SURF & TURF
Where do you go when your family holiday needs to combine riding trails with riding waves? Switzerland, of course...
Every year during the summer we are faced with the same problem: where can we go on vacation as a family so that everyone gets their money’s worth?
My son Lois wants bike parks and jumps, my daughter Leni wants enduro trails, and my wife Karen wants a high-Alpine experience. Me? I just want to go surfing. The unlikely land-locked recommendation from friends was Switzerland’s Valais region. So we went. And we were not disappointed.
Leni, Lois, Karen, and I started our trip in the eastern part of the canton Wallis. For us it was a six-hour drive to get there from Germany. The people here speak German as well, or at least something that sounds like German: Welsh Dütsch. The Lötschental is a very wild valley surrounded by glaciers. It’s even known as the “The Magic Valley’’, and it hosted a round of this year’s Swiss Enduro Series, which means there must be decent trails around.
Thomas is our guide. He is a local bike guide and an enthusiastic enduro rider who happens to be on the organising committee of the race and the mountain bike representative for the valley. We met him at the base station of Lauchernalp, and from there we took the gondola towards a high plateau. There, where the ski area starts in wintertime, is the end of bike transport. Now it was time to pedal so we rode uphill through the small village with our kids moaning behind us.
Lois is 12 years old and he hates pedalling. It’s all about bike parks and uplifts for him. Leni is 16 years old, and she puts up with some pedalling, as long as the reward is a nice descent. Small wooden chalets lined the road to the trailhead, where we were greeted with an overwhelmingly breathtaking panorama: giant glaciers showing off their sparkling ice shells in the morning sun. Everything looked like a typical Swiss postcard from the 1970s. A point underlined by my general observation that time simply seems to stand still in the Lötschental valley. It’s a very quiet place, where mass tourism and après ski are nonexistent. At the end of the village, we turned onto a panoramic trail, while the view opened up and we were able to see the Breithorn.
Thomas was very enthusiastic about his home turf, and especially about its trails. He showed us the different line options for this first descent. The trail flowed over Alpine meadows, before we reached a steep part in the woods with lots of rocks. This part was more technical, but still fun. Further down, Thomas even showed us a couple of jumps on the track. Lois’s face brightened and the steep climb from the cable car was almost forgotten.
VERBIER-BOUND
Back in Wiler, the main village of the valley
