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Meadows, Marmots & the MatterhornBy Beth Hancock
By the next morning, we could see the mountains – a distinct improvement on the previous day – we just couldn’t make out where the snow covering them ended and the heavy white clouds obliterating the blue sky of my dreams began. Encouraged, we decided on a walk around the lake of Oeschinensee. After all, we’d get fat if we spent another day sitting in a café drinking beer and eating rösti. I think that I can safely say that we worked off most of that potato, ham and eggs. Having reached the lake by chair lift, we plumped for a circular route on the north side, rising steadily through pine woods which smelt far superior to the ‘pine fresh’ scent promised us by household detergents, and then more steeply through lush green meadows. What a panorama! Blue-green in colour, Oeschinensee is set in an amphitheatre of mountains which at points rise sheer from the water. Above, grassy slopes and expanses of bare rock eventually give way to a blanket of snow. Our target was a small summer farm that doubles up as a café. Not for the first time, I cursed myself for not choosing a French-speaking part of Switzerland, where I could have conversed more confidently, but even my poor German was sufficient to order a coffee and a Sprite from the man chopping wood outside and, with no one else around, we lingered on the picnic bench just taking it all in. Next stop was Zermatt, beneath the mighty Matterhorn. At Kandersteg we’d been surrounded by peaks around the 3,000-metre mark, but here the mountains are in a different league altogether, and anything measuring fewer than 4,000 metres is dismissed out of hand. Again, we would need to make use of the transport (cable cars, chair lifts and funiculars) to give us a head start into the high mountains. We had started above the tree line, and our ascent took us into a lunar landscape in which the rocks either side of the path were covered in lime-green lichen. There were very few flowers, but those that were hardy enough to survive were startling in the vividness of their colours, almost as if in defiance of the otherwise quite barren slopes. We were too high up to hear cowbells, but we did walk accompanied by the shrill of marmots. The slopes were riddled with burrows, but we only saw one of these furry creatures. Either it has more official residences than the Queen, or its friends are very shy creatures. They weren’t the only things hiding from us, either – we were only aware of the position of the Matterhorn by the mass of cloud gathered around it like filings to a magnet. Seeing drizzle when I peered out from behind the curtains at 8am on our last morning, I made a U-turn and headed straight back to bed. But I was too hasty in writing off the day. By the time we re-emerged two hours later, the sky was completely cloudless and we hurried down to breakfast so as not to waste a minute more. The funicular was busy with day-trippers who crowded at the windows to marvel at the Matterhorn standing proud and alone against the blue sky. It’s strange that it is not the tallest of the mountains here (at 4,634 metres, the Dufourspitze boasts an extra 156 metres), but it is the most fêted, no doubt due to its striking profile.
To experience the same marvellous scenery, you can stay in the ever-popular Hotel Victoria in Kandersteg and the elegant Hotel la Ginabelle in Zermatt.  |
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“It’s not supposed to be like this!” I wailed as I drew back the curtains and surveyed the wet, grey scene before me. The idealistic dreams I’d harboured of walking beneath cloudless blue skies while cowbells clanged in the distance were shattered in an instant. Still, it was only our first day at Kandersteg; the weather could get better. And it did. Slowly. 
We hadn’t planned to go back, but the weather was so glorious the following morning that we decided it was worth it. What a difference a day makes! If Oeschinensee is impressive under a gloomy sky, it is absolute perfection when lit by the sun. The depth of colour of the water was so much more intense, the different shades of green in the meadows and the woodland were more apparent, and the outlines of the snow-capped peaks were crystal-clear against the blue sky. Everything glistened: the ripples on the lake, the snow, the spindly waterfalls, the wet rocks below them. This time we explored the opposite side of the lake, musing that our zigzagging path had as many creases as the crumpled strata in the (presumably) age-old rocks we could see across the water. Once again, it was a fantastic walk, and a very good note on which to end our stay in Kandersteg.
And so the first day saw us sitting in the funicular, listening to the likes of Queen and Lionel Richie blaring out over the sound system while we waited for it to set off bang on time at 10.10. It was all rather surreal. The silence of the cable car for the second leg of the journey came as a welcome relief. The car seemed like new, and it probably was – the Swiss transport system is deserving of the excellent reputation it enjoys. So too are the trails. The only people we saw on our ascent (and this was in mid-August) were half-a-dozen workers clearing the path. Considering that it already seemed more than passable to us, we wondered whether it was part of some government employment or offender rehabilitation scheme (we never did find out), but we were impressed nonetheless.
As on the sunny day at Kandersteg, there was no haze, and the ridges on the other side of the valley were sharply outlined. So sharply, in fact, that they looked like a razor’s edge. We were walking at an altitude a couple of hundred metres lower than the previous day, and it showed – our path led through grassy pastures, not lunar landscapes, and any deviation from the path had grasshoppers and crickets dancing and singing around our ankles, as if rejoicing at the appearance of the sun. Even the most modest gain in altitude brought more peaks and glaciers into our line of sight. We really didn’t need their encouragement to continue, however – it was an amazing day. The target we’d set ourselves was Riffelsee, the lake which is pictured on a massive mural in the tourist office. They say that the camera never lies, but we suspect the photographer of a little trickery. The image had given the impression of a big lake, so much so that we almost carried on past it, dismissing it as nothing more than a pond. Needing to prove to ourselves that it was indeed Riffelsee, we knelt down by the water’s edge and took the very same photo of the Matterhorn reflected in this seemingly expansive lake. And credit where credit is due, it did make a damn good picture. It might even make it onto our living room wall…