Our final day was spent on a different part of the mountains. We headed to the southern end of town to catch the gondola to Schwarzsee. This gondola first pauses in Furi before continuing upwards; it doesn’t stop but slows down so you can hop out. The gondola continuously runs so you don’t need to wait for a specific time. If you don’t want to do any hiking you can take the gondola all the way up to Trockener Steg, where you can change to a different gondola up to Matterhorn Glacier Paradise. There is a restaurant, scenic view, and glacier.
We disembarked at Schwarzsee and found the starting point for our hike. Our objective for this day was to take the North Face snowshoe trail to a restaurant in Stafel, then continue on the winter hiking trail from Stafel to Zermatt via the hamlet of Zmutt. You can also hike to Furi from Stafel and take the gondola back down. If you’re up for it, the hike down is very easy incline wise.
The North Face trail (which is also sometimes a hiking trail, but not when we were taking it as the snow was too deep) shares the ski piste as it goes down the hill. Be sure to stop at the Zermatt sign and the bench that faces the north face of the Matterhorn for nice photos. Then follow the ski piste down from the gondola to the right towards Stafel. I will admit this particular trail was not well marked; there were two pink posts at the bench and then we didn’t find anymore until we had made our way down the hill quite a bit. Once you get close to where the gondola crosses over the ski piste you should see the pink posts again. From here the snowshoe trail goes off on its own and doesn’t meet the ski piste until they both end at the restaurant in Stafel. Once we got on the snowshoe trail, we were treated to fantastic views of the north face of the matterhorn. We met no one else on the trail and it was very peaceful. It was all downhill.
Once we arrived at the restaurant, we removed our snowshoes and continued on to the hiking part of our day. The hiking trail starts by going behind the restaurant and follows the road across and along the river. You can take the road all the way back to Furi or take the left branch that turns into an actual trail to make your way to Zmutt. As it is a road, this trail is very popular and the restaurant at Stafel seems to be a popular stop. Thankfully the road is wide so there is plenty of room to pass. We followed the road over and down the river and through a tunnel until we got to a sign that pointed the way to Zmutt. You can also see the hamlet off to the left across the river. As you cross the bridge once you get off the road, look down along the river and you will be treated to some really interesting ice formations. Then follow the path up to the hamlet.
Zmutt is a tiny 500 year old hamlet consisting of traditional alpine buildings. There are a couple small restaurants but they were not open the day we went (Sunday after Christmas). There is not a ton of information online about the restaurants and I suspect some of the other hikers we saw were expecting them to be open. Luckily we had plenty of snacks and continued on.
The trail between Zmutt and Zermatt is very popular. Parts of it are also in the sun which poses a challenge: the trail ices over due to the snow becoming packed down and then melting. If you are doing this trail in the winter and there hasn’t been any recent snowfall, I highly highly recommend good nonslip boots and hiking poles with the grips on the ends. If you have shoe spikes or shoe grips, even better. We saw several people who looked absolutely miserable trying to navigate the icy trail. Even though we had all of our gear, we had a couple small slips here and there. Overall the trail back down to Zermatt is fairly easy and ends right at the gondola station.
For our final dinner in Zermatt, we again headed around the corner to the Excelsior. We started with the salad and carrot and ginger soup, and then both had the lake fish with dill sauce. We ended the meal with the Toblerone mousse which was absolutely fantastic.
Overall, our trip to Zermatt was fantastic. It was wonderful to spend a few days outside in nature, and we were incredibly lucky to have excellent weather. Even though Zermatt is a very popular destination during the winter holidays, we were able to enjoy the peace and quiet of the outdoors away from people for the most part. If you want to visit Zermatt and don’t want to ski, you can still have a very memorable trip.