Hiking the valais/wallis

There are 48 mountains in Switzerland that have an elevation over 4,000 meters (13,000 feet), and the Valais (Wallis to the German speaker), located in the southwest corner of Switzerland, has the highest concentration of these 4,000-meter peaks. Some of the peaks in the Valais top out over 15,000 feet which is not surprising considering that the Valais is home to the Pennine Alps, the highest mountain chain in Western Europe. The town of Zermatt, perched beneath the iconic Matterhorn, is the world-famous center for hiking and trekking in the Valais. Other popular destinations include Saas Fee, Verbier, and Crans-Montana.

Just west of Zermatt, basically heading straight south from the Rhône Valley, lies a 15-mile long valley called the Val d’Anniviers. The valley is punctuated with pint-sized historic villages with names like Grimentz, Zinal, and St. Luc. The valley is remote. Some of the roads in the Val d’Anniviers were the last to be paved in Switzerland, and the pine wood chalets that dot the landscape still bear their original slate rooftops.

Tradition runs deep in the Valais, and it’s not unusual to see ladies in traditional Swiss dress raking hay during the summer while herds of sheep graze across the hillsides. A very popular inn-to-inn hiking tour through the Valais is the Hiker’s Haute Route, also called Chamonix-to-Zermatt. The HHR officially begins in Chamonix, France, but the trail crosses into Switzerland on day two and never looks back. The HHR links the Swiss villages of Trient, Champex-Lac, Verbier, Arolla, Les Hauderes, Grimentz, Gruben and Zermatt plus a whole host of hamlets and huts in between. The predominant language on the HHR is French, but the greetings turn to German after passing the town of Grimentz. The region is rugged and remote, so the accommodations can be varied. For a person that wants to hike the highest mountains in the Alps, the Valais is a preferred choice. As with the Berner Oberland, multi-day inn-to-inn hikes can be arranged from virtually any village. A quick two-day trip, the tour of the Barrhorn based from Gruben, is actually one of the highest mountain hikes in Europe (3,610 meters) that is accessible without advanced alpine equipment.

For hiking tours that visit this region of the Swiss Alps, please click here.