Читать книгу Walking in the Valais. 120 Walks and Treks онлайн

10 страница из 88

Kev Reynolds, 2014

The trail that leads above the Grosser Aletschgletscher is one of the most popular on the northern side of Rhône Valley

INTRODUCTION

The Gratweg above the Aletschgletscher leads to Riederfurka (Walk 6)

The valley of the Rhône is a long, deep furrow cut by a plough of ice. Ice-melt fills its rivers, and the mountains that rear majestically to both north and south are laden with permanent snows that give birth to literally hundreds of glaciers, among them the largest in the Alps.

And yet the Rhône is not a frosty, arctic region at all. On the contrary, it’s a warm and sunny valley, its slopes terraced with vineyards and orchards of apple, peach, pear and apricot. Its climate is more akin to that of the Mediterranean than the high Alps, and the fertility of its broad, flat bed is there for all to see. But in marked contrast the tributary valleys which feed it are mostly narrow, tight-walled and rock-girt. Tiny villages hug abrupt hillsides. Above them ancient chalets and haybarns represent alp hamlets that command some of the loveliest views in all of Europe. These views are (forgive the cliché) simply breathtaking. They incorporate shapely peaks and long ridges bristling with spires. They dazzle with snowfields, hanging glaciers and the chaos of icefalls exposing several shades of blue in the eye-squinting light of summer. They include soft green pastures and the deeper forest green-that-is-almost-black, the shadowy-grey of ravines, the silver spray of cascades, the azure sparkle of a mountain lake. Wild flowers freckle the meadows in early summer with yellows and blues, pink and scarlet and mauve; a bewildering kaleidoscope of colour and fragrance is created, the air thrashed by butterflies’ wings as they flit from one pollen-heavy flower-head to another.