We have hiked for less reasons but today was all about cheese. Our planned 8.4 mile hike (yikes!) was going to take us through a gorge in the Leukerbad valley and up 2600 ft (double yikes!!) to a small cheese making operation where the cows spend their day eating high mountain grass and of course rattling those cow bells. The only downside… 4.2 miles up and 4.2 miles down.

Here’s Kseniia, one of our trip leaders showing us today’s route. We did the route in red.

The early part of the hike traversed through a gorge and then through some very pretty wooded trails.

We haven’t hiked in a lot of wooded settings here as we’ve used gondolas in previous hikes to get above the tree line. The mountains were ever present today and more than stunning.

As usual we took a lot of pictures. I’m not sure they show how beautiful is was. Today’s hike was easily in our top 5 favorites ever.

So after all the hard work traveling up for 4 miles we finally arrived at the little cheese making outpost where we would have lunch. The owners first gave us a short tour explaining that we would be eating ‘Alpine’ cheese. Only cheese from cows grazing at altitude like this in the Alps can create cheese labeled as ‘Alpine’ cheese.

These particular farmers have 70 bell clanging cows sprinkled throughout the pastures (6600 ft up). They get milked twice a day at 5am and 5pm. I guess the cowbells might come in handy in finding a cow at 5am in the morning when it’s dark.

The milk these noisy beasts make is used to create the Alpine cheese (and butter!). They demonstrated to us how it all works and then let us go in the cellar to see all the cheese wheels.

Finally we got around to having some lunch and sampling the cheese. This is a typical spread that Backroads puts on for us at some lunches during our trips. You can see the Alpine cheese below, one being a newer cheese (white samples in the upper middle-left with the fork hanging out) and a more aged version just below that. (Aged 1 year) As with all things the aged version is better. 😉 Both were really good as was the bread with butter.

After our cheese lunch we ascended a bit further to visit a very tiny chapel. We then crossed the river we had been hiking by all day and headed down the other side of the valley. In the picture below you actually see dirty snow to the left side of chapel.

Here’s another action shot of Kelly on the trail. Note the jacket, it was noticeably cooler at the top today and we even saw 5 minutes of rain. A couple times we actually had to cross very small areas covered in snow.

Here’s another selfie of us just to prove I was there – that’s me on the right:

After decending a bit more the clouds mostly cleared up which allowed for some panorama shots taken with the iPhone.

Here’s another one which shows why the cows love this area, the pastures are pretty nice. The cheese makers told us the cows only come up for the summer and obviously live further down in the valley for the winter eating hay. At which point they make more mundane cheeses like Emmental. (How disappointing) You can actually see our group hiking the trail up ahead in the picture. I’m pretty sure my knees where starting to get un-happy about this time. …going down is the worst.

Finally we start seeing some progress. You can see the little village of Leukerbad in the bottom center of this picture. By the time we reached the bottom, we were whipped and ready for a little down time.

However we found two things that helped: 1. This is a “thermal” center and that means we have two pools, both are naturally bathwater warm. The outdoor pool has massaging jets and they were awesome! 2. A cold local beer is a nice way to start the evening. At least I found a local amber beer. Thus far in Switzerland, generally when you ask if they have beer, the answer is: “yes, large or small”. …The Swiss are not a really beer-y people like us Austin-ites.

Tomorrow we are off to Zermatt (it’s in Switzerland). Goodbye Leukerbad, it was fun.