Valais – Page 4 – Alpine Winter Sports

04/05/201404/05/2014

Spring Skiing in Zermatt

Some of the most joyous events in the ski season happen in Zermatt in late April. All the ski instructors, laid off for the season elsewhere, descend on Zermatt for a last hurrah. Unfettered by snowploughing novices, snivelling kids, off-piste wannabees that need to get picked up out of the deep stuff and all those other frustrations, they show the same joie de vivre as the cattle being released from their winter quarters onto the meadows. It is a great festival of impromptu events – slaloms, jumps, skicross and slopestyle, followed by shots and beers in Zermatt itself (Sadly Hennu Stall is now closed). This week also saw 4,500 hardy souls embark on Patrouille des Glaciers, the ski-mountaineering race that starts in Zermatt and ends in Verbier, running high above all the mountain villages along the route.

In fact, Zermatt is the resort that keeps on giving with the official end of the winter season, and the start of the summer season, in June. As the cams on this page demonstrate, even this late in the season there are still good snow conditions.

The freezing level recently has been low enough to mean that fresh snow has settled briefly in the village. None of the valley runs are open and, although the snow above Sunnegga and Riffelberg looks good, only the Kleine Matterhorn slopes are open, above Steg – but today that is still 104km to enjoy. With temperatures set to rise in the days ahead and sunnier weather forecast, the conditions will gradually deteriorate but – if you get up early enough and are prepared for a long ride up and back down, the snow before late afternoon is still worth going after.

Unfortunately Zermatt do not lower their prices for this more modest offering, so be prepared for an eye-popping CHf 86/- ticket price for a day, but the uncrowded slopes just about make up for it, especially on one of those days when the sun is so warm that you can ski in a T-shirt. A word of warning, though, the sun is fierce enough to burn you to blisters in only one day, and once the sun slips behind a cloud or a mountain, the air can be bitterly cold so do make sure you are adequately prepared.

17/02/201301/09/2022

Fiesch

This weekend I visited one of my favourite ski resorts, the Aletsch Arena. It is an extensive ski and snowboard area, with a good range of runs and facilities and spectacular view over the Aletsch glacier and across the peaks of Valais, including the Matterhorn. It is hard to fathom why it is not more popular with people from outside Switzerland because you hardly ever hear a foreign accent there. It also has a good snow record with most of the slopes above 1900m and a series of small communities offering genuine ski-in, ski-out accommodation. It is also remarkably easy to get to from Zurich, Geneva or Basel so a great choice for a day out or a weekend break. There are effectively three base stations serving the Arena, one in Mörel, one below Betten (with a huge car park) and one in Fiesch. All base stations have fast efficient cable cars and are all served by trains running between Brig and Andermatt on the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn. Read more about healthy activities at Firstpost.
View from Bergstation Bettmerhorn
Although most of the action takes place above the Rhône Valley, there are a couple of trails down as far as 1000m, so you can do a spectacular 12km, 1800m drop off the Eggishorn all the way down to either Lax or Fiesch. Lax doesn’t have a lift back up, so you need to take the train back in either direction to get to the lifts, but for me it is the more enjoyable run. Mostly it follows a path then a road so you can’t get many turns in, but there are some nice bits of off-piste between corners in the track and there is a nice piece of off-piste just above the village – watch out for cars and trains as you cut across both a road and a railway track! The valley run into Fiesch is a tough trail, lots of moguls and steep, narrow parts, again mostly following a track. Unless you are confident in those conditions, you are probably better off taking the cable car back down at the end of the day.

Fiesch itself is a nice little town, with Inch being the most lively night spot. There’s a good range of places to stay, but I am excited to hear that the old Army Hospital just outside Fiesch has now been converted to a Youth Hostel. Although it is a fifteen minute walk from the slopes it does have its own railway station so you can take the train to one of the valley stations instead. Can’t wait until we get a chance to take a family break there.

10/10/201212/10/2012

Eurostar links up with TGV Lyria to take skiers from London to Valais

Eurostar has launched a new weekly ski service to the Swiss Alps with tickets on sale from Thursday 11 October.

The new ski service will carry skiers and snowboarders from St Pancras International and Ashford International to the Valais region, giving access to resorts such as Verbier, Zermatt and Saas Fee from Saturday 22 December until Saturday 13 April 2013.

Passengers transfer in Lille from a Eurostar train to to a high-speed TGV, and can alight at Aigle, Martigny, Visp and Brig stations for onward transfers to their ski resorts. Eurostar and TGV Lyria will allow ski passengers to carry on-board an extra item of luggage in addition to the normal luggage allowance, such as a pair of skis or a snowboard, at no extra cost.

Nick Mercer, Commercial Director for Eurostar said “With the highest runs in Europe, spectacular scenery and reliable snow, Swiss skiing offers something for everyone. With the resorts located just a short distance from the train stations, passengers have a much more seamless journey than travelling by air.”

The trains leave London at 6.57am and Ashford at 7.28am on Saturdays, and arrive at Aigle at 3.47pm, Martigny at 4.13pm, Visp at 4.57pm and Brig at 5.08pm. This realistically makes all the resorts of Valais and Vaud accessible via this service, using the excellent Swiss transport network completing the journey. From Martigny, Verbier is less than an hour away by train whilst from Aigle, Champery in the Portes du Soleil, Villars, Leysin and Les Diablerets all less than an hour away. Saas-Fee is less than an hour and Zermatt is almost exactly an hour from Visp. Brig gives access to the outstanding Aletsch Arena, with the resorts at Riederalp and Bettmeralp only 45 minutes away. There are also a clutch of smaller, lesser known resorts in Valais easily accessible from the ski train.

The news of this service has not been so well received by the Tourist Agencies in the Bernese Oberland and Graubünden. Britain has more tourists visit Switzerland than any other overseas country apart from Germany, but the strong Swiss Franc has led to a decline in visitors. I suspect that some visitors who would otherwise go to other parts of Switzerland may be tempted to sample Valais or Vaud, and let the train take the strain, at the expense of the Bernese Oberland and Grabünden. However, despite the undoubted convenience of the Eurostar service, all of Switzerland is accessible by train (see here for details).

The return train also departs on Saturdays. Return fares start from £189. For more details visit www.eurostar.com or call 08432 186 186.

22/05/201222/05/2012

Zermatt’s Mountaineers’ Cemetery

One all-year round sport in the Swiss Alps is mountaineering in its various forms, including ski mountaineering with the most famous ski mountaineering race in the world, Patrouille des Glaciers, beginning in Zermant every April. Zermatt is also home to a Mountaineers’ Cemetery, a poignant reminder of how cruel the mountains can be to those who seek to tame them. It makes an absorbing outing in Zermatt to visit the cemetery in front of the parish church of St Mauritius on Kirchstrasse.

The graves are usually stark, simply listing the name of the victim and the year and mountain they died on. Some provide even less detail, some more. We learn that Donald Stephen Williams, a teenager from New York, “chose to climb” and died on the Breithorn pursuing his choice. 24 year old Freda Currant “passed into fuller life from the Matterhorn at dawn August 6th 1936”. The young newlyweds, Herbert & Anni Braum, have a headstone which neglects the young doctor’s wife in proclaiming, in German, the line from Hamlet “O what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!” alongside fulsome praise for his lost talent. The poignant positioning of the headstones of Irmgard Schiess & Victor de Beauclair suggests these too were lovers. There are also friends buried together here, a couple of pals from Cambridge, a trio from Oxford, and alongside the latter – found in the search for their bodies – the body of an unknown climber.

For more details go visit http://www.swisswintersports.co.uk/cemetery.php.