In case rugged peaks and pristine alpine lakes don’t fit your image of glitzy St. Moritz, we spent our 48 hours on some breathtaking hikes rather than the Jimmy Choo and Rolex showrooms, with all gondola rides and chairlifts paid for by our hotel.
And if you’re still wondering why these two backpackers chose expensive St. Moritz as vacation spot, trust me, we wouldn’t have done so if we didn’t get a good deal out of it.
Now THIS of course, is most people’s image of St. Moritz, the definitive Swiss luxury alpine resort and timeless playground even for the most jaded celebrities and European royals. From 19th century masquerade balls to modern day snow polo tournaments showcasing a dozen stallions galloping across its frozen lake, the extravagance of St. Moritz has always attracted the world’s wealthiest.
At the time of writing, St Moritz still holds the dubious distinction for the world’s second most expensive hotels on average. Combined with the fact that none of the local ski lifts provide any discount for holders of the Half Fare Card or Swiss Travel Pass -- the favorite money saving strategy of foreign visitors -- and you may wonder why the average guy would ever vacation here.
Ah, but there is a trick.
Yes, the great equalizer known locally as Bergbahnen Inklusive. Book into an endorsed hotel for two nights or more, and the hotel pays for all mountain transport -- funiculars, gondolas, chairlifts -- in the Upper Engadine Valley from Piz Nair to Corvatsch to Diavolezza near the Italian border. In our extreme example, we paid CHF 298 plus local tax for our two-night stay, and the hotel refunded all our return lift tickets -- Muottas Muragl / Alp Languard, Diavolezza and Corviglia -- for CHF 242 back in cash. If paying CHF 56 total for two nights in a double room, in a 4-star hotel at Switzerland’s most expensive resort sounds too good to be true, go to the official site and see for yourself.
Penny-pinching aside, we still wanted to check out the lavish Victorian deco inside Badrutt’s Palace or Kulm Hotel. Now it may sound exceedingly decadent for two backpackers to reserve a table at Badrutt’s Le Grand Hall for its opulent English afternoon tea, except that it’s arguably cheaper than two entrées with beers at a blue-collar Swiss gaststube -- and was filling enough to double as an early dinner.
As if the hiking and gastronomy weren’t enticing enough, the rail journey itself -- 2 hours of stunning alpine scenery from SBB’s oversized train windows -- from Chur to St. Moritz is a UNESCO World Heritage Site featuring the world’s most amazing 19th and early 20th century railway engineering.
Implausible spiral tunnels and the pictured Landwasser Viaduct are among the ingenious 120-year-old engineering feats helping the Rhaetian Railway overcome staggering elevation differences through mountain passes. For rail buffs, the reservations-only Bernina Express would be an unsurpassable showcase of turn-of-20th-century rail engineering as the narrow guage train climbs 1500m from Chur to Bernina Pass before dropping 1700m down to the Italian town of Tirano.
Fresh off our train from Chur, we stopped first at our hotel in the neighbourhood of Samedan to drop off everything except our poles and a day pack for our afternoon hike. I cannot recommend Hotel Bernina 1865 enough for its hearty breakfast buffet that fuelled our morning hike in addition to the much-appreciated sauna room after hiking.
And remember, with the Bergbahnen Inklusive program our hotel paid for all of our gondola tickets. On the first day we tackled the Muottas Muragl Panorama Trail, to be reviewed in the next post, and on the second day we did two hikes starting with a gondola ride up the 2900m Diavolezza.
Even among non-hikers, Diavolezza is famous for its front row panorama of the Eastern Alps’ tallest peak -- the 4048m Piz Bernina (right) flanked by the 3900m Piz Palü with its glacier (left) -- right outside the gondola station with no hiking required.
While this isn’t a physically demanding hike, the 30 minute climb up to the rocky summit of Sass Queder was complicated by an ankle-twisting path of loose rocks as well as the thin air at 3000m. Awaiting at the top is Europe’s highest barbecue pit fit for an epic picnic.
