Corseax-Zermat Day 14

April 13, 2010

Day 14 Corseax-Zermat

Thankfully I had been drinking lots of water during night because by the morning I was feeling better.  We decided to let me sleep just a little longer than originally planned, but by around 09:30 we were on the train heading to Zermat, home of the Matterhorn.  The train ride was nice, with views of castles and churches on cliffs.  We even saw the tops of the mountains across from Heather and Matt's (we had only seen the bottoms since our stay). It took us a few trains to get to Zermat, as usual for our train trips.  In Visp, the views of the mountains were starting to get incredible.  These were real mountains.  When we got on the train from Visp to Zermat, they checked our tickets (nothing unusual) and this time we found out our Eurail passes were no good.  We ended up having to pay for the tickets for this portion because it's a private line.  It was definitely worth it, even if it was unexpected.  We got into Zermat around 13:15 and since the tourist office wasn't open, we started to wander.  It was another town like the one we skied by the day before.  There were only electric cars and horses as vehicles.  It was very nice.  The town was super cute too.  By this time, I was starting to feel a little sick again.  We headed towards the "view point" for the Matterhorn and saw our first glance of the great mountain.  It was a nice clear day so it was a great view.  We then tried to find out hostel and after a very roundabout way of getting there, we made it.  Turned out, you couldn't check in until 16:00 and there was no one at the office until then, so we left our bags where it said we could and headed back to the tourist office to get some info about skiing and a hike.  I was still trying to decide if I was up for a hike, even though I could feel my body starting to give up on me.  Once at the tourist office, Trevor found a pamphlet on spas and pools in the city to encourage me to relax, before our skiing day the next day, but when he came back with the info about the hike, I just couldn't refuse.  So we went to a grocery store to pick up some food and headed on a 3 hour hike.  The first part of the hike was uphill entirely, and just at the start of the trail we had a little picnic. The hike we took was called the Matterhorn trail.   It was uphill for about 45 min before we made it to Zumutt, a little village that looked like a ghost town along the path.  The next part was a little bit uphill until we hit a fork in the road where we split up.  It had started to get cloudy and now you really couldn't see the Matterhorn.  I headed directly to Furi while Trevor headed to a place called Stafel.  We agreed to meet at the hostel.  This part of my hike was pretty much a road the entire way right next to what I would learn the next day to be the ski out to Furi.  I kept seeing signs telling  me how far until Zermat and I kept taking pictures of them to see if I was slower or faster and it turned out I was about 30 min faster than the signs.  When I finally got back into Zermat, the path took me directly to the hostel where I checked in with a less than pleasant front desk man.  I then thought I would go out and walk around a bit more until Trevor got back from his hike, but when I left the hostel it had started to snow hard enough that I didn't want to be out there so I returned to our room where I got acquainted with two of our roommates.  It wasn't long before Trevor arrived.  I had started falling asleep when he got there and was told that I had been snoring.  I must have been tired.  Our evening was pretty uneventful from there.  We ate at the downstairs restaurant called Sparky's and paid way too much and then pretty much went to bed at 21:00.  That was the first day at Zermat.