We rested for the next few days in Sion, an incredible city nestled between two ancient castles built on two old hills. We explored the twisting streets, climbed (even though it was our days off!) up to see the ruins of a castle and a restored castle on the other hill, and managed to get a little lost walking on an expressway somewhere. We even had a chance to partake in what seems like a favorite Swiss pastime: window shopping in the evening after dinner. We stayed at the youth hostel in town, in a family room. The hostel seemed rather like an old jail cell, compared to the personality and charm of our Berghauses. And sure, there was an energetic group of middle school students staying with us as well on a French language field trip—but was incredibly cheap and manageable. We were surprised how different the Valais was from the Bernese Oberland. First, everyone spoke French, and it was much rarer to find people who knew English. Some of the shop owners didn’t know German either, so we used pictures once, or hand motions, or Harold dusted off his high school French to at least get us through restaurants. People seemed friendlier here as well, more willing to smile or nod hello at us.

Harold decided his ankle had healed enough (we got better insoles from a little camping section in the Migros there), so we decided to give part two of our hike a try. The Valais part of the hike could have been a vacation in itself—but we decided to do only a portion of it. Lodging is much more rare in the Valais– meaning much more crowded—than in the Bernese Oberland. Two of the nights, your only choice of lodging was the only hotel for miles (the Hotel Schwarzhorn in Gruben, and the Hotel Wiesshorn in the middle of nowhere). You should make your reservations first at these two places, and kind of plan the trip around when they’re available—the Hotel Schwarzhorn it’s very hard to get a private room, so book as many years advance as necessary! We stayed in Grimentz an extra day so we could get a room at the Hotel Wiesshorn (we were calling about 3 or 4 weeks ahead of time, but they were already booked on certain nights).

It was a wonderful bus ride to Les Hauderes—half the time we were in the clouds, and passed through interesting old villages, small roads, and working villagers. We got out at the last stop on the road, and immediately I felt the solitude. No other hikers exited with us (there were only four people on the bus, including us, and two people got out at an earlier stop). I loved the lack of visible tourism. But also because of this, the trails were also much less marked, and on occasion in this section we got confused by our books directions. Our topo map came very much in handy every day of our hike!

It was going to be a tough day of hiking, and we were hoping that the rain wouldn’t set in. Instead of rain, we just had a thick eerie gray fog that covered everything, so we couldn’t see too far behind us or in front of us. We found the trail in Valliaz as our book described it, 50 meters behind the bus stop, and begin climbing. At first, hiking in the clouds was beautiful, unique, mysterious, engaging…but after a while, everything looked the same! A few houses emerged from the mist as we passed them—they all seemed deserted, though one or two of them you could rent (and what views there would be if you could actually see!). The climb, though constant, wasn’t too bad…it helped not have to have crowds of people coming down towards you calling out “Gruetsi!” and expecting you to respond. On one occasion the clouds almost cleared, and we saw the tips of the mountains on the other side of the valley, and could almost imagine what the stunning landscape if it were a clear day.

Our guide book claimed there were prehistoric engravings somewhere near the Cotter alp, but we couldn’t easily find them, even with our topo map. Maybe they’re not there anymore, or maybe the directions to them weren’t clear—Harold wanted to keep up the search, but I wanted to keep the climbing going, before rain or exhaustion set in. If you’re search for the runes, allow yourself some extra time.

We lunched near a little pond in very cold, wet, clammy and windy weather—I was wearing shorts for some reason, but gave up any thought of ever getting overheated and put on pants and additional clothes. During lunch, we had terrific views of a herd of the Herens fighting cows and a cow herder and his dog. These cows weren’t the happy content cows of the Bernese Oberland—here they made the oddest roaring sounds and would try and lunge at each other. I could understand why—the landscape was much more desolate, and isolated, and I’m sure this seeped into the cows too.

We continued to climb into the clouds, and it was hard to have a sense of how far we were from the summit, but then we stumbled upon it, marched by a cross and by more hiking signs.

This was our first summit without views, and I could see how, if this went on for days, the climbs would become a little disheartening, since the summit looked the same as where we started, only we were a little sweatier and a little more tired. The descent, however, quickly becoming stunning—the ground cover took on this golden tint as we wound gradually down (I appreciated the gentle slop of the descent), and we were able to see a little further ahead as the clouds thinned. Snow patches looked like small lakes, and small lakes looked like snow—the clouds were playing with our eyes. It was an enchanted and empty place( we had only seen one other hiker the entire hike!). The scenery became even more beautiful when we spotted the glacier crisp blue of the Lac de Moiry, which is one of the prettiest places we came across in Switzerland, and I have to say the cloud cover did this place well. We descended pleasantly and crossed this very large dam, once again in the thick clouds, and it was one of my favorite moments of the hike (funny that it happened on man-made structure), but the damn became this mysterious place, with the moving mist rising over us across the lake. We took a lot of photos here!

It’s possible to hike to Grimentz, but we were pretty darn wet from the constant drizzle of the day by this point, and we had ascended 1200 meters and didn’t really feel like descending another 500. So we took a bus with slightly odd hours (check ahead), which picked us up from a little shop that had good hot chocolate and didn’t stare harshly at the us, dripping on the floor with our wet packs. The bus dropped us off at the edge of Grimentz.

I hadn’t been too excited about staying in this town for two days—we were, in reality, only staying put because we couldn’t find accommodation at the Hotel Weisshorn the next night. It was also completely off the map on our Lonely Planet hiking and traveling books. We had read a vague reference online about good day hikes with Grimentz as a base, but I still wasn’t sure…until we arrived at the town. It quickly became one of our favorite stops—unspoiled in a way (though I do think, especially in skiing season, it’s a big ski town, and many hiking groups pass through as well), or in the very least well preserved, germaniums bursting from the window boxes, wonderfully winding old streets that Harold and I walked up and down quite a bit (being originally from the Midwest, where cities are laid out on the organized grid system, one of my favorite things about the old towns of Europe were the crooked intricate old streets). There were beautiful ornate mechanical fountains, hand-carved doors, a historical walking tour guide (about an hour) that you can purchase from the tourist center, and the town was nestled in trees. It felt French (we were still in the Valais after all) and very much like a fairy tale. People were very friendly here as well.

Though a lot of the accommodation looked cute and nice, we loved the place we stayed at—Hotel de Moiry. Doing the halb pension would have been a much better deal, but we wanted to try different things off the menu—the food was terrific. I had polenta both nights, which the chef arranged to look like a mini-garden (they were certainly into flowers in this town!). They even put flowers in Harold’s meat.