• Zermatt – Bettmeralp

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We moved on from Zermatt and with a little research came across the mountain village of Bettmeralp, about an hours drive away.

Once we had explored this hidden gem we wished we had discovered it earlier as this place had such stunning hiking opportunities and was much quieter than some of the other places we had visited.

Bettmeralp is another car-free village which is only accessible by a large cablecar, sitting at 1.957 metres above sea level.  It is located in the immediate vicinity of the impressive Aletsch Glacier, the first Unesco World Heritage Site of the Alps. They say this village boasts 300 sunny days a year, sitting on a ‘sun terrace’ high above the Rhone Valley, that could be inticing enough for some!

We spent our first day walking around the village, noseying in the few shops that were there, then we found a lovely coffee shop, wandered up to the beautiful lake Bettmersee and found another lovely coffee shop with amazing views so chilled out there for quite some time before walking around the lake planning our hiking trip for the next day.  We love this place, its small, its quiet, and its pretty.

Next days hiking turned into a 10 hour amazing hiking trip as we got greedy.  We managed to squeeze in all the hikes we wanted to undertake here and pushed it right up until the sun set which made this hike feel even extra special.  

So we started off with a hike to The Great Aletsch Glacier.

Guarded by thirty-two 4,000-metre peaks, this trail provided us with some spectacular experiences.

The Aletsch Glacier is the largest glacier in the Alps. It has a length of about 23 km and covers about 82 sq km in the eastern Bernese Alps, it is absolutely huge and astonishing actually.

The path we took runs parallel with the glacier and all day we simply looked at the crevasses, the small glacial lakes and the towering snow covered peaks.

Walking away from the glacier the landscape suddenly changes and we left behind us the snowy peaks and walked towards the Marjelensee Lake with the Gletscherstube mountain hut situated beside it should you need some food and drink, we had came fully prepared.

From here we then took a shortcut to Fiescheralp, following the trail through a very long tunnel which was barely lit. From Fiescheralp we were then off to summit Eggishorn.

This path would be described as an alpine route, but it was nothing too difficult, a few steep sections, a few rocky sections and once we reached the peak, with its big metal cross, we were rewarded with magnificent views both of the Rhone Valley and the 4000m-peaks of Valais, including Jungfrau, Eiger and Monch and we could even see the Matterhorn from here and of course more stunning views of the Great Aletsch Glacier.

We could have stopped here and been easily contented but there was one more hike we really wanted to do but we needed to get a move on as it was a longish hike and the sun would set around 9pm(ish).

This hike was up there with the “Best-of-the-Best”, it was one of those hikes that gave us a bit of everything, it was long, it was steep, it was airy at points, it involved scrambling, it was quiet we never saw one other person on this route at all and of course all the way it provided us with plenty of stunning views of the Aletsch Glacier and all the Valais 4000m+ mountains when it was safe to look!!

The path along the ridge I felt was absolutely thrilling and I guess suitable for sure-footed hikers without fear of heights! 

Along some sections there were ropes and steels bars to assist with the hike, I like a good Via Ferrata,  and we were provided with plenty of warnings about not venturing out of the white-blue trail markers provided.

We hiked, we stopped, we admired, we repeated…all the way.  We were still no-where near the end of this ridge walk and the sun was beginning to go down.  It was important that we got off this section before darkness but we were not too concerned about hiking outwards in the dark once on more solid ground should we need to.  All cable cars at this point had stopped as they were now closed for the night so it was going to be a long, steep decent, but we knew this and I kind off like that feeling, a race against the sun, keeps you moving…quickly!

We continued along the long ridge just enjoying every single minute of it.  On reaching the end, it was a steep climb downwards from the summit of Bettmerhorn for quite a while before we hit a steepish path/staircase type trail and this helped us get down very quickly.  We could not have timed it any more perfect, as soon as we hit the village the sun disappeared and darkness was all around.

Bettmeralp I felt was like a dream village.  As mentioned previously it is car-free which I love and it has its typical wooden chalets surrounded by colourful flowers, everywhere, surrounded by mountains and more mountains its almost flawless. 

This for us had been the perfect day with the perfect hike to finish off our perfect time in these mountains before hitting some cities which would finish off our trip.

Hope you enjoyed the video above, just some of the amazing views we got to see. Love this trek ❤ 🇨🇭.