Conclusion

Once we got to the mountain hut, our rescue saga was pretty much over. We had expected to arrive earlier, of course, eat dinner, relax on the patio, and enjoy the view and stars. It didn't happen that way. They had saved dinner for us, but the kids refused to eat various parts of it. There was a delicious vegetable broth. The main course was polenta and "meat." The kids can't stand polenta for some reason. As for the meat, it was some sort of ground meat done in gravy. We don't know what kind of meat it was - no one could or would elaborate in any language. But it did remind me of the gristle stew served at pow wow feeds. Dessert was awesome! Perfect meringue cookies and whipped cream. The kids also ate some food which we had brought with us.

Then we were shown to our room - which was unheated. There were two shelves of bunks and we were given the bottom. There were already some people asleep in the top. The bottom shelf had four mattresses, five pillows, and six blankets, so we had to do some adjusting in the dark as quietly as we could. Luckily, I had the flashlight my Dad gave me for our trip! Changing was also an issue. The only bathroom was a double outhouse down the hill a bit. So we organized ourselves in the hall and changed on our shelf.

E and R enjoyed the stars but the rest of us were just too tired and cold.  It was about 30 degrees. We all did see them briefly, though, and they were beautiful. It wasn't a great dark skies display like I was hoping for, but it was more than the kids had ever seen before. And there was a bonus - a nearly full moon at the end of the valley, which made the river below shine like silver. Also, there were colored lights shining here and there from the hotels and huts on the facing mountains. As you can see, E braved the cold and took lots of pictures so S and I wouldn't miss anything.

That is the moon. The pictures look light because they were taken 

with a thirty second exposure. It really was very dark!

It was a restless night. The unheated room somehow became unbearably hot. I was sore. And the kids woke up with nightmares. First L, who just howled and howled, causing a domino effect of people waking up and moving around through the hut which lasted quite a while after she'd fallen asleep again. T woke up but fell right back asleep. S didn't wake up at all. She just yelled in her sleep, "Not another mountain! You said there wouldn't be any more!" That made me feel bad, considering we had to get down from the hut again somehow.

S checking out the view of the glacier before we left

In the morning we ate a suspiciously skimpy breakfast. There was bread and butter on the table, but no plates. Milk out, but no glasses. We were one of the last down to breakfast, but not at all so late that we should be given the bum's rush. Maybe they thought getting an early start was for our own good. We asked everyone we could the best way back to Zermatt. I had to laugh when one woman laid out her map for us which was much more detailed than ours. She said, "Let this be a lesson to you." First of all,  I think nearly having my family spend the night under emergency blankets on a frozen plateau was lesson enough. But the funny part was that her map was no lesson at all. The path she suggested wasn't even on the map!

So we hiked down to the rescue van. No problem. Then we couldn't find the trail from there until a man came up from it. He said it was narrow and steep and that we might as well take the road, since it met up with the path by the dam anyway. We took the road and found that it met up with the path before the dam. Rather than follow the road, which was about to do a bunch of switchbacks heading down we joined the path the woman at the hut suggested. She had said it would go very gently down.

It was a fine path for a while, and passed a pretty waterfall. But guess what happened when we got near the dam? No, not a gentle descent. We ended up going down the steep gravel path from the day before! The path with people coming down on their bottoms that we thought was too dangerous to risk. We had no trouble at all coming down, and barely recognized it as the dangerous path. We were grizzled veterans now and had seen far worse.

 

The ridge path at left might have been worse.

At right is an example of how the very few signs we found were confusing.

We wanted to go to Zermatt via Zmutt. 

The girls noticed all sort of pretty trees, rocks, foliage, streams, waterfalls, butterflies, etc.

R even spotted an edelweiss, which is very hard to find (and is a member of the sunflower family).

Still, we are terrible hikers for some reason. We met people on the path who said they were taking a nice little roundtrip to the hut for lunch. Another woman, about fifty years old, was running at good speed up the dangerous path. She'd just come from Zermatt and it had taken her about forty-five minutes! We followed the path down to Zermatt - we didn't want to have to walk way up to Schwarzsee the way we came. It really was a nice and easy hike: lots of pretty scenery, almost entirely gently down hill, only one short section where E had to take L because I was too scared. Maybe we are getting better, though. The four hour hike only took us seven and a half (though we cheated and took a bus for the last kilometer - the earliest possible chance to catch a bus.)

A sign of civilization but still more than an hour from town. 

This restaurant receives supplies via helicopter at the beginning of the season and is staffed by a woman so old and frail we had to carry everything for her. I guess she is delivered by helicopter, too?

How did that one escape being shorn?

 Here is a bonus shot. Somewhere down there is the plateau where we were lost. There were absolutely no signs of any kind down there. BUT the next morning we noticed MANY signs on the high path warning us that under no circumstances should we go down near the riverbed because at any time it could be violently flooded by the water power plant!