Switzerland
Passes, four-thousanders and a walking network like nowhere else.
Switzerland is the country of the pass. Here the Alps fold into their highest form: sixteen four-thousanders, glaciers feeding the headwaters of the great rivers, and mountain valleys that for centuries were reachable only across the passes. Those passes are the canvas of walking in the country: mule tracks that carried trade and migration since the Middle Ages, now maintained with a precision no other country matches. Between the villages lie the ridges and lakes of the Bernese Oberland, Valais, Graubünden and Ticino, and since 2008 an official network of national walking routes has stitched the whole country together. The Tour du Mont Blanc loops ten stages around the Mont Blanc massif through France, Italy and Switzerland, over passes that connect the valleys of three languages. The Bärentrek crosses 130 kilometres and eight stages of the Bernese Oberland, from Meiringen to Gstaad, over seven passes between glaciers and alpine meadows; the name recalls the time when only wild animals used these crossings. Both routes can be walked in either direction, with the best season between late June and late September.
Trips in Switzerland
11 days
Hard163 km9798 m
Mont Blanc massif · Switzerland, France, ItalyTour du Mont Blanc
The classic walk around Mont Blanc: 164 kilometres, three countries, eleven stages from 10 to 21 kilometres, and every day a balcony view of the highest mountain in the Alps.
6 days
Hard97 km7889 m
Berner Oberland · SwitzerlandBärentrek
Six days over the passes of the Bernese Oberland, from Meiringen past the Eiger north face and over the Sefinenfurgge and Hohtürli to Lenk: the classic Via Alpina week.