and sunny valley, its slopes terraced with vineyards and orchards of apple, peach, pear and apricot. Its climate is more akin to that of the Mediterranean than the high Alps, and the fertility of its broad, flat bed is there for all to see. But in marked contrast the tributary valleys which feed it are mostly narrow, tight-walled and rock-girt. Tiny villages hug abrupt hillsides. Above them ancient chalets and haybarns represent alp hamlets that command some of the loveliest views in all of Europe. These views are (forgive the cliché) simply breathtaking. They incorporate shapely peaks and long ridges bristling with spires. They dazzle with snowfields, hanging glaciers and the chaos of icefalls exposing several shades of blue in the eye-squinting light of summer. They include soft green pastures and the deeper forest green-that-is-almost-black, the shadowy-grey of ravines, the silver spray of cascades, the azure sparkle of a mountain lake. Wild flowers freckle the meadows in early summer with yellows and blues, pink and scarlet and mauve; a bewildering kaleidoscope of colour and fragrance is created, the air thrashed by butterflies’ wings as they flit from one pollen-heavy flower-head to another.
Walling these valleys, or standing sentry-proud at their head, are mountains straight out of dreams: the Bietschhorn, Matterhorn, Monte Rosa, Dom, Weisshorn, Täschhorn, Zinalrothorn, Ober Gabelhorn, Dent Blanche, Dent d’Hérens, Mont Collon, Pigne d’Arolla, Mont Blanc de Cheilon, Grand Combin, Mont Dolent…the list goes on and on of peaks that formed the backdrop to the adventures of Alpine Club pioneers who were active among the Pennine Alps a century and more ago. Yet although the foundations of mountaineering were set upon these peaks, one need not be a mountaineer to fall under their spell. You don’t have to climb them to enjoy their company, for by taking to the footpaths that weave among their shadows we can bask in their glory and become, for a few fleeting hours, days or weeks, figures in their landscape.
The footpaths of Switzerland’s Alpine regions are highways to a wonderland. Along them the fit and healthy, young and old, can become absorbed by a world of infinite beauty that may only be imagined by those who remain road-bound. The 8000km network of paths in canton Valais (Wallis to German-speaking Swiss) leads, surely, to some of the very best that this extravagantly picturesque country can boast. So, whether your wandering is limited to valley-bed trails, along the mountainsides from alp to alp, or more energetically over passes that conveniently breach some of the high ridges, there will invariably be something of scenic drama to see and to experience, thereby adding a richness to your Alpine days.
The Valais region has its own distinctive character, be that of its mountains, its valleys, the native population or the architecture of its villages, some of which came late into the 20th century. Even today a number of these villages retain an air of welcome simplicity that has long been lost in some of the area’s bustling resorts, which bear a closer kinship with European capital cities than they do with the pastoral communities gathered nearby. The vernacular architecture of the Valais, best represented by the beautiful old villages and alp hamlets, is heavily dependent upon wood, and practically every valley is characterised by chalets of dark brown (almost black) timbers on a stone foundation standing side by side with traditional mazots (haybarns or granaries). These mazots are also constructed of dark brown timbers, usually lengths of horizontally laid pine logs fitted one upon another, and stand on staddle stones (Mäusesteine – ‘mouse stones’) to resist the attention of rodents.
One of the flower-bedecked chalets at Clambin (Walk 97)
Chalets and haybarns close ranks alongside narrow cobbled alleyways, seemingly unaltered in appearance for hundreds of years. At their windows boxes of geraniums and petunias add welcome colour, while small square vegetable plots are kept trim with chard and lettuce growing in neat rows. The aroma of cut grass and cow dung hangs over many of the villages, and it’s not unusual to see women tackling everyday chores dressed in traditional costumes of long black skirts, white blouses and black bodices embroidered with red and white threads, and with red scarves loosely tied. Some of the older folk wear traditional bonnets too – not for show, not for the benefit of tourists or for Sunday mass, but because it is simply their way.
Mostly, of course, tourism has had a major impact on village life and on the mountain scene, especially where downhill skiing dominates the locality’s income. Above Zermatt and Saas Fee, for example, cableways whisk visitors to remote summits or viewpoints where restaurants and gift shops stand on rocks that once were known only to climbers and Alpine choughs. Engineers have even tunnelled into the mountains to create underground railways – remarkable feats of engineering, no doubt, but unwarranted acts of vandalism on a fragile mountain environment.
In several valleys enormous dams have been constructed, reservoirs created, and hundreds of kilometres of tunnels and aqueducts laid as part of the complex Grande Dixence hydro-electric scheme, a scheme that transformed large areas of the Pennine Alps of canton Valais in the latter half of the 20th century, and which conservationists today are anxious to prevent from spreading further.
Fortunately such developments are not experienced everywhere in the region, and there are scores of enchanting areas where the mountain wanderer can tread in the footsteps of the pioneers with nothing of the twenty-first century to tarnish his vision of untamed wildness. For although the peaks and valleys of Switzerland have all been mapped, named, measured and photographed, although their exploration has been recorded in so many different languages that it seems there is nothing left to discover, the perceptive wanderer who takes to the steeply winding trail across the alps of the Valais with his eyes alert and senses tuned will find many a surprise waiting just around the corner or over the next hillside bluff.
This guide will lead you to some of those surprises…
The Valais region
Canton Valais, third largest in the country, is that region of southwest Switzerland which surrounds the Rhône valley. It begins at the Rhônegletscher between the Grimsel and Furka passes, and then flows southwestward as the valley of Goms through Fiesch and down to Brig at the foot of the Simplon pass. Just beyond Brig the valley swings to the west, then curves southwest again at Sierre, which stands close by the language frontier. All to the east is German-speaking Wallis; to the west, French-speaking Valais.
The Rhône flows on towards the canton’s capital, Sion. This historic town, extensively modernised and developed, has at its core a pair of rather incongruous castle-topped hills that catch the eye as one approaches. Beyond them, with vines on the northern slopes and orchards to the south, the river reaches Martigny, a busy town at the hub of major through-ways. To the southwest the Col de la Forclaz road winds up among more vineyards on its way to Chamonix; to the southeast an international highway runs to the tunnel and pass of the Grand St Bernard, the long-established route to Italy. But the Rhône swings at right angles away from Martigny, heading almost to the north now to pass the wall of the Dents du Midi before spending itself in the huge teardrop of Lac Léman – the Lake of Geneva.
From the path of the Haut Tour du Lac (the Chemin 2500), practically the whole of the Val de Moiry can be seen in a single glance (Walk 79)
Around 15 per cent of the canton is covered by glaciers, for on either side of the Rhône stand the largest snow ranges of the Alps: the Bernese Alps to the north and Pennine Alps to the south. Both are great spawning grounds for glaciers, but the largest of all these icefields is the 22km long Grosser Aletschgletscher which, fed by other glaciers, curves like a vast arctic highway from Oberland giants such as the Jungfrau, Mönch and Fiescherhorn before coming to a halt near the Aletschwald, some 1200m above Brig. At the Konkordiaplatz the ice is said to be around 800m deep and 1800m wide, but in common with other Alpine glaciers the Grosser Aletschgletscher is in retreat, and measurements show that the annual rate of shrinkage is about 20m, while its depth is also being dramatically reduced.
As for the mountains of this scenically spectacular region, the chain of the Pennine Alps which stretches between the Col du Grand St Bernard and the Simplon pass claims a greater number of 4000m peaks than any other Alpine region, and includes the highest mountain standing entirely in Switzerland (the Dom, 4545m), above Saas Fee; the largest massif in