First things first, we were given a very brief packing outline that very specifically mentioned warm clothes. This was very exciting since the last time i tried do be fashionable and wear a toque i just starting sweating profusely and was not at all fashionable. On a side note, something in the air here in Switzerland seems to make people sweat more.....
Anyway, back to the point, I was told to bring my woolies! Hat, mittens and socks were immediately stuffed into the place of honor in my bag.
As far as Canadian attendees, the turn out was fairly small. Rachel Wong, Bruce, Chris, Steve Paige and I were the team. Kalid was also there but he is technically Moroccan, he just hangs out with us.... We met with the whole group on the train platform in Visp. There were 54 of us, not exactly a cosy gathering but all good people, and very international. In that first train ride I met Rosie from England, Victoria from China, Luke from Toronto, Nathaniel from the States, Daniel from Malaga and probably some others whose names I should remember.
We took the train to the winter get-away town of Zermatt. It was absolutely adorable. The quintessential Swiss mountain town complete with chalets and a plethora of beautiful flowers ( the chalets balconies always seem to be ringed with surprisingly lush planters. Purple and red seem to be one of the more popular color schemes...) It was less touristy than Banff and cuter than canmore so really the best of all worlds.
We first walked up to the HI hostel where we would be staying to divy up into rooms and leave anything that we didn't think we'd need. The hostel was really great, nice clean rooms with their own showers and bathrooms....
We then headed to the ski gondola that heads straight up the mountain from the heart of the town. We then proceeded up to the 3820m lookout point situated right across from the famous Matterhorn. The first thing we were told getting off the lift was take things slooow, you may be a little dizzy. It's true, you get tired quickly and your breathing picks up. One particularly unlucky fellow was severely affected and had to be taken back down the mountain because he couldn't even stand...
We spent some time here, went down and walked in the snow. Looked longingly at the hordes of skiers coming in off the mountain and then headed into the bowels of the glaciers where they'd carved out an ice cave. The caves weren't particularly spectacular, definitely not what I would have expected from the swiss but nevertheless, it was a cool concept.
We descended the mountain ( I swear we spent half the weekend in cable cars) and promptly got lost from the head of the group.... The funny thing about this was we were still a group of 30. I'm fairly certain it's their fault that we got lost. ha. Apparently we were supposed to have payed 2 francs to walk through a gorge at some point but we obviously missed that turn and bought beer instead. We all met back at the hostel though so not to worry!
Dinner was three courses with chocolate mousse for dessert and then we went out on the town to see what the Zermatt nightlife was like. We were a little early but ended up finding this gem of a place that had smoke machines AND a foam machine AND an acceptable DJ.
We were up bright and early the next morning to hop on a train bound for where we would start our days hike. We took another cable car up a mountain had some lunch and then got to walk along a beautiful glacier. They look just like roads for the mountain giants. This one even had strange dirty tracks in the appropriate spots.
The hike was beautiful, definitely worth the walk, especially since there was no elevation gain to speak of.
After the hike we re-descended and then were pretty much left to our own devices. We ended up taking five hours to get home but this was primarily due to one of our trains being 40 minutes late to leave. completely unheard of in swissland.....
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