Okay well for those of you who are Disney fans you may recognize this famous peak that has been somewhat reduced in scale at Disneyland. I love the Matterhorn ride, especially waiting in line listening to the oompah music....well enough of that. The city of Zermatt lies in the valley right below the Matterhorn and is well known for it's skiing which is year around, this was my base of operations.

I was a little worried when I first reached the Vallis region, which is in the Southwest of Switzerland. First of all I had to take the car onto a car-train transporter which went through a 20 minute tunnel that cut through the mountains...no lights, just pitch black...I couldn't quite tell what the couple in the car in front of me was doing...but...we'll leave that one alone. So once we got out of the tunnel...I couldn't even see 20 feet in front of me because the clouds and mist were so thick and that lasted all the way to Zermatt. I was starting to worry that I would never see the Matterhorn during the weekend.

Zermatt is another car free town and there is a short train ride to get into town, the only automobiles that you see are little electric powered taxis for those tourists that bring in the heavy duty luggage.

So bright and early the next morning, I wolfed down some fruchstuck (don't know about the sp), breakfast, and headed for the funicular that would take me to my hiking destination. The timing was perfect and as you can tell from these pictures the clouds were just lifting.

The hike was great and the terrain was quite a bit different from what I had ecountered the week before at Jungfrau...it was very rocky and I thought it was cool to see how the ranges differed from each other. So I got back late in the afternoon and kicked up my heels waiting for the sun to set since I had heard that the Matterhorn looks really neat when the sun sets....and this is what it looked like. It was a good day...my muscles were slightly sore, my face a little burnt and I had taken a bunch of good pictures = )

...I'm looking forwards to tommorrow.

OR
Onwards!!!