Stage 9: Hotel Weisshorm to Gruben, Wednesday August 1
The Haute Route is all about going up and over stuff, but dallying in Martigny had kept us off the hardest passes. Today there was no way around it. We had to cross the Meidpass, and high time!
Gruben, also known as Meid, is barely a place. It’s just a summer settlement. They close off the valley in the winter because it’s avalanche alley. We elected to stay up the road in Oberems, in a hotel instead of a dorm bed at the Hotel Schwarzhorn. We took a “taxi,” which was actually the postbus, Oberems not being much more of a place than Gruben. The biggest shock was having to switch from French to German.
We’d planned to buy snacks for the next day’s hike in Oberems. But the store was closed for a national holiday, and we would have to leave the next morning before it opened. Hm.
I taught the restaurant staff how to make a kir. They also served a local liqueur made from arven pine.
