Wednesday, September 1, 2004
Today was a very long and busy day. We had a buffet breakfast here at the Park Hotel, which was delicious and very fancy.
We caught the Gornergrat Bahn at 8:20, and made it up to Gornergrat by about 9 a.m.
The scenery was terrific!
At the top, there is a 360-degree view of mountains. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so it was an excellent day to be up there.
We hiked down the Gornergrat descent, which took about 3 hours and wasn’t hard, except for the strain on our knees and feet.
Back in Zermatt, we went to the co-op for groceries and had a delicious lunch of Edam cheese sandwiches which we made ourselves, milk, a banana and a Toblerone chocolate bar. Following that, we napped for 1/2 hour and then headed out for the Hohbalmen at about 2:15 p.m. Our guidebook gave us the impression that it would take about 5 hours.
We passed through Eidelweiss, Trift, and then finally got up to Hohbalmen where we had a picnic of more cheese sandwiches and chocolate. (We also bought another 1.5L of water at Trift, which cost us 10 CHF!)
However, the descent took much longer than expected, and we did the last half hour of the trek in the dark.
It was barely light enough at the end to see the gravel path, which luckily was wide and gentle, not rocky and steep as it had been earlier.
We saw 2 kinds of mountain goats, sheep, and 1 marmot today.
Arriving back in Zermatt around 9 p.m., we were very tired, so we picked up a quick sandwich. Now back in bed and ready for an excellent night’s sleep. It should not be a problem with our ultra-comfy duvets.
Cook Family Travels 