Zermatt
“Every night, do you understand, I see my comrades of the Matterhorn slipping on their backs, their arms outstretched, one after the other, in perfect order at equal distances...”
A Race to the Summit
In the summer of 1860, Edward Whymper came across the Matterhorn for the first time. He was an English artist and engraver who had been hired by a London publisher to make sketches of the mountains in the region of Zermatt. Although the Matterhorn had a mixed reputation among British mountaineers, it fascinated Whymper. Up to that point, the mountain had never been climbed - and, although Edward Whymper had no mountaineering experience, he dreamed of being the first person to stand on its summit.
At an elevation of 4,478 meters (14,692 feet), the Matterhorn is a nearly symmetrical pyramid. It forms a natural border between Switzerland and Italy, towering over the Swiss village of Zermatt to the north and the Italian village of Breuil-Cervinia to the south. Just to the east of the Matterhorn is Theodul Pass, the main passage between Zermatt and Breuil, which has been a trade route since the Roman Era.
In August of 1861, Whymper made his first attempt to climb the Matterhorn - to become the first person to stand on its summit - but was forced to turn around at just 11,414 feet. He made several attempts the next year, in 1862, but none were successful. In 1863, he returned and was caught in a violent storm halfway up the mountain; he was trapped in his tent for 26 hours before he was able to escape the mountain. I can’t imagine what mountaineering tents were like 160 years ago. He didn’t return to the mountain for another two years. I don’t blame him.
In June of 1865, five years after his initial encounter with the Matterhorn, Whymper returned with a new strategy for climbing the mountain. He had devised a new route to the summit, hired a team of Swiss guides, and set off for his seventh attempt to climb the Matterhorn. During this attempt, his team was shelled with a series of avalanches and rockfall while climbing up a narrow passage on the mountain. Though no one in his party was injured, the incident was frightening enough that his guides refused to make any further attempts with him using his new route.Thwarted again, Whymper spent the next few weeks climbing other mountains in the area with his Swiss guides, thinking and re-thinking how to successfully climb the Matterhorn.
Meanwhile, in July of 1865, the Italian Alpine Club was established and its leaders laid plans to conquer the Matterhorn, believing that the first person to stand on top of the mountain should be an Italian (and definitely not Ed Whymper). When Whymper caught wind of their plans, and learned that no Italians would climb with him, Whymper hiked from Italy over Theodul Pass and into the town of Zermatt to assemble his own climbing team. He was going to race the Italians to the summit.
On the morning of July 13, 1865, Edward Whymper and his newly assembled team set off from Zermatt, while the Italian Alpine Club’s team set off from Breuil-Cervinia, simultaneously racing to the summit of the mountain along opposing ridge lines. Climbing a new route along the Hörnli Ridge, Whymper and his team were surprised at how easy the climbing was (up to that point, the standard climbing route was along the southern, Italian ridge). Whymper described one section of the route as “rising 3,000 feet like a huge, natural staircase” and said that for large portions of the climb, the difficulty was so low that his team didn’t even use a rope. With the exception of a few short breaks, Whymper and his team made their way to the summit largely without incident and became the first people to stand at the summit of the Matterhorn.
Whymper’s team had beat the Italians to the summit so narrowly that they could literally see his climbing party standing on the summit, less than four hundred meters above where they were standing. Defeated and dejected, the Italian party abandoned their summit attempt and descended back to Breuil-Cervinia.
Whymper’s party built a small rock cairn on the summit and stayed for approximately an hour before beginning their descent of the Hörnli ridge toward Zermatt. As the group was descending, roped up, one member of the team slipped and fell, dragging three more people off the mountain with him, before the rope attaching the seven team members snapped. Four climbers fell thousands of feet to their death, leaving Whymper and his two remaining partners to soberly climb down several hours to Zermatt on their own before a search party could be sent up to the Matterhorn Glacier. Of the four climbers that fell, only three bodies were ever found.
The Hörnlihütte
Edward Whymper’s ascent of the Matterhorn marked the end of the golden age of alpinism in the Alps - with the Matterhorn being one of the last great first ascents in the region. The mountain has now been climbed via routes on all four of its ridge lines and all four of its faces during all four seasons of the year. Even for more modern mountaineers, standing atop the Matterhorn is considered a significant achievement - and with more than five hundred reported deaths on the mountain, it’s an endeavor that comes with significant risk, too.
Fifteen years after Whymper’s team first ascended the Matterhorn, the Swiss Alpine Club built the Hörnlihütte along the Hörnli Ridge of the Matterhorn (1880). The hut would serve as a base camp for climbers attempting to summit the peak along the standard route, and the first edition of the hut had beds for 17 climbers. Fast forward to today, and the hut offers 130 beds for overnight stays, showers, a full restaurant, and even Wi-Fi. In August and September, as many as 150 climbers line up outside the hut each morning to follow Edward Whymper’s route up the Hörnli Ridge; their headlamps can be seen all the way down in Zermatt.
Knowing all of this, Natalie and I set off one morning from our apartment to hike up nearly six thousand feet from Zermatt to the Hörnlihütte. For those of you that aren’t married to my wife, you can save yourself about four thousand feet of climbing by taking a gondola like a normal person; but, alas, this is what I signed up for when I proposed to the love of my life. If you’re ever in Zermatt, I’d highly recommend the trek up to the hut; it’s an incredibly historic place in the world of mountaineering, and standing at the base of the climbing route is a wildly humbling experience.
A Mountain Town Unlike Any Other
The Matterhorn is arguably the most photographed, most recognized mountain in the world. It’s been the subject of paintings, books, and films. It inspired the shape and logo of the Swiss Toblerone candy bar in the 1920s. It inspired the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride at Disneyland - the first tubular, steel rollercoaster of the world - in 1959. It’s credited with inspiring the development of American ski resorts and towns like Jackson and Sun Valley. It’s famous.
Unlike most mountain towns I’ve been to in the world, Zermatt is unique in the juxtaposition that it provides. Hardcore mountaineers walk down cobblestone streets past Instagram Influencers and shops that sell $30,000 watches. Newly-weds ride around the town on horse-drawn carriages past solo travelers queuing up at McDonald’s for $15 Big Macs.
Coming from the Pacific Northwest, where our mountains are known for their remoteness and their wilderness, I think Zermatt can be disorienting. And, coming from largely small towns in the Alps up to this point, Zermatt felt like a bit of a zoo compared to Austrian towns like Neustift and Mayrhofen. Still, there’s something magical about Zermatt - the history, the lack of cars, the fact that there are 38 different +4,000m peaks accessible from the village. The village is as aesthetically beautiful as any valley I’ve seen, and the whole time I was there, I couldn’t help but imagine how cool it must be to ski there in the winter.
Having said that, by the end of our week in Zermatt, Natalie and I agreed that we likely wouldn’t be back to Zermatt any time soon. Seven nights felt like enough time to do everything on our list in Zermatt: from seeing the famous Valais black-nosed sheep to hiking all over the valley to tackling the town’s trio of via ferrata routes. We definitely don’t regret our time Zermatt, but our time there confirmed that we prefer a quieter, calmer mountain environment. And that’s just what we’d find one valley over, in Saas-Fee.
