You are familiar with the famous Matterhorn in Zermatt, but perhaps less familiar with
two other mountains that make wonderful excursions the Klein Matterhorn and Sunnegga.
We are taking you up both of those peaks in this episode, first to the Klein Matterhorn
in the Matterhorn Glacier Paradise.
We're going on a major, major journey to a high mountain peak.
We're taking you to the top of the Klein Matterhorn, which is the highest viewing platform in Europe
that can be reached by cable ca---------
r at 3883 meters high at the top of the Alps.
It's called Little Matterhorn because it's next to the more famous Matterhorn mountain
that's even higher, 600 meters higher at 4478 meters high and we will get great views of
the Matterhorn going up in the cable car.
We're not there yet, we're just changing cable cars one more time.
We don't have to walk, hardly at all, though, it's an easy stroll from one cable car to
the next.
You'll see hikers with some serious climbing gear ready to scale the peaks, but the average
traveler like us needs no equipment, just some warm clothing.
Taking 3 cable cars changing twice on our route to the top, which takes about 45 minutes
altogether.
On the way down you could ride down the same way or in our case were going to do some walking.
As we will show you later.
There’s Trocknersteg, and one more lift to go and then we make it all the way up to
the top.
And this last leg is going to take us up over 12,000 feet high.
So were up in that thin oxygen zone over 12,000 feet.
You want to take it easy.
But we had no troubles and everything is very convenient.
And here too, the engineers have been busy at work building tunnels, and pathways, and
snack shops and elevators will take care of us.
So it's really no strain at all anybody can do this.
And then climb up a staircase to the main viewing platform.
Here we've got a spectacular panorama of the big high peaks all around us.
Many mountains over 12,000 feet high, stretching 360° in a circle around you here.
Watching the skiers go by.
And then they're going to slide down and ride back up that same cable car back to the top
of the Klein Matterhorn.
And they can ski up and down all day long, and all summer long as well too.
It's the highest summer slopes in the Alps.
Traveling in the month of May is just a nice time, a perfect time to be here.
It's cool but not cold and it's not crowded.
We are going to explore the inside of this glacier.
They've actually carved an ice tunnel – more than a tunnel, it's a grotto inside the glacier
itself.
This is just unbelievable.
You walk along a comfortable matting and staircase and it's all lit up inside.
They've got these different chambers and rooms and corridors and tunnels, all linked together.
We were able to enjoy a snack on the way down too – halfway down, there's a restaurant.
And the cable cars continue on down.
There are three stages of cable cars to get back down into Zermatt.
But once again we're not going to ride the cable car all the way down – you could if
you want to, but we've chosen to opt out and take a hike.
At the end of our 3-week tour of Switzerland, several of us looked back on this hike as
the favorite moment of the entire tour, and we had a lot of great moments on the tour
as you might've noticed if you've been following all of our Swiss videos.
But there was just something lovely and ideal about this beautiful walk downhill through
the wildflowers with mountains all around us.
Entering this little hamlet of Zmutt.
They've got a couple of restaurants here.
Is not even a hamlet.
This is what they call an alp.
It's just a little cluster of buildings.
And a couple of restaurants, you could stop and have a bite.
And a few cottages, a few vacation cottages here.
Zmutt has been an occupied village for over 500 years.
It's really quite something, seems like some of the buildings here are at least a couple
centuries old.
It makes the perfect pit stop and the food was really quite delicious, you've got a variety
of restaurants and each has its own special menus featuring of course traditional cuisine.
Grab a few pictures and adieu, leaving Zmutt behind.
Some fellow hikers trying to figure their way with the map.
Well it's pretty simple if you just stay on the path, you just keep heading down.
Some people like to hike up.
They say better exercise and also they get a view looking into the mountains that way.
Well either way you have a nice view.
Continuing down, it takes about an hour to hike all the way down to Zermatt – that's
not bad, that's an easy hike.
Some animals along the way, here's some frisky dog playing with a Heidi-type master.
And he wants to play.
And along the way you've got some scattered homes.
Patch of sheep just ahead.
These mountain meadows are ideal for sheep, they just run loose and chew their way, it
is like the country is been mowed down by sheep.
Everything is so neat trimmed in Switzerland and the sheep must have something to do with
that, like they've been weed-eating the whole country.
The rest of our small group decided to ride the cable car all the way back down to Zermatt,
but they missed out on these sights.
We had some nice streams and mountain forest, easy trail coming down, nicely prepared surface
there, no problem.
It was a nice vista.
