Nine expats and the Tour De Cervin (Matterhorn), Switzerland

One of the best things about being an expat is the expat community.  You take a bunch of adventurous people from all over the world, you pull them out of their comfort zone, you throw them into a foreign environment and you stand back and wait for the magic to happen.  In our experience, the "magic" was the formation of some incredibly strong personal relationship.  However, one of the worst things about being an expat is that the community is incredibly dynamic.  The close friends that you make are an constantly moving on to the next assignment.

What was so special about this summer was a large group of us who had originally met in Basel and subsequently have moved all around the world, decided to reunite in Switzerland to complete the Tour de Cervin.  This is a multi-day trek that tours the mighty Matterhorn mountain.  It also shares a number of day's with the trekkers "Haute Route" from Chamonix to Zermatt. In other words, it's a bucket list item for any avid hiker!

Given that we are all based around the world, coordinating the logistics for this trip was no small feat.  In fact, after finding a suggested itinerary on the internet, most of us left the planning to a very few.  It turns out, this meant for some pretty epic days of trekking.

Had we not taken a wrong turn we wouldn't have seen the valley from this perspective.  The weather was beautiful and the group was in high spirits so it was the best day of any to make such a mistake!

Our itinerary was a planned 6 days of trekking from Arolla (in Switzerland) to Zermatt.  The plan was to gradually work our way into the most demanding of days after a relatively light day one.  Unfortunately, a wrong turn (very difficult to do) only steps from our starting hotel led us on a 4 hour detour, with 500 meters of climbing only to realize that we needed to double back and start again.  What should have been a relatively light day one turned into almost a 10 hour trek!

Up the valley in the middle of the picture is Arolla where we started the trip.  This photo was taken early on day two as we climbed out of the valley on our way west towards the barrage to Moiry.  Turns out this was one of the days that we covered two days of trekking in one!

 Day two was always going to be a long day and the weather was predicting thunderstorms in the afternoon.  For this reason we left early in the morning with a quick climb out of the valley.  The plan was to get to the Moiry dam by noon and up and over the other pass before the weather turned bad.  In the end, the trek to the dam took us longer.  We didn't finish lunch until 2 (still no rain) and decided to push through.  A very rapid descent through the pass allowed us to catch the 4 pm cable car down into Zinal.  Within seconds of stepping onto the gondola the promised thunderstorms and heavy rain broke out leaving us eternally grateful for the ride down.

Nearing the Col de Torrent (1st pass of day 2). The central valley in the distance is where we started this entire trip on Day 1 (Arolla) 

 Every day on the trip consisted of at least one major climb (often two) as well as a descent.  Sometimes there were pleasant undulating walks in between although these were few and far between.  The colour contrast between the blue sky, white snow, grey rock and green forests was striking!

The snow line this year was around 2500 metres above sea level.  This made for some interesting trekking as most of the walk is above that (certainly the passes are!).  To be safe, booking the trip for the middle/end of July would guarantee snow free passes!

 We found out the hard way that this season was about 3 weeks behind in it's snow melt. Usually by early July the passes would be clear of snow.  This year, we encountered a lot of deep, wet snow that made for quite challenging descents.  Not only were the paths completely covered leaving us to guess the way down, but the steep descents often offered some pretty treacherous traverses!

Turns out the "season" was approx 3 weeks behind because of a very cold and wet May.  It meant that all of the mountain passes continued to be covered in deep snow.  The made for both difficult and at times treacherous accents/descents!  There was no hope for finding the trail markings so we just ended up bombing straight down the snow runs

 Once dropping below 2600 metres the trails were extremely well marked, very clean and easy to follow.  On day two we had some incredible views both up and down the valley as we traversed towards the Weisshorn hotel.

Trekking in Switzerland is a special experience.  The Swiss believe that everybody is entitled to enjoy the mountains and therefore make them incredibly accessible (busses to almost every town) and incredibly well signed/marked.  Here is an example of the white and red markers that identify the trail

Walking from Zinal to Gruben.  This was a relatively straightforward but long day.  A quick ascent from Zinal (to above the tree line) then a long traverse towards hotel Weisshorn for lunch.  Afternoon was the climb through the Meidpass to Gruben

The afternoon trek to the summit was demanding and the most treacherous of the trip.  The descent down towards Gruben was quite exposed and very steep.  After a few hairy moments just below the pass, it opened up to some quite nice bowl walking.

Our experience was that the west side of the mountain always had much less snow.  As you descended towards the east, the snow pack was much deeper.  This is an example from the Meidpass looking East

Day three was a long demanding walk from Zinal to Gruben.  It involved a climb through the Meidpass which we had been told would likely be covered in snow.

A view from the pass down towards Gruben.  This was the most treacherous descent of the trip. 

Day four offered us the greatest exposure to "mountain weather".  The conditions really did turn on a dime a number of times throughout the day.  We started in beautiful sun and clear skies.  About 1.5 hrs into the climb the clouds dropped and we got light rain.

It then cleared again only to really close in as we approached the height of the pass.  This is when a full summer storm came through with high winds, near zero visibility and bitter cold. Fortunately, everybody in the group was well prepared.

A view from the Augstbordpass looking back towards Gruben. We had been caught in a summer storm ascending to the pass.  Full alpine attire was needed including beanie and gloves.  Finding the trail up was difficult due to snow pack and poor visibility.  The trail down was not possible so just bombed down the snow

 We had learned from a fellow trekker who had done the route the day before in the opposite direction that there were some very treacherous traverses on the way down to St. Niklaus.  As a consequence the group decided to change course and head to Embd.

Our descent towards Gruben.  Very deep snow allowed us to bum-slide much of the steeper descent

Fortunately, we had some footprints to follow on the way down from the pass as finding the trail markers was impossible.  It was not a difficult descent, in fact, we made good time by bum-sliding much of the steep terrain.

Our slow descent towards St. Niklaus.  We ended up deviating from the plan here based on some local knowledge stating that snow slides had left quite treacherous traverses towards St. Niklaus.  We went towards Embd instead

The walk out to Embd was lovely and very different from anything that we had experienced so far on the trail.  It was a steep descent beside a heavily flowing stream exposing great vistas across down the valley.

A nice gradual descent towards Embd.  Still quite a long hike but didn't experience any difficulties.  Took the cable car down and then hiked back up to Grachen for the night

We did decided to take a cable car down from Embd and then walk back up the 750 metres of altitude into Grachen.  The cable car experience was unique in that the cabin angle matched that of the cable (heavy slope).  I had never been in a cable car like that before!

Pic of the Matterhorn taken in Zermatt.  Unfortunately, I ended my trek in Grachen (beautiful ski village just up the valley from St. Niklaus) and took the train into Zermatt (time constraints).  Some of the group continued up to the Europahutte and absolutely LOVED IT!

Grachen is an awesome swiss mountain village that caters to the trekking and skiing community.  I would have liked to spend more time in the town but unfortunately, needed to leave early in the morning to catch a bus and train to Zermatt in time to meet the family.  All in all, the Tour de Cervin exceed my high expectations!  Not only was the trekking excellent but experiencing it with a group of such close friends made it that much more enjoyable!  We're already planning our next big trip....

Selfie for prosperity.  This was taken just below the pass on day 4.  The group was caught in a summer storm just before reaching the pass.  Fortunately, it was short lived, we had the appropriate gear and there was some shelter from rocks at the pass.  Otherwise, it would have been a very uncomfortable (and potentially dangerous) experience.