Walking · Switzerland
Switzerland is laced with waymarked footpaths — more than 65,000 kilometres of them — and the best of them run high, on balcony trails cut into the flank of the range. The Bernese Oberland and the Valais have the greatest concentration: north faces, glaciers, and cowbells drifting up from the pasture below.
Why walk here
Switzerland runs on the yellow diamond — the Swiss Hiking Federation's waymark, painted on rocks, walls and fingerposts from the Jura to the Ticino. The trail network is exceptionally well maintained, the mountain infrastructure is unmatched (postbuses, cog railways, cable cars run to timetable in the middle of nowhere), and the walking is as spectacular as anywhere in the Alps.
The Bernese Oberland is the postcard region — the Eiger, the Mönch, the Jungfrau and the balcony trails between Adelboden and Grindelwald look out onto all of them. Further west, the Valais has drier weather, quieter trails, and the wild limestone towers of the Dents du Midi rising straight out of the Rhône valley.
The huts and mountain inns are excellent — timber-lined dining rooms, thick soups, rösti, a jug of Fendant on the table. Trails walk best from late June to mid-September, when the passes are clear of snow and the lifts are running.
The trails we walk
Every trail is walked and re-walked before we open it. We'd rather do four brilliantly than forty badly.
Book nowBernese Oberland · Swiss Alps
80 km · 6 days
The most famous balcony crossing in the Alps — from the rolling green pastures above Adelboden to the foot of the Eiger's north face — walked over six days with every night booked ahead.
Book nowValais Alps · Chablais
47 km · 5 days
A legendary 5-day loop through the high, wild country of the Swiss Chablais — limestone towers, lunar cols, and the 3,257-metre summit of the Haute Cime.
The trails on one map
Lines follow each trail's waypoints — live trail pages draw the full GPX route. Tap a line to see the trail.
Reasons to linger
Eat
Rösti with alpine cheese and a fried egg on top. Älplermagronen — the Alpine mac and cheese, with apple compote — in the Bernese huts. Raclette scraped straight off the wheel in the Valais. Every mountain inn cooks a set menu each evening and the portions are built for the day you've just done.
Drink
A jug of Fendant — the Valais white made from Chasselas — with dinner. Rivella (a whey soft drink; you'll like it more than you expect) on hot balcony days. Appenzeller or génépi as a nightcap. Coffee in the Swiss mountains is unusually good.
Sleep
We book the family-run mountain hotels along the balconies — Grimmialp, Griesalp, Schynige Platte, First — plus small hotels in valley towns for a proper bed and a shower with pressure. All walker-friendly, all with early breakfasts.
Read
Kev Reynolds's Walking in the Bernese Oberland (Cicerone) is the working guide. Heidi reads differently once you've walked past a real Alp hut with a herd of cows. For the wider picture, Fergus Fleming's Killing Dragons on the golden age of Alpine mountaineering.
From the journal
Elise Downing ran the Ridgeway in three days. Two friends tried to walk the same distances. It went about as well as last time.
Sarah and Ros walk a trail together every year — arriving from opposite ends of the country to spend one week together, all the planning sorted. This year it was the South Downs Way. On day five, they walked a mile with Bill Bailey.
Chris Townsend walked the GR5 in autumn, with a tarp on his back and the huts closing behind him.
