through some villages incorporating a Walser settlement. These people have Germanic origins, their ancestors having made the journey to the mountains around AD1000. They settled in many Alpine regions, notably around Alagna and Macugnaga, and still preserve the basics of their original culture.
The Swiss part of the trek is exclusively in the Wallis canton, staying high above the Saas and Matter valleys. The relatively new Europaweg (established 2000) links with the long-existing Höhenweg to make the world’s longest balcony path (at least that’s how it feels) all the way from Saas Fee to Zermatt. While this trail is a visual joy, it does keep the hiker away from some of the charming villages in the valley – it may be that the future Tour of Monte Rosa takes to the valley paths (shown as Stage 8A in this guide) to avoid the Europaweg, which has serious maintenance problems, and the upside of this will be the chance to discover these traditional hamlets. Zermatt and Saas Fee – along with Grächen, which sits between these high-traversing trails – provide a good insight into life in this German-speaking part of Switzerland.
The Monte Rosa massif
When driving up from the lowlands of the Po Valley past Milan on a clear day you will notice a misty mass rearing up in the distance. Soon you will distinguish snowy slopes and rocky buttresses, but even so this huge massif seems completely improbable from the motorway. This is the Monte Rosa massif, and you will better understand its situation and associated culture and weather if you can visualise its exact location. The massif forms the southern extremity of the Pennine Alps, and is the first obstacle encountered when heading up from the southern plains. The massif is shared between Switzerland and Italy, situated in the Italian regions of Piedmont (provinces of Verbania and of Vercelli) and the Valle d’Aosta (province of Aosta), and the Swiss canton of Valais (Wallis). The name pied monte literally means ‘at the foot of the mountains’.
Monte Rosa’s four highest summits (L to R): Nordend, Dufourspitze, Zumsteinspitze and Signalkuppe with the Margherita Hut just visible close to its 4559m summit
Facts and figures
The Monte Rosa massif is very large – the biggest in the Alps – with 22 peaks over 4000m. Ten of these peaks form Monte Rosa itself. The high point of Monte Rosa is the Dufourspitze, which at 4634m is the second-highest peak in the Western Alps. The official limits of the Monte Rosa massif are:
West Theodulpass (3317m)
East Monte Moro Pass (2853m)
North Schwarzberg-Weisstor, next to the Rimpfischhorn, in the Mischabelgruppe (4199m)
South Col d’Olen (2881m).
Matters are made more complicated by the fact that the massif straddles the Swiss-Italian frontier and thus many of the summits have both Italian and Swiss names (and sometimes different altitudes as the maps do not always concur!).
The northern side belongs to Switzerland and holds the greatest glaciers, such the Gorner Glacier (Gornergletscher), which is the second-largest glacier in the Alps and runs down to the Zermatt Valley (Mattertal). The Italian side is far less glaciated since it faces south and east, and here the most important is the Lys Glacier (Ghiacciaio del Lys or Ghiacciaio di Gressoney).
One of the most fascinating aspects of the Monte Rosa is its East Face, which is the highest in the Alps. There is a height difference of around 2470m between the meadows at the end of Valle Anzasca to the top of the mountain. Seen from Macugnaga, the face forms a steep and colossal barrier – virtually a Himalayan wall in the Alps. It features one of the longest couloirs of the Alps, known as the Canalone Marinelli after its first ascentionists. Also in the Monte Rosa massif, between the Nordend and the Dufourspitze, is the highest pass in the Alps – the Silbersattel (4517m).
Why ‘Rosa’?
The origin of the name ‘Rosa’ is lost in the mists of time. One version has it that the name comes from the beautiful pink colour (rosa) that tints wide glaciers and snowfields at sunset and sunrise, when the first and last light of day hits the different faces of the massif. When seen from the low valleys and big cities such as Turin and Milan Monte Rosa appears huge and magical, almost floating on a thin layer of clouds. When the sun goes down, the last rays of light bathe the mountains with a strange palette of colour. However, this interpretation could just be romantic nonsense. It seems more likely that the name ‘rosa’ comes from an ancient dialect word rouèse or roises, meaning ‘glacier’.
First ascents
The achievements of the earliest explorers of the Monte Rosa summits are undocumented how can we know … how can we know how many crystal hunters or shepherds tried to climb these peaks? But the first recorded ascent of the Monte Rosa massif is said to have taken place in 1778, when seven Italians from Gressoney went up from the south side, lured by tales of a mythical lost valley. The high point reached by this group (at about 4000m) was called the ‘stone of discovery’.
Ibex at Bettaforca with the Parrotspitze summit behind seen from Stage 3
Recent history of mountaineering on the massif is firmly linked to Italian priests: the first ascent belongs to Alagna’s priest, Pietro Giordani. He reached 4046m (now called Punta Giordani) in 1801. To Giuseppe Zumstein belongs the ascent of the Zumsteinspitze (4563m) in 1819, and to N Vincent goes the ascent of the Piramide Vincent (4215m) in 1819.
In 1842 another priest, Gnifetti (a name associated with many Monte Rosa peaks), reached the Punta Gnifetti (Signalkuppe) (4554m). In 1861 an English expedition (EN and TF Buxton and JJ Cowell) climbed Nordend (4612m) with two Guides. In July 1855 an English expedition (J Birkbeck, C Hudson, E Stephenson, and J and C Smyth), with Swiss Guides, attained the highest summit of the range, the Dufourspitze (4634m).
The first difficult route, the Nordend East, was climbed by an Italian expedition (led by Guide L Brioschi) in 1876, and the first winter ascent belongs to another Italian expedition (L Bettineschi, F Jacchini, M Pala and L Pironi) in February 1965.
Glaciers
Glaciers and glaciated mountains feature strongly all along the Tour of Monte Rosa. The valleys have been carved by the ice, and many people now come to the Alps to see what remains of these huge frozen rivers. The terrain encountered on the trek has been largely shaped by glaciers – mainly long gone – and all around are high snowy mountains. The trek has one short passage on a glacier which, although quite flat and apparently banal, should not be underestimated.
Glaciers respond to climatic changes. In cold periods with heavy snowfall glaciers expand downwards, only to retreat in warm dry periods. Over the course of the centuries the climate has changed more than once, and these fluctuations have influenced the life of the Alpine populations.
The Middle Ages were a time of relative warmth which favoured the colonisation of the Alps at increasingly high altitudes. Glaciers retreated considerably and artefacts found at now-glaciated passes are evidence that much of this terrain was ice-free for many centuries. The 16th century saw the beginning of the Little Ice Age, a cold period of heavy snowfalls which lasted three centuries, and the glaciers regained much territory. The advancing glaciers buried many of the high pastures and gave rise to fear and superstition among mountain people – the ice was literally pushing up against their front doors, and they were moved to call the priests to exorcise these demonic forces.
The mid-19th century saw the start of the warm period which has continued, with occasional colder intervals, to this day. The extent
