Luck Interrupted

Miles from Home - 5242.7
Firsts / Highlights - Hiking on Zermatt ski resort, Running of the Goats, more views of Matterhorn
Miles Hiked - 11.99 miles
Vertical Feet - -4,089 ft.
Route - View Today’s Route Here
People - Just me.

This post is from June 29, 2009.



Score one for the superstitious. The day after I blogged about the good luck and fortune I have experienced during my trip, I was hit with a rash of bad things. Superstitious people would say that I was asking for trouble by acknowledging that so many things had gone well. I prefer not to consider superstition, but those who believe would say that today proves their point. All in the same day, I had the following things happen:
1. My camera sensor started to fail – more later
2. My iPod froze
3. My GPS lost the record of today’s hike (later recovered)
4. A hiking mishap nearly took out my knee with the damaged meniscus.

My camera failed to shut down properly a couple of days ago and it overheated. I think this damaged the image sensor and the camera now only works intermittently. Returning it to the factory is the only way to repair a damaged sensor. That would be a 3-week process that isn’t practical while traveling. It is clear that the camera is going to fail, but I don’t know when it will become unusable. Canon will not do a replacement from a retail store because it is 2 months out of warranty. I could purchase a replacement, but that is very expensive in Europe and U.S. companies like Amazon cannot ship here. There are no good options, but I am going to roll the dice and keep using it until it fully fails.

The most serious problem happened while hiking across a snowfield today. I unexpectedly broke through the snow and my left leg dropped down to my hip where it became wedged between two boulders. This caused my right knee to abruptly go into full flexion, which is the one position I need to avoid while I live with my torn meniscus. It was initially very painful, but fortunately, by the time I am writing this, everything seems to be okay. Like my camera and my shoulder, failure is inevitable, but I am trying to live with their frailties until they impact my lifestyle enough that more definitive action necessary.



I figured out today why Matterhorn is so striking. Its shape and angles are distinctive, but the really noticeable thing is its apparent size. It is a high peak even by Colorado standards at 4,478 m (14,691 ft) and rises out of the town of Zermatt that sits at 1,620 m (5,315 ft). That makes the exposed vertical relief 2,858 m (9,377 ft) which is much larger than anything in Colorado and is a lot of exposed rock rising straight out of a valley floor. As you can tell by the pictures, I was just as captivated by it today.

On the good luck side of the ledger, the weather held out for another day. Considering the rain and snow that have been happening every day in Switzerland, I have been very lucky (there I go again). I’m starting to think that the locals are publishing bad weather forecasts to keep the tourists away.



While returning from my hike today, I was passing through Zermatt on the way to the hotel. I heard a chorus of clanking bells, and then saw a herd of goats heading toward me. Apparently the goats are moved between fields twice a day, and Zermatt sits in the middle. Running with the Goats is considerable less risky than Running with the Bulls.

Two days of intense hiking have left my legs more sore than they have been at any point during this trip. Since I was exploring the lift system today, most of my hiking was downhill. Going downhill is much more likely to make me sore than cycling or hiking up hill.

My last day in Zermatt ended with dinner in the hotel dining room (cheese fondue). The view of Matterhorn at sunset from my table was a good way to end this stay.

Exotic Lifts

Warning – this post may only be interesting to people in the ski biz – and maybe not all of them.

Doug Allen told me that ski lifts in Europe were more exotic than we commonly see in the U.S.. My tramp around Zermatt today was my first opportunity to see for myself.

Before getting to the lifts, the ticketing process was an interesting deviation from the U.S. model as well. They used the Ski Data point of sale and access control systems, and there is no way they could sell their products the way they do without it. Take the side of the mountain where I wanted to ascend as an example. The lift ticket had 3 different prices depending on whether you wanted to go 1/3 of the way up, 2/3 or all the way to the top. There were then 3 more price points if you wanted to ride the lift back down. Before you even start talking about discounting, packaging, kids, multi-days, etc., there were 6 prices you could pay to get on the lift just once. I was a little surprised to see that they not only had turnstile access to get on the first lift, they also had turnstiles to exit the lift at the top of #2 (and I assume #3). I could not figure out how they would handle exceptions for exit controls, but it certainly keeps everyone honest and accounted for. They did not prevent anyone from getting on lift #2, which I thought was a control gap, but they validated that you had paid for the 2nd segment of the ride when you got off at the top. They must have had some method to collect from unpaid riders at the top of each lift.

