In Search of Powder: Zermatt
We caught up with Fall Line contributor and self-confessed powder junkie Emily O’Connor to find out where she goes when the snow’s falling and the call of fresh tracks is impossible to resist.
I’m one of you. A civilian who loves skiing, rather than has it as a full-time job. Drat! But that doesn’t stop me thinking about the slopes all the time. Especially the ones in a certain Valais mountain town…
I may have only spent a fraction of my life in Zermatt, at something like six months total, but somehow it just feels part of me. A skiing second home in the best possible way. God, I must be following half the village on Instagram!
Why all the love? Well, it’s not even the mountain where I really started skiing properly. That was Chamonix. But sorry, ace-photographer Christian, also featured here, you’re off the mark.
“For us good skiers, rather than belay-down-the-Aiguille-amaze-balls-professionals, Zermatt wins every time.”
Because for us good skiers, rather than belay-down-the-Aiguille-amaze-balls-professionals, Zermatt wins every time. It’s much quieter than its French competitor. You have to really want to be here thanks to the three-hour car journey, or four-hour train from Geneva – but that’s fine for me, as it thins the crowds so brilliantly, compared to an easy-to-reach 75-minutes-from-the-airport spot like Cham’. While the avalanche-controlled but never-pisted itineraries (hello below the Rote Nase) are as tasty as a giant Toblerone.
Which brings me back to the stupendous best-looking hunk-of-mountain-anywhere-on-earth – the Matterhorn. Oh yeah, you don’t have Mont Blanc on a chocolate bar do you?
Chasing First Tracks
Anyway, returning to those delightful turns, I like to start my day with the Klein Matterhorn Express, as you rarely get more than 50 skiers ahead of you, and it requires just a single mid-station change before you’re at 3,883m, ready for the Trockner Steg to Furgg off-piste options below (keep high and hard left over the ridge for the best almost 40-degree north-facing snow).
Once you’re through this, flow down for all the Schwarzsee face-shot options below the upper part of the gondola; plenty just call this Schwarzsee trees, but strictly speaking you’re talking itinerary options like Tiefbach, Momatt, or closer to civilisation Hermetje into Bielti.
White Hare (no.28), below the Gornergrat, is another of my favourites, with over 1,000m of vert (like so many runs here) waiting for you as you move on to Mittelritz down to Grunsee.
I dream about all these – and the useful central poles used to mark itineraries in Zermatt – as I return to the Malteserhaus every night. It’s modern, clean, and perhaps less covered in chocolate and honeycomb than you might wish for given the name. But it’s excellent value at under £100 a night for two, and not a bad location at eight-minutes’ walk from the already-mentioned Matterhorn Express.
Navigation Tips
What else? Plenty will tell you the four areas – left to right think Rothorn, Gornegrat, Schwarzsee and Klein Matterhorn – are disjointed. Nonsense. They all funnel you down to the village, which you can walk across in well under 30 minutes. But you do need to study the piste map in advance (ideally over a beer at the slopeside Hennenstahl converted hen stall) if you’re going to the Italian/Cervinia side, so you know which lifts to hit and when, to avoid a very expensive taxi ride home.
Après and Eats
Final tips: think Sunnegga/Rothorn area and their slightly mellower off-piste if the weather’s iffy, Harry’s bar for straight-from-the-slopes drinks in town, then on to Du Pont for rustic yet really good food at not-silly prices.
