"The hills are aliiiive, with the sound of muuuusiiiic"

Unfortunately, I was not actually serenaded by Julie Andrews this weekend....although that would have been a sight to behold, wouldn't it?

If you haven't guessed yet, my latest excursion was to the site of one of the scenes in the famous musical, The Sound of Music (what a fantastic musical...). We didn't only get to see the Matterhorn (although that was definitely the main attraction), we saw the beautiful village of Zermatt, waterfalls coming from melted snow streams, and the glaciers from the summit of Gornergrat. Let me start from the beginning:

On Friday, I ended up taking a half day off work with a couple others to explore downtown Geneva while all the shops were still open. I was hoping to find some cool souvenirs for friends and family back home, but didn't exactly feel like spending 1000 francs on a Swiss watch for each person...sorry everyone. So we mostly just wandered, taking in the sights and eating raspberry sorbet on the edge of the lake, watching the Jet d'Eau turn to mist in the wind. At around 5:20, we met the rest of our fellow travelers at the train station to begin our four hour trek to Zermatt, Switzerland. The ride was the most beautiful ride of my life. On my right was Lake Geneva with Mt. Blanc towering over the rest of the mountains (an impressive feat considering it is about 100 miles away), and on my left were endless vineyards covering the mountainsides. The view continued this way for the entire 40 mile length of Lake Geneva, broken by the occasional castle sticking out into the lake or sitting atop a hillside, and then the vineyards continued for at least another 40 miles past the lake. It was surreal. I found myself wondering just how many bottles of wine these vineyards produced, and then I realized I was seeing only a fraction of a fraction of all the vineyards in Europe. Mind officially blown.

We arrived in Zermatt around 9:30 pm, and it was about the point that everyone turned to each other asking where our hostel was that we all realized no one knew where it was. Smart, right? Yeah, I thought physicists were supposed to be smart too...but luckily someone had the phone number, so we called and they gave us directions. Along the way was our first sighting of the impressive Matterhorn. Actually, impressive just doesn't cover it. There are no words to describe this beast. I had seen pictures of it and I had seen "The Sound of Music," but nothing prepared me for the real deal. I can't even begin to imagine how a mountain could be carved in such a fantastic shape.

The first sighting

Yes, I realize that this is just another picture of the Matterhorn, and pictures can't capture the true beauty of it, but I can try to describe it. Actually, I'm pretty sure that at least a third of the pictures I took on this trip contained the Matterhorn just because of its sheer beauty.

The hostel had been nice enough to hold dinner for us (especially since the cost of breakfast and dinner was included in the cost of the hostel), and we scarfed it down like there was no tomorrow. Literally. There was not a scrap of food left on that table. We all retired early in anticipation of an early start and a busy day on Saturday.

Saturday began at precisely 6:45am, when pretty much everyone's alarms went off within 30 seconds of each other. What a wake up call. We groggily rolled out of bed and went to breakfast, slowly waking up with each bite. At least, that's how I felt. I'm not actually sure about the others. We set out around 8:30 and spent half an hour trying to find the trail head. We eventually found it, and almost immediately we split into groups of the more and less experienced hikers. The more experienced hikers just went on ahead, and said maybe they'd meet us at the Swarzee lake on the map, but probably they'd just continue on to the Hornlihutte. The rest of us were undecided on whether we would hike that whole trail. Hornilhutte also happens to be base camp for those intending to climb the entirety of the Matterhorn, a feat I'm not sure I could ever pull off.

There is not too much to say about the hike up the mountain, except that the views are unmatched by any that I've ever seen. There were bare, rocky mountains with a very low tree line, and there were mountains with villages that looked like they could have been in the clouds. The most beautiful, however, were the mountains that stuck out higher than all the others, covered in a perpetual snowy blanket. That is, until we crested one of the many "hills" we had to climb and there was the Matterhorn in all its glory:

Partially covered in clouds, I was not sure I had seen a more beautiful sight. The hike in the Jura paled in comparison. Our group spent a full ten minutes just taking pictures of the beast, taking turns posing in front of it. The views only got better as we ascended higher.

You know when you Google search the Matterhorn and you see some pictures of it towering over a beautiful lake with a clear blue sky? Well, for how well known the Swarzee lake is, we figured for sure that had to be the lake in the pictures. We finally arrived at the Swarzee hotel and restaurant, where there was a small pond and a deep valley. Definitely no large, beautiful lake. We actually had to ask some random guy we passed on the trail where the Swarzee Lake was. At which point he pointed to that tiny pond. Swarzee Lake? The beautiful lake of the pictures? Wrong. So we continued on after a brief stop for lunch. A short time later, we came across one of the members of the "more experienced" group just chillin' in the shade of a hut once used for the cable car lines. He told us to go up ahead to the trail to the Hornilhutte - apparently it was a must-see. Let me tell you, it definitely was a must-see but definitely NOT a must-do. I thought that the scary-looking metal staircase we encountered was bad, but it was nothing compared to what came after. An even scarier looking metal grating walkway continued on a ways away, turning to half a metal grating walkway after a short time because every other grate was missing. That's right, you could step over open air, look down and see only the mountain far beneath your feet. Terrifying.

Oh but it got worse. I wasn't brave enough to go, but a short distance up ahead, the walkway continued like this without a railing. Now there's open air to the left AND beneath you. That's about the point we all decided to turn back and give props to the two members of our group who were able to continue on. We continued our hike along the "Glacier Trail," which was a rocky mountainside marked only by stripes of paint on the rocks. We were always searching for the next marker of the trail. It wasn't long before we had to begin crossing snow. Luckily, someone had been there before us so we stepped in the fresh footprints. There was only one mishap, with one of our members attempting to walk on the unbroken snow and sinking in to his thigh. I guess that's why you never travel alone, because two of our members had to dig him out. But all was good and we continued on. We began to see the light at the end of the tunnel about about two hours, when we noticed cable car lines running up the mountain. The goal was in sight! However, the light was swiftly turned off when we encountered an impassable frozen lake surrounded by snow that disappeared over the edge of the mountain. We might have tried to cross the narrower parts had our trusted footprints continued and had we not heard the swift river of water running under the melting snow. Reluctantly, we decided to retrace over two hours of hiking and meet the cable cars at the Swarzee stop.

But there was another surprise in store for us. When we finally arrived at Swarzee, the cable cars had stopped running for the day. At this point, I swear we were the only ones left on the mountain. It was an eerily peaceful quiet. We (even more reluctantly) began the two hike back to Zermatt, stopping once for water and a break. We returned for dinner after 12 hours on the trails and crashed hard for the night.

On Sunday, we walked around the village of Zermatt, eventually deciding to take the train up to the top of Gornergrat, 3100m high (10,168 feet). The view was similar to the views the day before, with much more snow and some real, not-melted glaciers. We spent two hours on the summit before heading down for lunch at a burger pub (yeah yeah yeah, American food in Switzerland, how lame...). We caught the 4:13 train back to Geneva after a long, fulfilling weekend.