Lost Tyrolienne: Chasing the Aletsch Via Ferrata
The Aletsch Via Ferrata encircling the glacial Gibidum Reservoir near Blatten (no not that one) has long been a crown jewel of the Valais region. While severe summer mudslides have temporarily closed this vertical playground, looking back at its historic configurations reveals an entirely different beast.
Before structural updates altered its design, 2019 was a great year to conquer this canyon. It was the final season featuring the legendary Tyrolean Traverse (zipline) and a unique dual-level pathway dictated entirely by fluctuating glacier waters.
Route Summary
Difficulty: K3 (C - moderate) Long horizontal traverse just above the reservoir, normally clockwise, no easy exit route once started…
Distance: ~13.5 km Optimized loop covering the gorge approach, technical sections out & back, and return trail.
Time: 3 to 4 Hours Fluid pacing for clips, horizontal traverses, etc.
Altitude: 1,310 m to 1,560 MASL.
Elevation: +/-250m of cumulative climbing throughout the loop.
Key Obstacles: Horizontal log bridges 80m Nepal Suspension Bridge 3-cable Monkey Bridges 2 vertical Crux Up-climbs - one 10m.
Packing Tips: Boots, Fuel, and Hydration
Thick Hiking Boots are Mandatory: Don’t attempt this trail in flimsy trail runners or soft-soled shoes. Because this is a predominantly horizontal route, you will spend hours with your entire weight pressing down onto narrow iron rungs, cable strands, and jagged rock pins. Without stiff, thick-soled mountaineering or heavy hiking boots, those metal pins will dig into your feet long before you finish the VF loop.
Pack Plenty of Snacks & Drinks: Even though you can clear the moving time in 3 to 4 hours, the physical exertion of the long route takes a toll on you. There are no water fountains or refueling points down in the gorge. You must pack plenty of high-energy snacks and a generous supply of water to sustain you through the grind.
Myth Busting: Will You See the Great Alpine Peaks?
Despite being named after the most famous glacier in the Alps, don't expect to see giant 4,000m snow peaks (like the Aletschhorn) or sprawling ice rivers on this route. Because you are climbing deep inside the vertical jaws of the Massa Gorge, the steep canyon walls completely mask the surrounding mountains.
It’s not a loss, though - what you lose in mountain vistas, you gain in an intense canyon atmosphere. The visual focus stays locked onto the towering rock walls, glaciated granite scars, and the stunning pool of the reservoir right beneath your feet.
Logistics: Getting There via Swiss Public Transport
One of the best parts about this via ferrata is how seamlessly accessible it is without a car. The major rail hub of Brig serves as your perfect launching pad:
Bus Route: Directly outside the main train station at Brig, Bahnhof, hop onto the iconic bright-yellow PostBus Line 624 (Belalp Linie) heading toward Blatten.
Journey: The bus winds its way through Naters and climbs up the panoramic mountain road, getting you to the mountain village of Blatten bei Naters (Luftseilbahn) in just 15-20 mins. The bus runs reliably at an hourly frequency throughout the day. See my other articles…
Final Approach: Once you hop off at the Blatten village center, simply follow the well-marked hiking signs pointing northeast toward the Gibidum Reservoir (Stausee). It is a scenic, straightforward 1-kilometer walk (~15 minutes) along the road to reach the dam wall where the via ferrata officially starts (on the left).
Engineering Marvel & Route History: Harnessing the Massa Gorge
To truly appreciate the Aletsch VF, you have to understand the ground you are walking on. The entire loop circles the Stausee Gibidum, which is held back by the staggering Gibidum Dam. Built deep inside the raw limestone walls of the upper Massa Gorge, this massive double-curvature arch dam stands an imposing 120m tall & entered official service in 1969.
The reservoir's hydrology is entirely unique; roughly 65% of its catchment area is heavily glaciated, primarily fed by the direct melting run-off of the Great Aletsch Glacier. Because of this, the water trapped here is incredibly dense with glacial sediment ("rock flour"), giving the lake its signature milky-green opaque color.
This heavy sediment load creates severe friction on the downstream power turbines. To prevent catastrophic build-up, engineers completely drain and flush the entire reservoir once a year - a mechanical marvel that temporarily turns the canyon back into a roaring, dry riverbed - I wish I had seen this…
From Ancient Trails to High-Wire Adventure
The rock faces you scale aren’t just random canyon walls; they have a distinct timeline. Centuries before cables were anchored here, local Swiss herders and hunters used dangerous, rudimentary wooden ledges and narrow stone pathways to navigate the upper Massa Gorge to move livestock between the alpine pastures of Belalp & Riederalp.
The modern sport route as you know it was officially mapped out and opened by local Blatten mountain guides in 2014. Their goal was brilliant: create a low-altitude, highly originality-driven via ferrata that could use the granite cliffs of the Stockflüe while intimately skimming the changing waterline of a modern hydroelectric reservoir - there aren’t many routes like this!
