Gornergrat

The Gornergrat is a summit ridge in Valais, four kilometres south-east of Zermatt, which separates the Gorner glacier from the Findel glacier and reaches 3,133 metres. From the crest, more than twenty Alpine summits above 4,000 metres can be taken in at a single glance, among them Monte Rosa, the Matterhorn, the Breithorn and the Liskamm.

The way up is the Gornergratbahn, a rack railway opened in 1898, which serves Riffelalp and Riffelberg and gains close to 1,500 metres from the valley floor. A refuge hotel stands at 3,089 metres, south-west of the terminus station. From 1958 to 2007 a two-section cable car linked the ridge to the neighbouring Stockhorn by way of the Hohtälli.

The two towers of that hotel are not ornament: since the late 1960s they have housed observatories belonging to the high-altitude research station Jungfraujoch and Gornergrat. The one-metre telescope of the Lyon observatory worked here from 1976 to 1983; a one-and-a-half-metre infrared telescope occupied the north tower until 2005; the south tower holds a three-metre radio telescope. The University of Bern runs a passive laboratory here to measure solar neutrons, part of a European network of stations.

Why this place is remarkable

One crest gives two things of different natures: the simultaneous view of more than twenty summits above 4,000 metres and of the two glaciers that flank it, the Gorner and the Findel — and a permanent scientific observation post at 3,133 metres, where the hotel towers have held instruments since the late 1960s.

History and origin

The rack railway opened in 1898 and turned the ridge into a summit reached without climbing; the refuge hotel at 3,089 metres followed from it. Scientific use came later: from the late 1960s the two towers received observatories, among them the one-metre telescope of the Lyon observatory, active from 1976 to 1983, and an infrared telescope kept until 2005. The cable car link to the Stockhorn, for its part, ran from 1958 to 2007.