Cabane du Moiry is amazing! It is located on a cliff overlooking the Moiry Glacier. There is a beautiful dining room with a glass wall overlooking the glacier.
When we arrived at Cabane du Moiry, we were happy to find out we were placed in a private room for six versus a " dormitory room for 15 plus. Even so, it is still challenging for 6 adults and all their dirty, smelly gear to sleep together in one small room. In this room, we had two people up on top and the other four were lined up like sardines below. In these close quarters, we've all been using ear plugs to try to sleep.
We left at about 7:45 am and started a descent down a rocky steep slope. We knew we had a long hike today but also knew there was an option of taking a tram down to Zinal for the last part of the hike.
We spent the morning hiking high up on a really narrow trail overlooking a beautiful glacier lake. Once again, we follow the painted marks along the way in addition to relying on our guidebook that we consult regularly during the day.
But, we were in for a "full experience" today - up to this point, we had barely pulled out our rain gear and had not used our new pack covers. At about noon, it started drizzling and we stopped to get our rain gear and pack covers on. This was right before we began the long climb up up today's col. Within a short period of time, we were all feeling miserable. A couple members of our group were hurting today and it certainly isn't as much fun to be doing a challenging climb up in the rain. At our lunch stop, we didn't even bother removing our packs but just ate our sandwiches quickly in the rain.
Finally we reached the top of the col, we knew that we had to descend 5236 feet - after assessing the group, we decided we were going to try and hike down to the tram and take that the remainder of the way to Zinal.
We hiked as fast as we could down more steep slopes passing many more cows (trying to avoid cow pies :-) along the way.
After a heroic effort from our members who were hurting, we made it to the tram station at about 3:10 pm. By this point, we were all in agreement that the tram was the way to go! We were so happy riding down over the remaining very steep slope to Zinal.
Once we got to Zinal, we still had about a 20 minute walk to our "Alpina" we are staying in for the night.
We finally arrived at the Alpina at about 4:30 pm - it has been a "full experience" day with some good and some challenges. We know that after a good night's sleep, we'll have a fresh perspective tomorrow.
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