Hiking from Täsch to Zermatt in Fall

Getting there

The Matterhorn is one of the most famous silouettes from Switzerland – the mountain with the tilted shape at the peak. A fantastic way to see the Matterhorn is to do a hike from Täsch to Zermatt, which offers spectacular views on a clear day. Täsch is quite equidistant from Geneva and Zürich, and it takes around 3:30h by train. By car, the trip is a bit shorter from Geneva, approx. 3 h.

Starting point: Täsch

Finishing point: Zermatt

Distance: 12 km

Total time: 4:30 h

Elevation gain: 913 m of ascens, 748 m of descens

Fitness difficulty: Moderate

Technical difficulty: Easy

Facilities: The beginning and the end of the route are in populated areas, where one can find bars, restaurants, and bathrooms. There’s no facilities other than banks to sit in the route.

Others:

When we went, end of October, part of the route was covered with snow, which makes the route more challenging.
Part of the route traverses a rockslide area, so check out the condition of the route before coming.

The hike

Start in Täsch & the ascend

The first part of the hike was the hardest. The ascent at the beginning is relatively steep, although then the slope is softer. The hardest part of the hike is that the first half is going up all the time. However, you can see beautiful views of the valley while ascending. Even more interesting are the Golden Larches, which are coniferous trees that get get yellow in fall and lose their pines. They are absolutely stunning! Fall hikes in the Valais region are a must in one wants to see those majestic trees. While ascending we could see an increasing amount of snow in the hike. It had been snowing the previous days, and some of it had stayed!

Heading towards Zermatt

The second part of the route was much easier. We reached an area of around 900 m where rockslides were more common. Because of this, every few hundred meters or so, there was a small refuge consisting of a metal tube covered with rocks. That’s the first time I’ve seen those refuges, but I appreciated them, as knowing that the rockslide area was 900 m long, I wasn’t sure I could run the whole distance in case of need.

Once we had reached the rockslide area, we had already almost finish the whole ascend and had a relatively flat path in front of us. The only issue was the thick layer of snow that had suddenly appeared, together with the dropping temperature. I regretted my interseason gloves, wishing I had taken the winter ones, because my hands were freezing. We walked in that temperature are for a bit more than a km before starting the descence. The highlight of that part of the hike was a beautiful viewpoint of the village of Zermatt, which in good weather had the Matterhorn right behind. For us, there was a cloud covering it, which was quite unfortunate.

We then started to descend, which I appreciated because I could feel my fingers again. The landscape changed a bit, and now was much more foresty. The descent is quite easy, not very steep. On the way there was another viewpoint, from which we managed to see the tip of the Matterhorn, but the mountain was still shy and hiding from us.

Finally, we reached Zermatt, and after walking for a bit, looking at the cute cottage houses, we took the train back to Täsch, which took around 12 min to reach the end destination.

Highlights of the hike

Definetly the views of the Matterhorn! Too bad it was quite cloudy for us and we only got to see it towards the end, but I totally want to do this hike again on a clear day.
The larch trees. They make fall look spectacular.