The ledge and the high pass

An hour out of Saas-Fee the path stops being a path.

It narrows to a ledge with a wire rope bolted into the rock, and the Weissmies fills the entire far side of the valley. We met six people all day, in high season, one valley over from a busy resort. There is a boulder out there with a very long drop behind it, and not everyone in the group was willing to climb it for the photograph. That is the honest measure of day one.

Lunch is whatever you carried, because there is no kitchen up there. Afterwards the trail swings into the Mattertal and the whole cast changes: the Weisshorn ahead, the tip of the Matterhorn beside it, ibex working the slope below a bench somebody placed exactly right. Then a long drop into Grächen, a proper village on a sun terrace with shops, beds and a spa, and the last place you will see any of that.

Day two is the biggest day of the weekend. Five hundred metres down to St. Niklaus, then straight back up the old mule path to Jungen with the Matterhorn standing behind you, then a boulder field, then the Augstbordpass at 2,892 metres. Half of Valais opens from the top. On the far side you give away a thousand metres into the Turtmanntal, a valley so quiet its only village empties for winter, where the way out is a four-a-day bus booked by telephone and paid in cash.

There is a shortcut on day two, a bus and a small cable car that removes about two and a half hours of climbing. Two of our group took it. We did not, spent the morning chasing them, and caught them just below the pass, which felt like winning something nobody else had entered.

Who it suits: walkers who can do six hours twice and want exposure without technical ground. Who it does not: anyone who needs an easy exit, because above the treeline there is no lift out and no shortcut home.

Hardly anyone links these two days, which is exactly why they are worth linking.

42 km. 2,814 m of climbing. T3. One night in Grächen.