Switzerland - Tread The Sky - Hiking The Alps (90/151)

Switzerland - Tread The Sky - Hiking The Alps (90/151)

So pleased at first, the towering Alps we try [?] Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky [...] But those attain'd, we tremble to survey [?] The growing labours of the lengthen'd way.... Thus Alexander Pope described the Alps in 1711 - and rightly so. This film takes us clear across the "lengthened way" by one of its most scenic and spectacular routes. Our trip begins in the world-famous resort of Interlaken in the Bernese Oberland, up the Eiger North Face on a cog train to the highest train station in Europe. From there, a sensational ski trek over the longest glacier in the Alps begins, taking us to the canton of Wallis. From Brig and the Stockalper Palace, the largest privately-owned Baroque building in Switzerland, the Glacier Express takes us to Zermatt at the base of the Matterhorn. Here we ascend the highest border wall in Europe, the mountain massif between Switzerland and Italy. Our path leads us over the eternal ice of the Theodule Pass to the Aosta Valley on the Italian side. On the way, it becomes impossible to ignore how climate change has affected these seemingly indomitable yet very fragile monuments to creation.