Unlike most U.S. ski resorts, Zermatt has a significant portion of their lift system running during the summer to provide hiking and biking access to their extensive trail network and the back country. They were operating 12 lifts, including gondolas, trams, a funicular, a cog railway train and something I don’t even know what to call (like an elevator that operates on a diagonal rather than vertical path). 4 of them service glacier skiing at the top year-round.

The summer access prices were very high - like everything in Switzerland. A ride on one of the small base area lifts could be as little as 10 CHF (Swiss Francs ~$.90). A single ride from bottom to top of the mountain can be as much as 58 and if you want to ride back down, the total cost is 90. Every lift has a separate price, but those are the extremes. A 3-day hiking pass that gives you access to everything is 183. Those prices make U.S. lift ticket prices seem like a huge bargain. For a little more than the cost of a single lift ride at Zermatt, you can ski all day at Steamboat. Skiing is just an amenity to enhance the experience of riding the lift.

Now – on to those exotic lifts. Here is the experience I had getting to the top of the second lift for today’s hike.

1) I purchased the ticket

2) I walked through a tunnel to get to the first lift. I don’t mean a hallway, I mean a 500 foot tunnel deep inside the mountain. Think capital spending like a large-scale mine.

3) Electronic status signs indicated the departure time for the next lift, which was a funicular (inclined railway).

4) The train arrived at the bottom station on what appeared to be a 35-40 degree angle. There did not seem to be any means of articulation in the train, so I believe the track maintained that exact pitch from bottom to top. The entire ride was underground, obviously engineered so that the grade from the starting point deep inside the mountain was exactly what was needed to reach to surface at the top station. The evac plan was apparently to use an 18" wide stair case that ran from bottom to top along the track. I would guess there were more than 1,000 stairs. Wouldn't that be fun in ski boots?

5) When we arrived at the top, the doors opened and I walked the final steps back into the sunlight.

6) This was a typical mid-way station like many ski mountains (except most mountains don’t have a view of the Matterhorn). It had a lodge with a dining room and a bike terrain park. It also had a smaller tunnel that lead to the diagonal elevator. You pressed a button to call for a car and a gondola-like cabin arrived on either of two tracks. When you entered, you pressed another button (like an elevator) and the cabin descended on the track to the lower terminal, perhaps 100 vertical feet below. This was obviously a low-capacity lift designed for limited use, but it solved the problem of a short steep pitch providing access to beginner terrain.

7) The next lift was a Doppelmayr gondola. Very familiar.

8) At the top of the gondola, you could either board the final lift or take a pair of high capacity elevators up two floors to exit building. Not that big a deal until you think of the cost of moving that many people efficiently.

9) The final lift was a 100-person tram that went the rest of the way to the top. I did not ride the final leg.

So to recap – For one of three major summer routes up the mountain, you take a funicular to a diagonal elevator to a gondola and a tram. There are other routes that use a surface cog railway, other trams and gondola as well as glacier-mounted chairlifts. In terms of investing in lift capacity, this place spends money like a Vegas casino in 2006 (does anyone remember those days?).

Luck and Fortune

Miles from Home - 5242.7
Firsts / Highlights - Matterhorn, big hike, fondue, raclette, Swiss chocolate and rosti
Miles Hiked - 10.0 miles
Vertical Feet - 3,513 ft.
Route - View Today’s Route Here
People - Just me.

This post is from June 28, 2009.