1. Entrance: Passing the Guardian Madonna
The adventure kicks off directly from the dam parking lot, dropping you straight into a rocky channel down toward the water level. Right at the start of the route, chiseled neatly into the raw rock near the dam, sits a small statue of the Madonna (Virgin Mary). Passing her serves as a silent guardian blessing for climbers as they transition away from solid earth and clip their lanyards onto the continuous steel wire rope for the first time.
2. Outbound Western Shore: Logs & an Upper Bypass
Once past the entrance, the western shore tests your horizontal balance. This stretch features a section of dual-cable configuration designed to handle the fluctuating water levels of the hydro-dam reservoir:
Lower Shelf Route (my 2019 Experience): When the reservoir is low, you skim the lower track immediately above the canyon floor. The highlight here is a series of thick wooden logs and narrow timber beams bolted horizontally into the faces. They lack standard iron foot rungs, forcing you to shuffle sideways along the smooth wood while staring straight down into the dry, stony reservoir bed.
Upper Bypass (my 2021 Experience): When the reservoir fills to maximum capacity with vibrant, milky glacier runoff, the lower path can be completely submerged. You are forced to move onto the upper line right along the cliff wall, and into the forest, where the water literally lapping just a hand's breadth beneath your boots as you hang onto the upper rock path.
Liquid Turquoise Lake
Traversing along the waterline offers a spectacular visual treat. Thanks to the heavy 'rock flour' sediment washed down from the melting Aletsch Glacier, the reservoir water glows with an incredibly vibrant, milky-green turquoise color under the sun. There are usually lots of huge tree branches and logs floating in it as well…
3. Midpoint Apex: The Nepal Suspension Bridge
The path eventually converges at the northern vertex of the loop, channeling you directly onto the 80m-long suspension bridge. Suspended 40m in the air, crossing this swaying cable bridge offers an amazing view northward into the gorge [Gibidum Reservoir 1428 m]. It is incredibly rare because you cannot just drive up to see it you either have to hike deep into the canyon or scale the cliff rungs of the via ferrata to step onto its swaying wires.
4. No Quick Escape: a Brutal Emergency Exit
If you get tired of walking on metal pins at the halfway mark, there is an official emergency exit (Notausstieg) right by the northern bridge entrance. However, calling it an exit is a misnomer because it requires a grueling endurance hike to get back to safety.
Instead of a quick walk to a road, the emergency route forces you to unclip from the cables and transition directly into a strenuous, steep mountain hike. You must climb a punishing incline entirely out of the deep reservoir canyon up to the high walking trails, then connect to the historic Massaweg hiking trail.
While finishing the second half of the rock face takes about an hour or so, taking the emergency exit takes 2 to 3 hours of continuous mountain hiking just to get back to your car. (Note that with the 2026 mudslide closure on the other bank, this is exactly what some adventurous climbers did!)
5. Room to Breathe: The Uncabled Terraces
One of the best design choices of the Aletsch Via Ferrata is its pacing. Just when your feet begin to cramp from the steel pins, the rock face relents. The safety cable disappears entirely as the path leads you onto wide, flat rock terraces or woodland paths.
Being completely untethered allows you to relax, move around freely, and soak in the absolute stillness of the canyon. Standing on these natural viewing decks in 2019 offered an unmatched perspective of the low reservoir basin, making it a great spot for a picnic or to snap a few photos before heading back into the horizontal gauntlet.
6. The Gauntlet: Monkey Bridges & Crux Up-Climbs
Just when your legs start to tire, the route throws a technical crux at you along the eastern face. Scaling one or two grueling vertical up-climbs (B/C) driven straight into the rock face creates a mental test. While the rest of the trail is a test of horizontal movement and effort, pulling your body weight straight upward here requires a real burst of upper-body strength.
The solid rock sometimes disappears, replaced by minimal steel monkey bridges two/three-cable tightropes where your boots balance on a single wire over the drop. Every step causes the foot cable to sway and vibrate, requiring total core stability.
7. Scrambling the Home Stretch: Slabs, Boulders and Dam Views
After the vertical crux, the terrain breaks open into beautifully smooth, inclined granite slabs that test your friction footing, followed immediately by a rugged boulder field of massive fractured rocks. Scrambling through this open zone treats you to the finest views of the day: a head-on, panoramic look down the canyon at the sweeping 120-meter face of the Gibidum Dam wall. It is a stunning visual reward right before you gear up for the final finish.
2019 Grand Finale: The Lost Tyrolienne
In 2019, instead of just hiking out, climbers reached a wooden launch platform on the eastern wall, unslung a specialized heavy-duty pulley, and clipped directly onto a massive steel zip-cable stretching across an alcove of the reservoir.
