Things to do
9-
Gorner Glacier
The second longest glacier in the Alps, running twelve kilometres off Monte Rosa and best seen whole from the Gornergrat ridge above it. It has retreated visibly within living memory and the marked terraces on the valley wall show where the ice stood.
-
Matterhorn
The mountain that put the Alps on a poster, 4,478 metres and standing alone, which is why the shape reads as a single tooth from every side. First climbed in 1865 by Edward Whymper's party, four of whom died on the descent. Most people see it from the village, the Gornergrat or the Riffelsee rather than from anywhere near it.
-
Riffelsee
A small tarn one stop below the Gornergrat summit that holds the Matterhorn's reflection when the wind drops, which is the single most photographed thing in the canton. Morning is the reliable window. It is a ten minute walk from Rotenboden station and there is a second, smaller pool just beyond it.
-
Stellisee
The lake on the Five Lakes Walk that gives the cleanest reflection of the Matterhorn, at 2,537 metres above Sunnegga. The walk that links it to Grindjisee, Grunsee, Moosjisee and Leisee takes about two and a half hours downhill from Blauherd.
-
Gornergrat
A ridge at 3,089 metres reached by a cogwheel railway that has run since 1898, looking across the Gorner glacier at a wall of twenty-nine peaks over four thousand metres. The train climbs from the village in thirty-three minutes and the view changes at every stop, so the walk down one section is worth the time it costs.
-
Klein Matterhorn
The highest cable car station in Europe at 3,883 metres, with a lift through the rock to a viewing platform and a glacier palace cut into the ice below it. Skiing runs here through the summer. It is high enough that altitude is a real consideration and the air temperature stays below freezing in August.
-
Matterhorn Museum
A reconstructed village built below ground in the middle of Zermatt, telling how a farming community became a resort and how the 1865 first ascent ended. The broken rope from the descent is here, which is the object the whole story turns on.
-
Mont Cervin Palace
The grand hotel of the village, open since 1852 and still the address on Bahnhofstrasse, with a spa, a pool and the horse-drawn carriage that meets the train. It is the Zermatt of the era when the mountain was newly climbed rather than the Zermatt of the ski lifts.
-
Riffelalp Resort 2222m
A hotel on the Gornergrat line at 2,222 metres, reached by its own tram from the station, with the highest open-air pool in Europe looking straight at the Matterhorn. Guests are above the village and its weather, which is the point of staying up rather than down.