Stephen and Elaine Biddulph: ZERMATT SWITZERLAND

28 SEPTEMBER - 4 OKTOBER 2015

The Matterhorn

Thursday, 1 Oktober, we left Frankfurt with Dale and Sharon Greenwood and Steve and Liz Edmunds for Zermatt, Our route took us south past Mannheim, Heidelberg, Schwarzwald, Freiberg, Basel and Bern. None of us had ever been to Zermatt before, but despite the 9 hour drive, we were excited to see the tourist attraction and famous ski resort at the foot of the Matterhorn made famous in the late 1950s by Walt Disney's "Third Man on the Mountain."
Zermatt is not easy to get to, something we found out quick enough. We stopped at the town of Lahrs near Freiberg where Dale trained and gave some medical information on missionaries to Dr. Hatch who is taking over Dale's work when they return to Utah next week after 23 months of serving as Area Medical Authorities.
From Freiberg we traveled south into

Zermatt Houses

Switzerland, passing Basel and Bern where the LDS temple is in Zollikofen. From Bern we headed into the Swiss Alps region of magnificent alpine mountains. Near Interlaken we took the road to Reichenbach where we drove aboard a car ferry that transported us for several miles by tunnel through the mountains. We excited at a place called Kandersteg where we drove a few miles and descended into a large valley by a steep switchback road. A few miles east along that valley, we turned south again into a rugged, narrow valley and switchbacked our way up until we came to the little town of Täsch. Here we parked our car and took the train into Zermatt. It is the only way to get into Zermatt as vehicles are verboten (forbidden). After an 8 mile train ride we arrived at the main bahnhof in Zermatt. It was dark by the time we arrived in Zermatt, and we had left Frankfurt at 7:00 in the morning.
Zermatt is located in a narrow, very rugged valley with remarkable green grassy hillsides that quickly rise up into massive granite cliffs. A river runs directly through Zermatt which has been channeled by high stone walls. The water

Gornergrat Pass (Edmunds, us, and Greenwoods)

comes from high mountain springs and snow melt, and has a pale greenish color. Zermatt is a tiny village composed of one main street where almost all of the major shops are located. Everything can be found there, including many restaurants, clothing and artifact stores, bakeries, and hundreds of hotels and tourist apartments. A large Catholic stone church is in the center with a compact cemetery. A separate small cemetery is dedicated as a memorial to those killed climbing the Matterhorn throughout the years.
The Matterhorn rises prominently to the south of Zermatt and is easily visible when weather permits. During our stay, the mountain was not ever fully visible and somewhat shrouded by blowing snow and clouds. But occasionally we got fairly good pictures of its magnificent spire jutting over 4000 meters high. Disney made his famous "Third Man on

Main Street Shopping

the Mountain" film in 1959 in Zermatt, commemorating the 1865 climb to the summit. Seven men made it to the top and only three lived to tell about it, the other four being killed when one slipped and took three others with him down the glacier and off a 4000 foot precipice.
The town was stacked with apartments, hotels, and houses, but on the edges, the old Swiss chalets and old wood homes dotted the green meadows. We took the Gornergrat Bahn from the bahnhof in Zermatt up to Gornergrat which was above 3000 meters (over 10,000 ft). It offered a remarkable view of huge glaciers, great mountain ranges, deep, hazy valleys in the distance, and, of course, the magnificent Matterhorn. We took hikes, walked around town, and had a wonderful time.
Instead of paying exorbitant prices for hotel rooms, we rented an apartment with three separate bedrooms, a large kitchen, two bathrooms, and a nice living room with TV where we watched sessions of general conference. It was so much fun and relaxing to get away. The one good and bad thing was that I had absolutely no cell phone access there,

Birthday Toast of Airborne. Happy 68th!

and when I returned, I had 19 emails and many phone calls to return to mission presidents and missionaries. I spent all day Monday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the telephone getting caught up. Was a great 68th birthday for Elaine!!!