WHR day 6: Cabane de Moiry to Zinal

We had an easier day today, mainly because we cheated at the end and got the cable car down to save ourselves 800 metres of knee jerking descent. That said we still had a 500 metre ascent to cross Col de Sorebois into the next valley, which was far from easy!

We left Cabane de Moiry bright and early, retracing our steps back down over the rocks, snow and glacial moraine to a path junction, before taking a path to ‘Moiry Barrage’. We were in the shade for much of the morning and, even when we were in the sunshine, there was a lovely cooling breeze.

The path traversed the hillside, undulating with some big height gains and losses in places, especially where we had to cross rocky streams and gullies.

After a while, we could see the milky turquoise Lac de Moiry, and its dam at the far end. We also saw some marmots again, including another baby! Then, we reached another path junction where, instead of turning downhill to the dam, we headed uphill to Col de Sorebois.

We could see the Col high in the distance, and our path zigzagging backwards and forwards up the hillside. It didn’t look too bad, but we soon found out it was much steeper than it looked!

We’d watched a herd of cows being rounded up and moved down the hillside. Of course, they were all over the paths we were going to go up. I put my big girl knickers on and psyched myself up to walk through them, with John close beside me to look after me. ☺️ Then, to my horror, the younger, smaller cows started running at me. I started panicking, but John kept me calm, and waving my walking pole seemed to deter them from coming too close. I’ve never run up such a steep hill so fast! Thankfully they didn’t follow!

The slog uphill, backwards and forwards on the relentless switchbacks seemed to take forever. I was jealous of all the people coming downhill in the other direction, and of anyone with a small rucksack! We just kept ticking off the metres and eventually we popped out on the Col. John left me recovering in the sunshine, enjoying the view of the Weisshorn (4506 metres), while he ran up to tick off a nearby peak, Corne de Sorebois. Then we set off down hill to the cable car station through a grassy basin full of ski infrastructure.

Down in Zinal, we were too early to check into our hotel so we found a bar and had a lovely relaxing couple of hours soaking up the sun with a few drinks. Wonderful! Zinal is a beautiful place. On our way to the hotel, a local pointed us in the direction of the old part of the town, which is full of lovely wooden houses, decorated with flowers, carvings and old machinery. He also recommended somewhere for dinner. I’m looking forward to that!