Leukerbad

The Rhône river starts in the heart of the Swiss Alps and flows southwest towards French Provence, carving out a deep and beautiful valley called the Valais. The bottom of the Valais is a fairly warm and fertile plain, with various peaks ending in “-horn” on either side: Firehorn, Blinnenhorn, Nesthorn, Matterhorn. Mont Blanc blocks the way though, so at the bottom of the Valais at Martigny the Rhône makes a sharp right turn and widens out into banana shaped Lake Geneva. The city of Geneva is at the outlet of the lake, where the Rhône then tumbles out of the mountains, down to Lyon, where is can finally get back on its provincial track, turn south, and flow through southern France to the sea.

Lausanne is at the top of the banana. Vevey is the next city east, and is where we started our train trip to Leuk and then on to Leukerbad. The weather, as it often is, was cloudy when we left Vevey and sunny by the time we made the turn up the Valais. It really is a blessed valley, with Villars, Champery, Zermat up side valleys, dramatic peaks high above on both sides and ancient vineyards and fields down below. The fields end at Brig, which is also where the train line splits. To go further by train you either plunge through the Alps towards Italy (the old Simplon tunnel) or you plunge northwards towards Bern (the new 21 mile long Lötschberg tunnel).

Leuk is one stop before Brig, and Leukerbad is a dramatic bus ride up the valley from Leuk. Somewhere in the rock, about a mile beneath Leukerbad, is that Lötschberg tunnel. Leukerbad sits in a dramatic bowl of limestone cliffs.

The 3000 foot wall of rock is intimidating, but over the top of that wall if the easiest way to get to Interlaken and Bern if you had to walk. The trail up the wall to the Gemmi Pass is over 800 years old, and travelers have been coming this way since Roman times. They’ve also enjoyed the hot springs since Roman times.

Leukerbad is an interesting mix of a ski town, spa resort and an old trading route village. There’s several gondolas out of town, one up the Gemmi and a couple on the east side for a skiing.