Back to Civilization

We made it to Zermatt today. Apparently the permanent population is under 6000 souls, but what a crowded place; way more people than we're used to!!

Our hike today wasn't terribly strenuous. It was 565m of uphill and just 50m of downhill, straight up the valley on a combination of old roads and footpaths. But it was on the long-ish side. For some reason I seemed to be more sore and tired today than any other day of the walk. Perhaps my brain thought we were done, or maybe the surfaces we were walking on were harder on us. In any case, we made it just as clouds were starting to form around the Matterhorn (see first pic below). Not much to report on the way today. A very different walk than every other day, except perhaps the first one coming out of Chamonix. We were never too far from the main road and followed the valley instead of crossing a mountain range or two or three. We saw lots of interesting looking goats - front half black and back half white. We ran into only one pair of familiar hikers. A couple of young men from the UK had run out of money, which would not be hard to do since everything is so pricey, and were catching a train back to Chamonix today. I haven't been to Zermatt for about 20 years and it seems to be much bigger and busier than I remember. There are no exhaust-spewing cars allowed, but they now have a lot of little taxi vans - all of which seem to be out to hit us. Most of the time we're a pretty easy target since there is very little in the way of sidewalks.

The forecast isn't very good for the next two days so we checked in to our hotel (which is lovely) and then caught a train up one of the mountains to Gonergrat. We went up to just over 3000m (which seemed high until we realized that most of our passes were over 2900m) and enjoyed the expansive glacier views - pictures below. The clouds had pretty much covered the Matterhorn by now but the visibility wasn't too bad in other directions. Then back down to dinner in a charming, but expensive, little restaurant down the street.

Our activities for the next two days may be dictated by weather. Unless there is anything blog-worthy, this may be it. Thanks for looking in. If you were following us at all, I would love to hear from you. It has been a wonderful trip!