Matterhorn Glacier Paradise Express Journal
September 5. Sunday
Gary
Since the sky was SO clear this morning, we took the Matterhorn Express gondola to the top of the Klein (Small) Matterhorn at over 12,740 feet elevation. It is the highest gondola/cable car station in Europe, and it’s only 4.3 miles from there to the (big) Matterhorn, peak to peak. There were hundreds of skiers at the top where there are huge snow fields. Inside the glacier at the top of the mountain there is the Glacier Palace with amazing ice sculptures that last year round.
Cathy
Our first glance out the window toward the Matterhorn, to see what kind of day we might expect, showed the town and valley still dark and the sun shining full on the Matterhorn! It was golden and looked magical. Gary was so excited! He said he absolutely had to go back up into the mountains, this time taking the gondola clear to the top. So we did! Our friends stayed in town.
The gondola goes to the top of the little Matterhorn about 4.3 miles from the big one. There is a viewing platform on top and one can see so far on a clear day like the one we had today. There was little snow until we got to the top and looked toward the south and southwest at snowfields where a couple hundred people were ski skiing. Yesterday our German friend had seen people on the gondola carrying skis and snowboards and wondered aloud why they were toting them around when there was no place to use them there. It really was surprising to see such a huge area for skiing.
We caught up with our German friends for dessert and had another great discussion. Sunday afternoon we visited the museum. It was typical of such museums and I liked it, but Gary not so much, also typical :) One big part of it was the discussion around the death of 4 men who had been part of a climbing group tackling the Matterhorn. Blame was laid at different people's feet. Still today it is debated, and of course it will never be resolved since it is so far in the past.
It was our last night together with our friends, so we ate at a restaurant they had noticed earlier. It was near the train station, had a nice menu at reasonable prices. 3 of us had one of the many Rösti dishes. I wasn't hungry enough to eat a full meal but Gary was, so didn't want to share one like we usually do. So I ordered a small bowl of Heusuppe ("hay soup") and the salad bar. Heusuppe has no hay in it, rather it is a soup made from whatever meat and vegetables the farmer's wife had handy and was taken to be lunch for the workers as they harvested the hay, hence the name.
Gary wanted to share his photos from today and also show our friends photos of our kids and offspring, so we took a little bit of time before bed for that. We parted just after 9:00 PM with plans to breakfast together one last time before they headed on their Glacier Express excursion from Zermatt to Chur, their celebration for their 50th anniversary.