Stepping off that platform was a pure adrenaline rush - rocketing through the canyon air with the wind in your face and the reservoir water rushing beneath your boots, before a high-speed landing into a heavily padded tree zone on the opposite bank.
Gone Months Later: The Safety Shutdown
When you zipped across the gorge in 2019, you were enjoying a legendary alpine feature in its final months of existence. Unbeknownst to us summer climbers, the line was a growing liability for the operating company, Belalp Tourismus AG.
The landing zone was notoriously difficult to manage. For the zipline, specialized equipment with wheels equipped with a brake was highly recommended to properly control the rapid descent. Unfortunately, many climbers attempted to tackle the traverse without this, ignoring precautions, or missing the exact braking required.
Climbers of different weights would gather too much momentum down the steep incline, resulting in a string of accidents, control failures, and severe, high-speed impacts into the landing zone rock faces and trees.
Due to these mounting safety hazards, the operator made the call to pull the plug. As soon as the autumn 2019 season wrapped up, engineering crews dismantled the launch pad, rolled up the cables, and permanently closed the zip-line forever.
Today's climbers are denied that final gravity-fueled experience. Instead, they are routed away from the water via an uphill bypass trail that requires legwork to climb out of the canyon.
Postscript: The Brutal Reality of Shifting Alpine Weather (my 2021 loop)
To truly understand this canyon, you have to respect how fast the alpine weather can turn. While the 2019 trip was a picture-perfect sunlit run, a return trip in 2021 was pure survival. Right after stepping off the suspension bridge onto the eastern wall, the heavens completely opened. Within minutes, a torrential downpour transformed the vertical rock face into a freezing, slick gauntlet.
The very iron pegs and rungs that give you leverage became treacherous under the downpour. With cold-numbed fingers and soaking-wet gear, every placement of a boot required absolute focus to prevent a slip.
Worse yet, being trapped on a sheer rock wall while clipped directly into a continuous steel safety cable - essentially a miles-long lightning rod - with thunder rolling by above is a nightmare scenario.
Tired, freezing, and soaked to the bone, there was no time to enjoy the scenic granite slabs or admire the boulder fields. The goal shifted completely: move as fast as possible, snapping carabiners forward in a blur, rushing past the cliffs, and sprinting down the final stretches back toward the safety of the concrete dam wall…
Nature Takes Back the Canyon: Recent Mudslide Closures
The extreme shifting weather patterns that climbers feel on their skin have a long-term impact on the stability of the entire canyon. A brief but violent thunderstorm triggered a massive mudslide and landslide directly above the Aletsch-Gibidum VF route.
The mud and loose earth cascaded down the cliffs of the Stockflüe, completely destroying vital safety infrastructure, burying key footpaths, and tearing away portions of the steel cabling. Local authorities and trail managers immediately put a strict "closed until further notice" warning into effect…
As shifting permafrost and heavy alpine rainfall continue to destabilize the Swiss Alps, these sudden mountain failures are a stark reminder of why respecting local closures is necessary for survival. While we wait for the Valais trail masters to clear the rock and anchor new cables, those who carry a 2019 GPS log hold a piece of alpine history: the year we zipped across the water of the greatest alpine glacier gorge.
Post-Climb Fuel: Where to Eat in Blatten
After hanging onto steel cables for hours, your arms and feet will be sore and your stomach will be empty. Once you complete the loop and make the 15-min walk back from the dam to the village center of Blatten bei Naters, there are excellent local spots to eat:
Hotel-Restaurant Belalp (Blatten Center): Located right by the PostBus stop, this is a great spot for a traditional Swiss alpine recovery meal.
Pizzeria Bella Nova: If you crave carbs of a different variety, this cozy local spot serves fantastic wood-fired pizzas with a crispy crust.
Optional Extension: Hiking to the Foot of the Dam
If you finish the VF loop and still have some energy left, don’t head straight back to the village. There’s a highly impressive optional detour that lets you truly appreciate the scale of Swiss civil engineering: a hike down to the valley floor at the very bottom of the dam:
Route: From the main dam area, look for the narrow maintenance service road that drops sharply down the side of the gorge. It winds its way down via steep, sweeping switchbacks right into the shadow of the concrete wall.
Experience: Standing at the base of the structure is a humbling experience. Looking straight up at a 120-meter vertical wall of solid, curved concrete towering over you makes you feel small. It is raw down there - looking up at the sheer rock walls of the Massa Gorge closing in around you, and watching the rushing water empty out into the lower riverbed.
Worth the Extra Steps? Absolutely. It adds about 20–30 mins of walking and a bit of a steep uphill trudge to get back to the main trail, but it is easily one of the best photo spots in the valley and a perspective that most tourists completely miss.
This route was done by the Author in July 2019 and August 2021. See my other articles for hikes in this area, including the Aletsch Suspension Bridge hike not far upstream. Contact me by email for photos or to ask questions.
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