Day 16 and Day 17: Is that the Matterhorn?

Day 16

After a lazy morning we awoke to a bright sun and made a nice breakfast of bread. Then we headed to the train station to get our tickets up to Zermatt. Even though Mark and Nate were extremely clear about not being eligible for discounted tickets, for some reason our bike tickets were half price. Thankfully the lady on the train was nice enough to let us go this time and told us not to make the same mistake on the ride down. Jokes on her, we're biking down!

The entire way up Matt was asking if every peak was the Matterhorn, but unfortunately we weren't able to see it till we were off the train. Due to the incline the train had to take, parts of the track had grooves in the center for the train to literally climb up.

From our campsite in Zermatt we can see the Matterhorn which is basically a dream come true for Nate.

The campsite is surprisingly enough the cheapest campsite of the trip! That was a huge surprise. It was also overrun with middle school American kids. Mark and Nate felt like they were back in Boy Scouts. A company called Overland Summers runs these trips for middle school and high school kids. They are hiking all they way to Mount Blanc!

We met another American (lots of them hear) named Nick from New York. We drank and talked with him for awhile. He knew all the mountaineering jargon so Matt sat there dumbfounded as Nate and Mark used all this terminology he'd never heard. Also, frat star review of Nick, his chill to pull ratio was massive!

Day 17

Today we hiked up to the base camp (aka really nice hut) for the ascent of the Matterhorn. It wasn't a treacherous route up but we'll call it tricky. It was beautiful though and definitely worth the views. We hiked up with Nick who talked to every attractive girl on the trail. We all took notes.

The hike took all day (9 - 6) and so it was 4 brauts per boy for dinner. We chatted with Nick and some random Swiss people on holiday. Matt ran into a Harvard CS grad in the bathroom. After 5 mins of talking he told Matt to add him on LinkedIn, that's probably not happening.

Tomorrow is our last full day in Zermatt, then off to more towns in Switzerland.

Side note: Matt lost his Leatherman today but is religiously against buying a Swiss-Army knife because he doesn't trust the Swiss. So he's on the lookout for another leatherman.