As we make away further downhill heading back to Zermatt.
Once again we've got wildflowers and snow-covered mountain peaks, green hillsides – what a
package.
As you've noticed were using 3 screens to present the picture to you today and this
is kind of a little experiment to replicate the experience of being there.
When you are at a place you're looking all around, not just at one focus but on the side,
above, below, and that's what we're showing you today.
It's a kind of total immersion to give you lots of interesting things to look at.
Of course you could do this hike in reverse.
You could start out in Zermatt, but then you're walking uphill, and continue up to that cable
car and then carry on from there.
Or you could do it as a loop hike, as we'll show you in a moment with the map starting
up from Zermatt, up to Zmutt, have a break and maybe have lunch, turn around and walk
back down to Zermatt.
You're on two different trails, so it makes for nice alternative viewings.
The higher trail requires a little more effort so we're showing you the lower trail in this
video, on the blue route.
And then it levels off as you get down towards the bottom of the hill and then all of a sudden
you're back in Zermatt, back in the village.
We have a separate movie about Zermatt that shows you how lovely this village is so be
sure to look for that in our collection.
For now we're just taking a quick look at the village and then we're going up another
mountain.
We're going to Sunnegga and we'll take you on another hike down.
We'll go down both sides of Sunnegga actually.
You could do all of this in one day.
I you get an early start, go to the top of Klein Matterhorn, come down as we have shown
you.
Do that nice walk from Zmutt.
Back into Zermatt, take a break, have lunch perhaps and then up the Sunnegga.
It's easy to get to the mountain lift.
It's in town, although it's not in the center of the village, it's over on the edge, so
it might be a 10-minute walk for you.
But no problem getting there.
And were going to walk over to the funicular that will take us up to the Sunnegga, a mountain
high above Zermatt town.
We'll ride a funicular up and then we're going to walk down.
Reaching the funicular in a few minutes we notice out front they have a big map showing
the different routes and different locations up on the mountaintop.
We'll be riding up this way in the underground funicular and then walking down the mountain.
Then at the end of the segment we'll go back up and hike down on the other side of Sunnegga,
showing you the differences in those two routes.
You'll find each side is different and equally attractive.
Just buy your tickets from the booth here, no reservations necessary.
Then you walk through a tunnel for about 80 meters.
It's quite a stretch here going into the mountain.
Notice it's not crowded because we're here in the month of May which is kind of the shoulder
season, very nice time to be here, not crowded at all.
This funicular goes up through a tunnel in the mountain.
You're never above ground, it's like a subway inside the mountain itself.
It was opened in 1980.
That only took 3 minutes and now we're out on the terrace.
The sign shows you that from this one point there are many different trails that you can
take.
And there's a restaurant up here, of course and a bar, you could just have a drink, have
a meal or just skip it as we're going to head right out and do some walking.
And so we begin our descent.
W figure this'll take us about an hour and 1/2.
It actually took about 2 hours, but it's all downhill and really quite easy and scenic.
Right away there's a little lake called Leisee.
In the summer time people go swimming in this lake but it's a little nippy here in the month
of May so we're just taking a look.
And this is one of 5 lakes up here on the plateau.
You could keep walking further uphill and see more of these lakes if you wish, but we
are heading in the other direction so we just stop and have a look down at the lake, beautiful
reflections, and turn around, we keep on walking down.
You have a choice of direction in walking down from Sunnegga to Zermatt.
You can either go left or you can go right, down each side of this ridge.
Later in the program in about 5 minutes, we'll take you on a walk down that right side so
you can compare the two.
If you go to the left, that's to the south, it takes they say about an hour and 45 minutes.
If you go to the right that's on the north side, they say takes about 2 hours.
Well in our case we went to the left.
Actually if you went to the right it's a little bit more of a forested trail winding through
a slightly steeper hill, and if you go to the left as we did it's more of a gentle and
straight slope, and we'll have some forest coming, up as you'll see, so you take your
pick.
This early part of the trail was reached within about 15 minutes and it was so pleasant, quite
level you got the rocky outcrop, you've got the hillside coming down with the grassy slopes
and a few wildflowers, slightly above the tree line and we're about to enter into the
forest.
It's a magnificent forest of Larch trees, the typical forest cover of this part of Switzerland,
a very hearty and durable wood that's used for construction as well as firewood.
Getting into the characteristic zigzag cut of the trail, it's going steeper downhill,
but still it's been planned so that the slope is very easy for anybody to cover.
You do not have to be in any kind of special physical condition to make this hike, it's
really quite easy.
