**I finished this blog post a week ago, and when I clicked publish it froze up and deleted 3 hours of work. I abandoned the draft for a week in anger but just need to get these published already**
Our days in Zermatt were spent hiking. When we woke up our first morning there, we weren't sure where we wanted to go but we knew we wanted mountains and trails. We walked to the end of Zermatt where most of the trails started from and decided on one. While deciding we had a nice 30 minute long conversation with a couple and they even took our picture!
^^Cute little black sheep!
Paul always stops at good streams to search for caddisflies, and he had some good luck at this one!
We planned our hike around a mid-day break at a little restaurant along the trail. It's all alone up in the mountains, ready for the hikers, mountain bikers, trail runners, etc. We had an amazing salad and tried the traditional Swiss dish Rösti (potatoes, baon, egg, DELICIOUS).
Right after our lunch break, the rains came down. Torrential downpours right out our faces.
But then! Our gift of the day. The clouds just to the right of the trail parted and gave us a beautiful view of the Matterhorn. I am convinced we are the only people to have seen the grand mountain that day.
While I was trying to capture a picture of Paul (the lighting was being so tricky), he pointed behind me and I kind of ignored him...
... well a herd of Chaomis (deer like animals) were FEET from me. I finally turned around and got a far away picture of them.
Soaked in front, dry in back.
The clouds soon returned and we hiked in them for the rest of the day. It was kind of eerie and fun to be alone on the mountain and not quite sure what was ahead/around you.
We made it to Hotel Schwarzsee where we were actually booked to stay the night. Unfortuantely the hotel had closed because of the bad weather (it was our splurge hotel of the trip, amazing views above Zermatt and of the Matterhorn). We were going to hike down at this point but couldn't see 10 feet in front of us, so we took the tram and enjoyed a quiet night in Zermatt watching General Conference.
Coming out of the clouds on the way down the tram...
The next day we wanted to do some more hiking. We spent the morning in Zermatt taking photos of the Matterhorn because the clouds had finally cleared.
We also took a few shots of our Hotel for the night, that tiny white dot up on the mountain - Pension Edelweiss.
Then I just went and climbed the Matterhorn.
(ha! a fake tiny one, the real one we did next).
We spent a little bit of time at the Zermatt cemetary where many of the casualties of the Matterhorn are buried in it's shadow.
For our hike we decided to start at Schwarzsee where we had left off yesterday and try to make it to Hörnli Hut. Unfortunately the clear skies of the morning didn't last for long and we were soon hiking in clouds again.
There were a lot of exposed parts of the trail which is kind of scary when it's nice and foggy.
The hike was long and hard. We saw ONE other hiker in the 4-5 hours we were on the mountain. We came upon a lot of false peaks so I was very relieved to finally see the hut in the distance. The hut is at 10,000+ feet and is base camp for Matterhorn hikers.
Since the clouds were so thick, we couldn't tell where the Matterhorn peak was. Little did we know it was above us - we had hiked 1/3 the way there!
We ate lunch (apples, rolls, cheese, and meat) on the porch of the hut and prayed for the clouds to give us a peek of the peak, but no luck.
This is where I imagined the peak to be.
Hanging out on the Heli-Pad
Brrr! Lots of snow and icicles. We were glad to have our down jackets and beanies on this hike.
This bridge thing was actually one of the scariest parts of the hike. Super rickety and old and a really big drop in some places were it to collapse.
This was one of my favorite days with Paul of my life. When we got to the bottom I just felt so grateful for him and to have such an adventure with him in such a beautiful place.
After a long hard hike down, we still had more hiking to do to get to our beds for the night.
The yellow Swiss hiking signs are great for directions and give hiking time estimates instead of distance measurements. The sign to Pension Edelweiss estimated 1 hour from Zermatt (which we had heard people say to over estimate because that was a time for fit Swiss hikers). I, however, am married to a mountain man and he sped up that mountain in 30 minutes, with me breathing heavy right behind.
The served us dinner at the pension (Fondue! another Switzerland tradition). The pension wasn't all I had dreamed it to be. We were the only guests there and we kind of felt like we were a bother to them. Especially when we asked for dessert and all they had was a random piece of carrot cake that Paul couldn't eat because of walnuts everywhere.
We watched a pretty sunset with a view of Zermatt below to end the long day.
In the morning we took of first thing back down to Zermatt. We briefly considered trying to head back up to Hörnli Hut for the view we missed the day before, but knew we had to get all the way to Zurich that day.
The hike down was really pretty as the sun was just waking up the mountains.
Goodbye Zermatt!
