After 10 days of hopping on and hopping off Swiss trains at various ski resorts we (Steve Westlake, Patrik Lundin) arrive in Zermatt - ready to pay homage to the Matterhorn.

Train across the Alps… the story so far:

- Day 1&2 - St Moritz: Fantastic skiing, amazing views, posh as anything
- Day 3&4 - Davos: Zero vis, broken rib, great hospital
- Day 5&6 - Disentis: Friendly and fun freeride heaven, we have to steal our own kit back
- Day 7&8 - Andermatt: All the potential in the world, but not quite enough snow…
- Day 9&10 - Bettmeralp: High, car free, and the longest glacier in the Alps.
- Day 11&12 - Zermatt: just arrived…

All pics by Patrik Lundin. www.patriklundin.com

We leave Bettmeralp on the cablecar (the only way in and out of the resort) and drop down to Betten station at 6pm for the final 2-hour train journey to Zermatt. Patrik takes the chance to enjoy an impromptu wine/cheese/meat/bread picnic. If he had a third hand, it’s a fair bet it would also contain food.

 

They certainly extract their money’s worth from the Matterhorn in Zermatt. Look around and almost every brand logo you see uses the iconic pointy triangle in some way. Nicolas (left), who works in the tourist office and is our guide for the day, says his boss calls the Matterhorn the hardest working member of their staff. And it doesn’t even need a loo break! The magnetism is the same when you’re on the mountain - your eyes are constantly drawn back to it… unless it’s lost in the clouds of course, as it was for much of our two days in swish, car-free Zermatt.

 

Compared with Bettmeralp, the last resort we visited, this place feels just vast. Zermatt seems to be doing all it can to connect everything to everything with chairlisfts crisscrossing cablecars and even train lines. The mountain is a crosshatch of high tensile cable zooming people as quickly up slopes as they can slide down.
 
In the low visibility of our first day, we’re grateful to have Nicolas as our guide. He takes us to Sunnegga and Rothorn, and he’s not hanging about. “Don’t worry about there being bumps on the piste, even in these conditions” he says. “They are prepared perfectly.”  Still, after my white-out rib-cracking experience in Davos a week ago I’m a little cautious. And next time we stop, Nicolas seems suspiciously covered in snow. Out of politeness, we say nothing.

 

We take an early lunch after a brilliant morning of careering around in the gloom. In the excellent Simi restaurant we find a table next to these lively ladies who have been making annual visits to Zermatt for more than 700 years… I think that’s what they said.

 

The sun comes out in the afternoon and Zermatt’s pistes offer endless miles of high-speed adventure. We’re tempted by the freeriding possibilities at Stockhorn, but Nicolas, who is an ice hockey player and so seems to have extra credibility, says it’s really not worth it because of the lack of recent snow. He also offers the following pearl of rib-wisdom: “Pain-wise, cracked or bruised ribs are worse than broken ribs.” Sounds plausible to me because I’ve had surprisingly little jip from mine.
 

The Gornergrat railway is an utterly charming way to get to up the mountain. If the Swiss got into space travel, they’d do it by train. And it would run on time.
 

I’ve always thought there aren’t enough escalators at ski resorts. Zermatt goes a fair way to putting that right. (For the record, the longest escalator in Switzerland is in a car park in St Moritz. Fact.)
 

Nice touch, though I’d have preferred menthol lyptus…

 

And so a Great Train Journey across the Swiss Alps, taking in six resorts in 12 days, finally hits the buffers…
 

… brought to you by Patrik Lundin (left, photographer, Swede) and Steve Westlake (right, most of the time).
 
What we’ve learned:
- Swiss trains are fantastic
- Skiing in low visibility can hurt
- You can’t eat too much cheese