About the Via Alpina
The Via Alpina, aka the Alpine Pass Route, travels nearly due west with a slight southern tilt, crossing numerous alpine passes and staying in a series of mountain towns, ranging from the tiny Weisstannen to the chichi tourist mecca Gstaad. It’s situated north of the Rhone valley, in contrast to the Walkers’ Haute Route, which lies to the south of that valley.
Switzerland being entirely mountainous, walking in any direction means a lot of up and down. Though passes, or cols, are a big part of any alpine trek, the Via Alpina has a particular emphasis on them. Nearly every day features its own pass. Passes are amazing places, where you can often see the entire route just walked along with the route yet to come. It’s like looking into the past and future at once.
The nights are spent in the numerous towns that dot the mountains. Unlike some other treks that use lots of huts, the Via Alpina’s accommodations are almost all in hotels with a couple of guesthouses in smaller/more remote settlements. This increases the comfort level but also increases the price – the Via Alpina can be an expensive trip!
Switzerland has wonderful luggage transfer services. Alpine Exploratory arranged this for us, but it can be done privately as well. Every morning, we’d pack our suitcases and leave them at the front desk of our hotel. That afternoon, our bags would be awaiting us at our next destination. All we had to carry in our backpacks was water, raingear, and anything else we might want on the trail.
We were obviously traveling light – our suitcases were carry-on size – so we did a lot of hand laundry in hotel sinks. You really don’t need that much if all you do every day is walk along mountain trails!
A lot of the places we stayed and things we did on the Via Alpina are probably well known to Brits, Germans, and other people who customarily vacation in the Alps, just like people in South Carolina know what you can do in Myrtle Beach or Isle of Palms. While everything seemed new and strange to us, the places we stayed are old standard tourist establishments, some of which have been around since the late 1800s. Towns with odd names are ski resorts now – you can probably buy package tours to fly you from Birmingham (the one in the UK, not Alabama).
The temptation is to believe that we’ve made new discoveries, but nothing could be further from the truth. Anytime you find something new in Switzerland, it’s because you’re a novice and don’t know anything. This place has been around for a very long time.
Distance and transportation options
The stages on the Via Alpina tend to be long, many of them well over 20 kilometers. 24 kilometers in a single day is a lot, especially if you’re still adjusting to the time difference. 29 kilometers is probably beyond our capabilities.
We have concluded that 18 kilometers in a day is about as far as we can walk and remain happy. As this trek wore on, we grew increasingly adept at modifying our routes for our own purposes, which included maintaining realistic distances.
Modifications are generally easy to do because there are tons of public transportation options and lots and lots of alternate trails. It can be smart to at least look at a map before taking a trail, but everything is extremely well marked, and it’s almost always possible to navigate just by following signs.
Our route cards from Alpine Exploratory often suggested variants for a day’s walk, but we did some of our own as well. Some alternate trails were great (the Eiger trail was gloriously unforgettable) and some not so great (the terrifying balcony walk into Meiringen and the even more terrifying steep climb out of Mürren - if Alpine Exploratory calls something “unreasonably steep,” it’s best to listen.)
Buses, trains, and – best of all – cablecars are everywhere. They are expensive, to be sure, but they’re ubiquitous and easy to use. The ski lifts run all summer, the better to maximize tourist francs, and they are a godsend for trimming ascents and descents. The Swiss transit app is super easy to use, making transport really painless.