My Dad and I have discussed the difference between “Being Lucky” and “Being Fortunate”. The essential difference is that being lucky is something that happens to you, while being fortunate is something that happens as a result of your actions and decisions. I think those are good definitions, but I am not sure I can define whether the results of my trip so far are lucky or fortunate. I’m sure there are elements of both. What was it that Chris Diamond decided to allow me to take the time off that I needed to do this? What was it that allowed me to get on the train with my bike even though the conductor was certain that nobody was going to ride the train without the proper ticket that could not be purchased? What was it that allowed me to break into my hotel instead of sleeping on the street outside the gate? What was it that the weather in Zermatt was perfect today, in spite of the fact that it has been lousy for weeks and the forecast was marginal?

In each case, I can identify one or two things that I did correctly to create a favorable outcome, but even with those actions, the outcome could have been far less favorable. I don’t believe in the supernatural, so that is out as an explanation. I think it is a probability game, and I have been the beneficiary of the odds a number of times now, and the laws of probability say that in spite of my best efforts, I am due for some unfavorable outcomes.

For now, however, I will take the good as it comes.



Today was a perfect day in Zermatt. I stayed in Finale Ligure just long enough to wait-out the bad weather before coming to Zermatt. If I had come here directly from Bormio, which would have been more efficient, I would have been sitting inside watching it rain and snow. As it turned out, I had a great hike to Edelweiss, up a big alpine climb, to Zmutt, Furi and back to Zermatt. Hiking in Switzerland is something I have wanted to do as long as I can remember wanting to do anything. What a great first day for doing it. It was one of the best days they have had this whole summer in Zermatt.



The big headliner at Zermatt is Matterhorn. I have seen pictures of that peak my whole life, but seeing it in person is mesmerizing. I found myself sitting down on the trail and starring at it for minutes on end. It has so many shapes and angles that are different with every view. It looks like a number of things. It looks like a movie company logo, like a piece of fractured quartz and like a piece of hand-broken parmesan cheese (enough to keep Maurizio going for a very long time). Whatever it looks like, it is big and impressive.

The fact that I was obsessed with views of the Matterhorn means that you will be seeing pictures of it multiple times today. Sorry. Hopefully, these will be some views you haven’t seen before.

I won’t have my bike for about a week, but that didn’t keep me from getting a good workout today. I started out by taking a steep hike up to Edelweiss – a small lodge about 1,000 feet above Zermatt. It has no access that I could see other than the hiking trail to get there. That probably justifies the price I paid for lunch. 16 CHF for Rosti (pan fried potatoes), 2 for an egg and (this was the shocker) 6 for a ½ liter of water. Altogether, lunch was 24 CHF (1 CHF = .90 USD). I knew that Zermatt was going to be expensive, but that is why I am keeping my stay short. In spite of the price, it was a great lunch to keep me going the rest of the day and the view was hard to beat.

After Edelweiss, I continued hiking up. My intended destination was a small town called Zmutt. I eventually got there, but not without a substantial uphill detour. I suspected that I was on the wrong trail for some time, but I didn’t care because it was a nice hike. I eventually ran into 3 men in their 60’s and 70’s hiking down toward me. I was WAY above tree line, and they were hiking down to me. They spoke only French, but we spent a little time pointing at the map and figuring out where we were. They were obviously fit hikers, but they had no better idea of where they were on the map than I did. We concluded that I needed to turn around and take the low trail to get to Zmutt.

I hiked down the mountain with the gang of old men and eventually found a branch that lead to Zmutt. The detour meant that I climbed over 3,000 feet today. For those keeping score, the climb portion of today’s hike was about 3 miles at over 22% average grade.



Tomorrow I will hike again, but I think I will take advantage of the extensive cable car and mountain train system to get to the high country. Like everything here, using the lift system is very expensive. I think it will cost almost as much to ride the lift once for hiking as it would to buy a lift ticket to ski all day in the U.S. (a 3-day hiking pass costs about 180 CHF!). Zermatt apparently out-Aspen’s Aspen. I expect having access to the high alpine zone will make it easy to forget the pain of buying a 1-day ticket, although it is hard to believe the scenery could be a lot better than today.