high mountains and glacial remains. To add to the anxiety, the blue skies of earlier in the day were turning an ominous shade of grey and the hot afternoon was turning into a humid and sticky one. The high peaks restricted our distant view of the weather, but it felt like a change was on the way. In a couple of hours time, this would not be a very safe place to be. We have been caught out in Alpine thunder storms before and it really is not an experience you would readily repeat. The thought of yet another climb, another hour searching this unforgiving mountain that was holding us hostage, was fast losing it’s appeal. The decision had to be made, we were well over two hours walk from the nearest accommodation, possibly even further from one with rooms available.

With hindsight I am very reassured that, given our physical and mental tiredness and the pressure we put on ourselves to complete this walk, we still made the right decision. But for me, at the time, as we turned and headed back down the valley, it was a desperate, desperate feeling of failure. Maybe it was the sheer exhaustion, combined with making a decision I really didn’t want to make, but for the next hour I was very, very, quiet. I had to concede that the Chamonix to Zermatt walk was now over, just six days in and it had come to a full stop. It felt like all the planning had come to nothing, we could not complete this walk, it had beaten us. All that I could see now was my boots, as one ritually overtook the other, transporting me away from achieving our ambition.

As we made our way down the valley, I eventually forced myself to look up and start taking in the surroundings once again. I couldn’t help but drink in the sheer beauty of all that surrounded us. I began to realise how stupid I had been. After all, here we were, still in Switzerland, still walking in the most beautiful mountains I’ve ever seen, in a beautiful climate and with the most beautiful person I’ve ever known, such perfect company. Regardless of what happens, regardless of what route our walking takes us, those facts will remain the  same. I had foolishly been drawn into thinking that the achievement was more important than the experience, when really it’s the other way around. The only thing wrong with today was that I had foolishly wasted an hour of it in self indulgent pity. A lesson learned.

Back On Track

After abandoning our search for the Col De Prafleuri we walked down the valley until we were fit to drop. Ten hours of tough walking had drained all our energy resources and we were functioning on automatic. We came to a bus stop in a small ski resort called Super Nendaz, which appeared to be mostly locked up until the ski season, except for what appeared to be a youth holiday centre. There was a vending machine next to the bus stop and our provisions had long since been consumed. So the vending machine was a very tempting proposition, but I wasn’t even capable of getting my brain to work and I couldn’t get the machine to part with any of it’s delicious looking snacks and drinks. Sheer exhaustion had defeated me.

When the bus arrived it was already overcrowded and the fantasy of a comfortable bus seat quickly evaporated. We were stood with our rucksacks, squashed into a small space next to the doors. Everytime the bus screeched around a sharp left hand bend and there were a lot of them, we came close to losing our grip on the handles and spilling out onto the road, or down the steep slopes of the valley. A real white knuckle ride! We didn’t have a clue where we were, so it’s no surprise that we got off the bus at the wrong place, but by good fortune, there was a hotel right across the road from the bus stop. And so it was that two, scared out of their wits, dusty from a days walking, exhausted, hot and sweaty ragamuffins, who had spent the previous night in a hut, stumbled into the three star Hotel Deserteur.

I sometimes thought as we approached a hotel, that our appearance alone, after a hard days walking, would put off any hotelier who was trying to run a decent and respectable, establishment. I think they must be used to taking in wanderers like ourselves, or maybe we didn’t look half as bad as we sometimes felt, because we were never turned away. The welcome extended to us was always warm and friendly, perhaps, sometimes a little reserved, but the combination of reserve and friendly warmth created just the right level of welcome for us. Always genuine, but never intrusive. This particular day is probably the best example of hot, tired hikers meeting with genuinely friendly Swiss hospitality.

The elderly lady who greeted us at reception was wonderful, when I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had quickly ushered us out of the door. But she chose not to notice our disheveled state and although I was too tired to understand much of what she said, her welcome was much appreciated. However, her guided tour of the four floors of the hotel, it’s fire escapes, dining rooms and other facilities, would have been better appreciated after we had taken off our packs and had a rest. Never mind, it was all done to make us feel at home and welcome in her hotel. Merci Madame, your hotel was magnifique.

It’s strange how much you can appreciate things when they have been denied you, even for just a short while. A very comfortable, very private hotel room with a wonderfully hot shower…. sheer bliss! After just one night in a mountain hut, sharing a room with others and very few facilities, the sheer luxury of having life’s little comforts restored felt unbelievably good. 

We could only speculate about where we were, to ask the hotel staff would have made us appear even more like aliens. Weighing up the shape of the valley, the views and the size of the village, we felt pretty sure that we were in Haute Nendaz, but confidence in my map reading had taken a knock, so we couldn’t be certain. We began to reflect on the day, knowing that if we had got it right, we would now be spending our second consecutive night in the cramped, showerless conditions of a mountain hut. That is exactly what success would have looked like. As it was, we enjoyed the delights of beautifully cooked pork steaks in a very comfortable dining room, as a thunder storm raged outside. The torrential rain and lightning seemed only to highlight the comfort of the Hotel Deserteur even more. If we still had any lingering disappointment about today’s events, they suddenly just faded away.

Haute Nendaz above the Rhone valley

After a delicious evening meal, the most wonderfully comfortable and restorative night’s sleep, followed by an extensive breakfast, we were strong again and keen to get back on the trail. Contrary to the previous day’s belief that the walk was over, we now had a new plan, a new resolve and determination to complete our journey without missing any of it, or at least as little as possible. This trek was not over, far from it.