Walking in the Valais. Kev Reynolds

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      Dominating the Lötschental, the Bietschhorn is seen reflected in a small lake below the Lötschenpass Hut (Walk 9)

      The longest of the valleys draining into the Rhône from the north, the glacier-carved Lötschental is one of the loveliest in the Valais. In its bed a string of small villages line the true right bank of the Lonza river, with meadows dotted with hay barns on the opposite bank, and glacier-hung peaks leading the eye to the retreating Langgletscher, which tumbles from the icy saddle of the Lötschenlücke at its head. Pools and tiny lakes add to the scenic pleasures of this valley on the edge of the Bernese Alps, and the walking potential offers something for everyone.

      ACCESS AND INFORMATION

      The Lötschental retains an air of isolation. Approached through the once forbidding, avalanche-prone narrows of the Quertalschlucht, some of the charms of this splendid valley are the result of the fact that it was slow to respond to commercialisation – before the Second World War the only motor road ran for just 4km between Goppenstein and Kippel. It offers little to the downhill skier, and as such remains virtually uncluttered today. On the hillsides the only mechanical aid rises above Wiler and the Lauchernalp. There’s a sense of ‘unworldliness’ about some of its villages – an air of primitive antiquity aided by a folklore represented by grotesque masks made of wood and animal hair, with cows’ teeth fixed to gaping mouths. These hideous demons – Tschaeggaetten – appear in local carnivals, where they are paraded through the village streets, a custom dating back hundreds of years.

      Draining southwest from the Lötschenlücke, the Lötschental is a sunny U-shaped valley cradled between a 3000m wall of mountains on the north side and a higher, more severe line of peaks culminating in the graceful Bietschhorn on the south. The north wall supports the Petersgrat, one of the last remaining vestiges of a great ice sheet that covered much of the Bernese Alps during the last Ice Age. On its far side the Petersgrat spills via the Kanderfirn into the Gasterntal above Kandersteg, but on the Lötschental flank it lightly overhangs a succession of small tributary glens. The Lötschenpass at the head of one of these carries an old trading route across the mountains to Kandersteg, and has a hut nestling just below it. Nearby one can gaze south to the Pennine Alps across the Rhône valley, while a shallow lake turns the Bietschhorn on its head. Below peak and glacier the hillsides are dressed with forests of larch and pine interrupted by meadows, and at mid-height on the Petersgrat slope a magnificent balcony path links seven alp hamlets before sloping into the bed of the valley at an eighth, Fafleralp. This path –the Lötschentaler Höhenweg – gives as pleasant and scenic a day’s walk as you could possibly wish.

      Fafleralp is as far as the postbus goes (summer services between June and mid-October), but there are two more alp hamlets beyond in what’s known as the Gugginalp, the valley’s upper reaches leading to the Langgletscher and another mountain hut, the Anen Hut, at 2358m. Apart from the Lötschen Hut, built virtually on the Lötschenlücke and reached by way of the crevassed Langgletscher, the only other mountain refuge within the Lötschental is the Bietschhorn Hut, which stands amid rocky terrain at 2565m on the slopes of the mountain it serves, and is reached by a walk of about 3–3½hrs from either Wiler or Ried.

      Main bases