This was the 360 panorama that made it worthwhile: Piz Bernina and Piz Palü behind the back, a cliff-edge drop to Lago Bianco beneath the feet, and countless Italian peaks as far as the eye can see in the direction of Bormio.
After a short train ride of spectacular hairpin turns, we arrived back at St. Moritz where we hopped on the Corviglia funicular for our second hike of the day, on a grassy 2500m plateau that once served as the alpine skiing venue for the 1948 Winter Olympics.
With less than three hours available before having to return to St. Moritz, we took the official Corviglia hiking map and picked Familienweg Lej Alv, marked No. 8 on the map and billed as an easy, 5 km trail in the shadow of gorgeous 3000m peaks. It’s also marked as stroller-friendly, I mean, navigation should be a breeze, right?
Except that the advertised trail didn’t really exist, or perhaps the overgrown vegetation had reduced it into a barely-noticeable goat path that certainly wasn’t stroller-friendly. For 30 minutes our only guidance was my phone’s imprecise GPS reception, pointing us towards a distant flock of wooly sheep.
Of course the sheep were hanging out beside this sublime alpine lake and the destination of our hike, a natural reservoir with crystal blue waters and zero visitors aside from ourselves, plus one caretaker attempting to keep the vegetation in control with his handheld weed trimmer. With a circumference of exactly 1 km, the wood-chip-covered running track circling the lake is apparently popular with distance runners arriving for altitude training.
Just beyond the reservoir we reached the pristine emerald lake of Lej Alv, perennially fed by snow melt from the 3100m Piz Grisch to provide a rare watering hole in these alpine meadows. In a couple weeks the owners would return and bring the herds back to the valley for the annual Alpabzug procession and wintering in the covered barns.
The stroller-friendly trail emerged at last, leading from Lej Alv back to the funicular station with sweeping views towards the towns of Celerina and Samedan where we were staying. The 5 km loop took us about 2 hours in good weather, with a long rest at the reservoir and plenty of photo stops along the route, taking us back to St. Moritz in time for our 17:00 reservation.
Victorian armchairs, inlaid marble floors and wall-to-ceiling wood panels abound, the aptly named Le Grand Hall is the classic setting for English afternoon tea at Badrutt’s Palace, St. Moritz’s 120-year-old landmark frequently voted top hotel in all of Switzerland. Now this may sound really absurd, but buried behind this lavishness was one of the best deals in town.
Guests are greeted by majestic windows overlooking the hotel’s own yacht sailing across the turquoise Lake St. Moritz, ready for hire by the next billionaire checking in. Inside the same menu featuring CHF 4500 bottles of vintage Krug is a small section detailing the hotel’s signature afternoon tea set: more than a dozen finger sandwiches, cakes and scones complemented by a small dictionary of teas from around the world, with a surprisingly affordable price tag.
We had no hope of finishing this tower of tartlets and sandwiches, ranging from smoked salmon to macaron to prosciutto-and-alpine-cheese to Engadine nusstorte to a delectable cheesecake with a crème brulee top. Each guest gets her personal choice of tea -- 28 varieties in total including an outstanding Oolong -- served in a teapot of polished silver.
We made sure to finish before 19:00 when jackets become mandatory, now filled to our cheeks with no further need for dinner. The price for an afternoon of extravagance? Just CHF 32.5 (CAD$45) per person, which barely buys an entrée of bratwurst, rösti and beer in a typical Swiss restaurant. A Canadian equivalence I’m familiar with is the famous afternoon tea at Victoria, B.C.'s Empress Hotel, which charges CAD$82 plus tax at the time of writing. Not to sound unpatriotic, but at half the price I'd take Badrutt's any day.
As mentioned we took full advantage of the Bergbahnen Inklusive program with a third hike over our two-night stay. The stunning Panorama Trail between Alp Languard and Muottas Muragl will be the subject of the next post.
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