Saas Fee and the Adventure Hike

When you hear about an easy wildflower or nature hike in Wisconsin, you expect a broad/flat trail that’s about a mile long and maybe 10 different types of flowers. An easy (hiking difficulty, with moderate technical difficulty per the tourism site) wildflower hike in Switzerland involves sweeping vistas of some gorgeous alps (one ridge between you and the matterhorn), some nice footpaths, some boulder hopping, an incredible variety of wildflowers, a gondola ride up (think ski hill, not venice), a chair lift down, and cutting across the faces of 4(?) mountains. All in all, the wildflower hike outside of Saas Fee (pronounced “sauce fay”) is the kind of hike I wish I could do every day of my life. The wildflower hike alone was beautiful, though clouds kept shrouding some of the mountain tops before being pushed off again, but we also got to link up to an “adventure” trail. The hiking rating must have been due to elevation gain/loss, because we stayed at a pretty constant altitude for the most part (with a ton of switchbacks to get us lower on the mountain at the end). There were crystal clear streams which fed into crystal clear creeks which went cascading off the face of the mountain (really pretty from the valley below). Right before we switched from the wildflower trail to the adventure trail, we stuck our feet in one of those crystal clear streams, and while my feet were quite happy with that, they were very cold happy feet. Guess that’s what you get when you’re hiking on mountains covered in glaciers.

The adventure trail was another thing. We went along through pine forest (the wildflower hike had been above the tree line) and beside some very nice looking rock faces. The adventurous part of the adventure trail had us crossing cable bridges (which were surprisingly close to the rock, and surprisingly un-terrifying), climbing down rebar ladders, etc. It was a pretty good time, though Therese’s never-far-from-civilization thing still stands. I mean, gondolas up the mountain sure are convenient, but then you’re stuck with cables crossing your nice vistas, power lines headed to restaurants and huts far into the otherwise unclaimed alpine areas, etc.