High mountains and easy waves – Crans-Montana Youth Hostel

From the Grisons, my best friend and I trav­el to Valais, first cross­ing the Ober­alp Pass. A beau­ti­ful road trip route. We load the car at the Fur­ka Pass. Four hours lat­er we reach Crans & Mon­tana. That’s right, you know it as Crans-Mon­tana, but it’s actu­al­ly two small moun­tain vil­lages that are con­nect­ed to each oth­er: Crans and, you guessed it, Mon­tana. I was already here in the win­ter and because I real­ly liked Crans-Mon­tana, I couldn’t wait to return in sum­mer!

Aperitif & snacks with a view of a few ever-white 4,000-metre peaks

The Crans-Mon­tana Youth Hos­tel «Bel­la Lui» (mean­ing beau­ti­ful light) is one of my favourites because of the mag­nif­i­cent views, the good loca­tion and because Crans-Mon­tana is such a sun­ny place. No won­der we spend a lot of time on the bal­cony in the evening and mar­vel at the white four-thou­sand-metre peaks. By the way, the youth hos­tel ter­race is ide­al for a sun­set night­cap. The youth hos­tel also offers superb cui­sine – the food (I had cur­ry on the first day and spaghet­ti Napoli on the next) was excel­lent!

Two hikes and one surfing session

We reach Crans-Mon­tana ear­ly in the morn­ing and lace up our train­ers straight away. It’s time for a leisure­ly hike start­ing right at Crans-Mon­tana Youth Hos­tel. «Bisse du Ro»: This is the name of the route and you can eas­i­ly fol­low the hik­ing trail mark­ings. The three-hour hike takes you to Lac de Tseuziers, a reser­voir. Since this is a bisse hike, we stroll along the biss­es (old water chan­nels used to dis­trib­ute water in the vil­lages). In addi­tion, parts of the path are direct­ly adja­cent to the rock face and offer aer­i­al views. The high­light of the tour is the 120-metre-long sus­pen­sion bridge. The hike can be start­ed in both direc­tions. We begin our jour­ney home by bus* from the reser­voir after a well-earned Valais-style cheese toasty at the restau­rant. The bus doesn’t run very often so make sure to check the timetable.

On the sec­ond day, we want to go high­er. We take the cable cars to the sta­tion Plaine Morte and have a view of the glac­i­er of the same name at about 2,750 metres above sea lev­el. It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to reach a larg­er glac­i­er after such a short ride. Our hike takes us over the Wis­shore Gap and we make a detour to the can­ton of Bern, where we stop for some food at Wild­strubel­hütte. We fol­low this up with an ascent back to Valais soil to the sum­mit of Rohrbach­stein. The trail is rel­a­tive­ly short, but more chal­leng­ing than before.

The trail is no longer offi­cial­ly marked and has chains fixed to the rock for dif­fi­cult sec­tions (T4 dif­fi­cul­ty, sure-foot­ed­ness impor­tant, a head for heights nec­es­sary). After the sum­mit we head down­hill and pass the Weis­shornsee. The moun­tain lake invites us to cool off. As thick clouds approach and pour rain down on us, we set off to hike the remain­ing two hours to the Vio­lettes moun­tain sta­tion. From there, we take the train back down to the val­ley in com­fort.

The crowning glory of your summer trip – a little bit of Bali in Valais!

It’s 30 degrees Cel­sius and after our two hikes, we’re ready to cool off. We can bare­ly wait to vis­it Ala­ia Bay in Sion. I’ve heard so much about it ever since Ala­ia Bay opened its doors in April 2021. Surf­ing sur­round­ed by moun­tains on an elec­tro-mechan­i­cal­ly pro­duced wave – pret­ty cool.  A les­son costs around CHF 150 in the high sea­son with equip­ment hire. Those look­ing to surf often have to fly or take long road trips before reach­ing the sea. This makes Ala­ia Bay a cool alter­na­tive if you’re feel­ing like surf­ing. There’s a surf­ing option for all lev­els.

My friend books the begin­ner lev­el – two coach­es pro­vide inten­sive prepa­ra­tion and guide her in the water. I book the Waiki­ki lev­el, get my brief­ing, and then we can nose­dive into the waves. By nose­dive, I mean lit­er­al­ly. Although the waves break per­fect­ly, it isn’t so easy to get used to the arti­fi­cial envi­ron­ment at first. But the few nose­dives (tip of the board in, I’m knocked off) aren’t so bad in fresh water with­out the reef risk. The waves are always per­fect and so you can surf about 10 of them in an hour. This is, of course, much more than you would man­age in an hour at sea. After surf­ing, we treat our­selves to a snack at Twin Fin Restau­rant before head­ing home to the Grisons.

More tips for your stay in Crans-Montana:

• A vis­it to the Ala­ia Chalet: For skat­ing, tram­polin­ing, etc.
• A tour around Lake Grenon in front of the youth hos­tel. Usu­al­ly there are ped­a­los here, but all we found was a con­struc­tion site.

More from Christina?

Want to read more from Christi­na? She has already vis­it­ed many hos­tels and is hap­py to give you tips on what you can expe­ri­ence around the hos­tel. No mat­ter if it’s sum­mer or win­ter — most of the time you’ll find Christi­na out­side.