Day 11: Zinal to Gruben

Today didn’t start out too well, except that breakfast was a smorgasbord of cheese, ham, chocolate granola, yogurt, and fruit. Then we realized that somebody (me) had made a slight scheduling error. If we continued to Cabane Bella Tolla as planned, we still had five days of hiking, but we need to be in Jena for my conference in five days. So we changed plans and decided to hike over the Forcletta directly to Gruben. We spent the next few hours making sure we would have a place to stay that night and the last night on the trail. Staying in the Europa hut and hiking the Europaweg were billed as the crowning pinnacle on this amazing hike, so we were upset to find out that the Europa hut was full Friday night. We looked at the map and decided to reserve beds at the Domhutte, on the slopes of Switzerland’s tallest mountain.

We finally left Zinal around 11 AM, a disappointingly late start since Gruben lay a solid 6 hours away. The trail out of Zinal was straight up but then leveled out to a very beautiful, nearly flat trail. The vista behind us (up valley) was impressive! On the other side of the Forcletta, we were treated to the visual wonders of the Turtmantall valley. The most impressive part was the Weisshorn, whose knife-edged summit was creating its own weather as snow blew off the ridge. The hike was beautiful and only gradually downhill until the end.

We walked through a sheep farm with some very cute, confused, and noisy inhabitants. At one point, the farmer lit a small fire. They all started bleating and ran toward him. Then just as the first sheep got to him they suddenly realized that you shouldn’t run into a fire, and the whole herd took a sharp right turn, bleating even more. They were very wary of us, too, but were cute even when they were running away baa-ing.

We had to stop for several pictures on the way down on account of the views. Once the trail started descending in earnest, we high-tailed it to Gruben in a record downhill time for the Harper’s. We made it to our hostel right about 7:00 – a long day!

On top of the Forcletta, we had decided it was time to eat/”cook” the food we bought in La Sage. So Chris poured macaroni into his nalgene to let them soften. Then in Gruben we combined the wet, mushy noodles with a can of diced tomatoes, tuna, and cheese. Holy crap, it was disgusting!! We both ate as much as we could but were gagging by the end and threw a bunch away. We took our cheap butts into the hotel restaurant and each had a beer. Chris had an enormous plate of fries and I had some delicious homemade pumpkin soup. I think it made up for the awful macaroni mixture and only cost about $16. Our beds were in the attic but were the only ones up there and the beds were amazingly comfortable.

Leaving Zinal, far below

Hiking up the Forcletta

The Weisshorn is my new favorite mountain.

Our hotel in Gruben, the Waldesruh