It's going take you an hour and 1/2 to 2 hours.
It might help if you have a walking stick, especially when you're going downhill.
Another trick when you're going downhill is don't try and put on the brakes, just go with
gravity, go with the flow and let the hill carry you down.
Some places gf course get a little steeper and there is some tricky rocks and dirt under
foot, so you got a be more careful, sit down, take a break, take a rest, take it, easy,
you're enjoying yourself here.
You notice we're using some sticks that we found on the trailside to help stabilize ourselves
as we walked down.
You could always find the odd branch or two, so look around and grab one, it's part of
the fun and that'll help you get down.
Or on the other hand if you're more serious hiker, a regular on the trails, you want to
have these poles – Nordic walking sticks.
Local folks tend to walk uphill, they enjoy the exercise.
It's easier to walk downhill.
With all the beautiful scenery and the lovely trees and the easy walk down, we find that
trail is beginning to level, off it looks like there's light at the end of the tunnel.
We've almost arrived at the bottom.
From this point the trail is all quite level especially compared to what we've just come
down from up on the mountain.
We are in the suburbs of the little village of Zermatt.
There are houses developing, they are sprouting up like wildflowers here.
This town is quite small, only about 6000 population, but it's booming, it's growing
quite rapidly because of the increase of tourism.
All the time, people want to come to Zermatt to enjoy these beautiful mountains all around.
Notice you can stay in a house rather than in a hotel.
There's a large number of these bed-and-breakfasts and rooms for rent in the typical Swiss chalet.
That might be a nice choice for the visitor.
This house looked like it stepped right out of a postcard, it is so perfect with all those
flowers and the wooden balconies and benches, and planters in a beautiful lawn out front,
the rustic chalet wooden architecture.
There's the Gornergrat train coming down from the mountaintop.
We have shown you that in a previous episode.
Well, the town is booming.
There really is construction everywhere but don't worry they're not going to ruin it.
Zermatt will always be a village, it will always have that small-town charm and they're
just making it better, they're doing a great job with these modern expansions, more houses,
a few more hotels, make more room for the visitors.
Finally we've arrived back in town.
We're just a few minutes away from the main streets of the village, but even here you
see there's open fields and wildflowers, especially in the month of May.
It's the perfect time to visit for wildflowers and access to the trails.
As mentioned earlier we're going to walk down the same mountain again, Sunnegga, but this
time down the other route on the north side of the hill.
Start by riding up the underground funicular – taking the trail on the north side of
the funicular.
The sign shows our routing in the direction of Tuftern.
Frequent views that you get of the Matterhorn.
Scenery at the upper level is open forest with the grassy hillside between the trees.
In about half an hour you arrive at this tiny hamlet of Tuftern.
There are a couple restaurants and cafes here so you can actually take a break if you feel
like it, sit down get something to eat.
More likely you're just going to keep on walking by, but it's a pretty collection of chalet-style
buildings just to enjoy as you walk on down the hill.
For just a short while the trail gets wide and gravelly and dusty and not so attractive,
it's more of a bicycle trail than anything, but most of the trail ahead is going to be
nice and narrow and geared for the hiker.
It'll take about one more hour to reach the bottom and practically throughout that entire
walk now you're going to be enjoying scenery like this with the green hillside and lots
of trees.
These are primarily the Lark trees, the native tree of the area and it is very clean and
green and plenty of fresh air up here.
There are several different and interconnecting routes on his hillside.
At this point it's an ideal mountain trail, it's easy and it's just the right angle downhill
that it lets you float along without any effort at all, and it winds and turns in the sinuous
s-curves that are just very pleasant.
Very easy walking.
We have an entire movie all about Zermatt village, so be sure to look for that in our
collection.
It's a wonderful small-town – pedestrians only, shops, restaurants, many hotels, and
other mountain excursions available.
We will also take you up the Gornergrat in a separate movie, which is truly a spectacular
journey.
We have a big series of movies about Switzerland taking you to most of the great places.
We will bring you to Lucerne and up to Mount Titlis, Mount Rigi, over to Interlaken, up
to the Jungfrau.
We will see the Shilthorn, Lauterbrunnen Valley, Trummelbach Falls, Grindelwald, Bern, then
on to Zermatt, the Matterhorn, yes we will have a look at the Gornergrat, up the Sunnegga,
do some hiking, show you the village then on down to Lugano and Locarno in the southern
part of Switzerland, the Ticino we also take you to the great city of Zürich.
Look for them in our Swiss collection.