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Zermatt / Lift system
Zermatt
| Cable cars | 13 |
| Funiculars | 2 |
| Gondolas | 7 |
| Total chair lifts | 18 |
| Surface lifts | 31 |
| Magic Carpets | 3 |
| Rides per hour | 75,700 |
Traditionally, Zermatt’s lift system was a mix of charm and frustration: slow, old mountain railways and slow, not quite so old cable cars could be so oversubscribed at busy times that ascending the mountain via a string of lifts seemed to take up much of your day. But in the past few years several lifts have been built, each of which would rank as a major project for any resort.
New lifts
These include cutting edge technology, such as the Furggsattel chairlift – the first to be built on a glacier in Switzerland, with pylons ‘floating’ in the moving ice flow. At a stroke, this lift replaced the infamous T-bar which dragged you slowly across the often wind-blasted upper glacier. The covered, cushioned six-seater chair is not only faster but infinitely more comfortable, taking you rapidly from Trockener Steg and depositing you in another country, Italy, over 400m higher up, on the border ridge.
The other new six-seater chair is the Gifthittli on Gornergrat but the biggest development is the Matterhorn express, an audacious break with the pack ‘em in sardine tin arrangement favoured elsewhere on the mountain, with a comfy eight seater gondola from the Klein Matterhorn valley station via Furi to Schwarzsee. Unlike some of the massive projects in France and Austria in recent years, Zermatt’s new lifts all have the advantage of going up the mountain, rather than being merely horizontal link-lifts.
Lift times and prices
But perhaps the best single feature of Zermatt’s lifts is that they run from 8am every day, allowing early birds to beat the queues, reach the powder and fit in more skiing by lunchtime than should be allowed. Towards the end of season, the last lifts run as late as 5pm.
Lift pass prices are high, so don’t buy a pass that covers more than you need. The main pass covers all of Zermatt. You can also buy a Zermatt/Cervinia (Italy) combined pass, or a Klein Matterhorn/Schwarzsee/Cervinia combined pass if you know that you won’t be skiing Gornergrat or Rothorn. Single trip tickets for walkers and sightseers are so prohibitively priced that you can only conclude they don’t want you jamming up the system.
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