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In short

  • Duration: 3 days

  • Distance: 37 km and 2400 height meters

  • Wildcamping: tolerated above the tree line

  • Seasonality: July – September

  • Public transport: Zermatt (arrival and departure)

  • Highlights: Matterhorn basecamp (Hörnlihütte, 3260 m), Theodulsee, walking through the amazing geology of the Matterhorn

In August we finally took the change to go to Zermatt, and hike around the Matterhorn. This iconic mountain of switzerland is a must for most tourists and travellers, and we bended for it in the end as well. Beforehand I actually wasn’t really sure what all the fuss was about, never really liked overly touristic places, but afterwards I was really convinced about the beauty of this area. For me this hike ended out to also have a bit of a healing process, the semester coming to an end, the prospect of having to say goodbye to my friends and never live with them in this kind of situation again. The fact that I had been the happiest I had ever been the past few months, struck me during these days of hiking and made me extremely sad that all of it was coming to an end. This was the first time I ever experienced how hiking can also have a healing and therapeutical purpose and it really felt that I could process something during this three day hike.

Camping at one face of the Matterhorn
Camping at one face of the Matterhorn
Camping another face of the Matterhorn
Camping another face of the Matterhorn

We started and ended our hike in Zermatt, the capital of the Matterhorn. This village is really surreal to be in, there are the outdoor fanatics, with their scarpa mountaineering shoes, their arc’teryx outfit and alpinism rope and helmet strapped on their backpacks. Then there are the tourists, that take the cable car up, walk a 100 meter such that they can take a picture and go to the nearest restaurant to have an all-inclusive buffet. They walk around with their trolleys and they buy from the cheap souvenir stores, of which zermatt is packed full off. Both these groups have too much money, and we didn’t really feel like spending much time here, so we immediately started hiking to put as much distance between us and this place.

One of the first sights of the Matterhorn
One of the first sights of the Matterhorn

The hike

The Matterhorn hike was beautiful, immediately after heading off the roads got quiet, we didn’t see many people while making our way up. We camped somewhere with the view on the Matterhorn. When we got to the Theodulsee we had a great view of the Matterhorn and the lake. We took a small detour to hike up to the Matterhorn basecamp (Hörnlihütte), where we had a drink. Since going up and down to the basecamp is the same way, it was easy to leave the backpacks behind and just go without. On this altitude I really started to notice the lack of oxygen and therefore it was nice to hike without an extra weight pulling me down. On the last night we camped on a plateau with on one side a great view of the valley, and on the other side the Matterhorn.

 

The route

How to get there

It’s pretty easy to get to Matterhorn, the train to Zermatt leaves every hour. Just notice that the train to Zermatt is quite expensive, and that having a halbtax is probably gonna safe you some money. One way ticket to Zürich was around 60 CHF, and it takes around 3 h 15 to get there from Zürich HB.

Good to know

If you have time you cann add a detour to Hohtälli, Gornergrat and Riffelhorn, although high, i think would be well worth the effort.

Going to Hörnlihütte (Matterhorn basecamp, 3260 m) is also very much worth your time!

Best time to hike

This hike is best to do in summer, although it might be more touristic, you will also be safe from unexpected snowfields while going up.

Clear eaxmple of the greenschist of the matterhorn area.
Clear eaxmple of the greenschist of the matterhorn area.

Geology

The Matterhorn has an amazing geological history, and it’s even cooler to do this hike while knowing it. Around 200 million years ago, supercontinent Pangea (where the dinosaurs lived) started to be broken apart by the Thetys ocean. The ocean separated two new continents called Laurasia (containing Europe and Asia) and Grondwana (containing Africa). After 100 million years the extension of the Thetys ocean stopped and a small continent called the Apulian plate broke off Grondwana and started moving towards the european continent. This resulted into the western Thetys being subducted under the Apulian plate (with first the Piemont-Liguria Ocean and later the Valais ocean). The Alpine orogeny began at the end of the oceanic subduction, when the European and Apulian continental crusts collided, and resulted in the formation of the nappes (sheets of rock).

Camping with the view on the valley
Camping with the view on the valley

So the Matterhorn consists of two parts: the Tsaté nappe and Dent Blance klippe (which is an erosional remnant of a nappe). The lithology of the lower Tsaté nappe is called greenschist. They used to be part of the Piedmont-Liguria oceanic crust and consists of ophiolites and sedimentary rock. Ophiolites are leftovers of oceanic crust that were created at the mid-ocean ridge and later emplaced by tectonic forces at convergent plate boundaries. The forces that have been wielded at the subduction can be seen in the shape of the accretionairy prisms in the ophiolites. The upper Dent Blanche nappe composes the pyramid of the matterhorn (above 3400 m), and consists of gneiss. Gneiss is a metamorphic rock, which means that it used to be another rock that has been deformed under high pressure or temparture, in the case of gneiss this parent rock is often either sandstone or granite. The Dent Blanche klippe (Dent Blanche is another mountain in the Alps) is a remnant of the Apulian plate, which was the small continent that broke up from Africa before the alpine orogeny. So although the Matterhorn mostly consists of rocks found in Grondwana, nearby mountains like Monte Rosa consists of rocks which were part of Laurasia.

The characteristic pyramidal shape, which shapes the mountain today, is caused by natural erosion over the past million years. At the beginning of alpine orogeny, the Matterhorn was a rounded mountain like a hill. Because its height is above the snowline, its flanks are covered by ice, resulting from the accumulation and compaction of snow. During the warmer period of summer, part of the ice melts and seeps into the bedrock. When it freezes again, it fractures pieces of rock because of its dilatation (freeze-thaw). This forms a cirque, which is an amphitheatre-like valley formed by glacial erosion, and four cirques led to the shape of the mountain.

 

The matterhorn under the fullmoon
The matterhorn under the fullmoon