The glittering wonders of Saas-Fee
Saas-Fee is incredible. It is a small village and enormous ski resort in the east of Valais, surrounded by 4000-metre-high mountains. Two glaciers inch from the mountains towards the valley floor, and you can ski amongst it all. To get there you take a train to Visp, and then one of the ever-present Post busses up to the village itself. This takes almost three hours, which is a long time in Swiss-distances, so Tanya and I and some friends decided to stay there for the weekend. We left on Friday and arrived in the little village in the icy dark. We crunched our way through the snow to a little hotel and hoped for good weather for the morning, because the forecast was for warm temperatures and heavy cloud.
The view on our first morning in Saas-Fee.
The weather forecast turned out to be wildly inaccurate! We woke to absolutely clear skies and a lovely sunrise on the mountains, which sent them pink and orange for about ten minutes. The mountain in the middle of the photo above is The Dom, which at 4546 m is the third highest in the entire alps, the second highest in Switzerland, and the highest entirely within Switzerland. Not a bad mountain to ski under.
The Dom (4546 m).
One of the many fantastic things about Saas-Fee is how high you can get on the lifts. By way of two cable cars and - get this - an underground railway line, you can emerge at 3500 m and ski down from there. Up that high it was pretty cold, but the snow was just perfect to ski on. It's a beautiful long run all the way back to the town.
I particularly enjoyed being right amongst the glaciers. For a good section at the top you're actually skiing on top of the glacier, which is why there are signs everywhere telling people not to leave the pistes. This year there is not very much snow, so we got amazing views of the glacier ice peeking out from under the fresh snow. The seracs, crevasses, and ice walls are beyond spectacular.
Not only is this resort amazing, but the après-ski situation is not to be sneezed at. We found good food, drinks, and beats everywhere, including high on the mountain during the day.
Like a swarm of snow-making bees.
Saas-Fee is in German-speaking Switzerland. I'm still not used to the language changing so quickly. Between Sion and Leuk the announcements on the train changed order, from French first to German first. By the time we got to Visp most people around us were speaking German. I only know about five words in German, but one means "hot jam donut" and another means "thank you", so I get by just fine.
Exactly what I thought about the snow at 3500 m.
At the risk of depleting my entire supply of German words I'll use two more and say - danke shön, Saas-Fee. We'll be back!