Day 15 — Hiking Verbier

• Note: we have been remiss in updating this blog because we had to postpone our updates until we found sufficiently fast internet to upload our pictures. As beautiful as it was, our rented house in the French/Swiss Alps was not up to spec, technologically.  We are now closer to (wired) civilization and so will be catching up quickly.

We spent around 6 hours hiking around/above the very posh resort area of Verbier (a favorite ski area of the royal families of Europe since Victorian times). This was a baptism by fire—a hike of almost 12 miles and over 25k steps. Arthur and Leo held up well. The route was called La Bisse du Levron, which started at the top of a cable car stop called Les Ruinetttes and followed a little stream (La Bisse) across a the mountain, with spectacular views of Verbier and the surrounding mountains.

Along the way we enjoyed the mountain flora, interesting wooden sculptures/landmarks, and an alpine restaurant called Les Planards.

Les Planards

Incredible cheese—”Raclette” comes from this region

As we moved further across the mountain, we moved further into “fighting cattle” country—which is apparently a thing here. Drinking from the Bisse for hundreds of years has made these cattle big, strong and aggressive. You can imagine our trepidation as we crossed right in front of the “pugilistic” tribe. We kept our cool and eyed each other with mutual suspicion as the bells clanged ominously.

We ended up at “La Chute” du Levron, which is a waterfall with a bird’s eye view of our own quaint town of Levron. We then hiked a grueling stretch back to Verbier. We missed our cable car connection back down the mountain to our parked car at Le Chäble and so had a chance to check out the city. We lost count of the Teslas, Ferraris and Lamborghinis.

A ten-minute taxi ride down the mountain cost 60 Francs and reminded us that we are in one of the richest, most expensive parts of the world. Thankfully, our German rental car and home cooked dinners are helping to keep the costs down.