When we woke up this morning (at about 7:00), it was 4 degrees C (about 39 F.) outside and the weather forecast said rain. Neither Shirley or I felt motivated to go out and hike in the cold rain. We lounged around, ate breakfast, and played Kings in the Corner. By about 11:30, we decided that we were done lounging and got dressed to go out.

We found the funicular that went up through the tunnels to Sunnegga (2288 meters) and then transferred to a gondola that took us up to Blauherd (2571 meters).   Our plan was to do at least part of the 5 lake hike. We talked to the young man at Bluherd and he explained that we should hike over to Fluhalp (2616 meters) which took a bit of uphill but was not hard. He said we could have lunch there and since it was already about 12:30, we decided that was a good idea.

The glaciers near Fluhalp were spectacular.

I just loved looking down on the clouds below us.

As we passed the first lake we were surprised that our cameras showed the reflections that we actually couldn’t see with our naked eyes.

I couldn’t believe how cold my hands were when we arrived at the restaurant.  I had a delicious bowl of potato soup. It was a cute restaurant.

After lunch we started down the mountain. We were headed for Zermatt (1620 meters). There were actually snow flurries as we started down but it didn’t last very long.

Getting back to Zermatt would be about 1000 meters which is about 3281 feet but that does not explain how far we actually descended because of all the ways that the trails meandered back and forth. The signs we passed also gave us several choices of going to the next place so we were never certain that we were on the right path. But on we walked.

We took many photos as we were walking and walking and walking.  I am not sure if I have them in the correct order, but it sure was a great day.

The purple flowers were very pretty.

Shirley was taking a photo.  Many of the trails were along ridges and it was absolutely fantastic.

The trees were reflected in this lake.

Shirley took a photo of me taking a photo.

Some of the path was pretty stoney but not difficult.

This mountain with three peaks reminded me of 3 Finger Jack.

When we would turn around, we could see these mountains.

I loved the little village of (probably vacation) houses that we passed on the way.

You can see the many signs on the post.  It was pretty confusing sometimes because it showed 2 different ways to get to Zermatt.

We kept wanting the Matterhorn to come out from behind the clouds. It would peak out just a little and then go beck. We were pretty excited.  I am not sure why Shirley’s iPhone captured the image batter than my camera. Here it is.

We are still hoping to see more of her before we leave Zermatt on Monday.

The Color in the reservoir was so glacier like.

The path started to go through the forest.  It went down, down, down.  It was not difficult for us – just ver long for the end of the day.  There were switchbacks after switchbacks after switchbacks.

 

Somebody had carved a toadstool out of the wood.

The path kept going and going and going. When we finally thought we were back to Zermatt, we discovered that we had to meander through town for quite a while. We passed these beautiful flower arrangements on a couple of buildings. I have been meaning to take photos of how almost all of the houses we have seen from the trains have arrangements like these. The Swiss people do such a beautiful job with window boxes.

We were absolutely exhausted when we finally walked into downtown Zermatt at about 6;30 so we stopped at a restaurant (Walliserkanne) for a fondue dinner.

We could hardly believe how lucky we were when we left the restaurant and came upon this group of people singing in the street.

It was absolutely wonderful. That gave us just enough energy to walk back to our apartment. I have barely had enough energy to upload the photos, shrink them, and write this post.

We are so blessed.

• The rain never came today.
• The Matterhorn almost showed herself
• We are strong enough to have walked all the way down the mountain.

I was pretty exhausted when we arrived back at our apartment at Residence Patricia.  I can hardly believe that I had enough energy to upload all of the photos, shrink them, and write this post.  I hope it has made sense.