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Saas-Fee, Switzerland
Switzerland

Things to do in Saas-Fee

Why you should go

Ninety seconds on Saas-Fee

The other car-free village of the Valais, in a bowl with thirteen four-thousand-metre peaks standing around it and a glacier hanging over the roofs. It is quieter than Zermatt and the mountains are closer, near enough that the ice groans at night. An underground funicular runs to Mittelallalin at 3,456 metres, where the skiing lasts all summer. The village is a base for glacier walking and for the Saas valley's high trails rather than a place with much in it.

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Things to do

7
  1. Allalinhorn

    Viewpoint · 5 hr

    A four-thousand-metre summit that the Metro Alpin brings within reach of a guided party in a morning, which makes it one of the most climbed peaks of its height in the Alps. It is still a glacier route with crevasses and it is not a walk.

  2. Fee Glacier

    Viewpoint · 1.5 hr

    The glacier that hangs directly above the village in three tongues, close enough that its seracs are visible from the street. Guided glacier walks start from the Felskinn lift and the ice has retreated far enough in thirty years that the old routes onto it have moved.

  3. Hohsaas

    Viewpoint · 2.5 hr

    Above 3,100 metres over Saas-Grund, on the far side of the valley from Saas-Fee, this lift station faces the Mischabel group head on and counts eighteen four-thousanders from one platform. Two cable car stages climb from the village via Kreuzboden, with its lake and restaurant. The Weissmies is climbed from here.

  4. Kapellenweg

    Landmark · 1.5 hr

    A path of fifteen baroque chapels of 1687 climbing from the village to the pilgrimage church of Zur Hohen Stiege, each holding a carved scene. It is a half hour up through larch and it is the oldest thing in Saas-Fee.

  5. Mittelallalin

    Viewpoint · 3 hr

    A station at 3,456 metres reached by the Metro Alpin, the highest underground funicular in the world, with a revolving restaurant and a glacier grotto cut into the Fee glacier below it. The summer ski area runs from here and the view takes in the whole Mischabel wall.

  6. Saaser Museum

    Museum · 1 hr

    The valley's own museum in an eighteenth-century parsonage, on the making of a mountain community and on the writer Carl Zuckmayer, who lived here in exile and is buried in the village. It is small and it explains the place better than the lifts do.

  7. The Capra

    Hotel

    A timber and stone hotel at the top of the village with a spa built into the rock and windows onto the Fee glacier. It is the newest of the serious addresses here and the one that treats the view as the room's main feature.

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Take the seven o'clock train to Gornergrat, the first of the day, before the regular service starts.

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Stop at Birg on the way down.

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