The Route Book | Getting to Aureline Pass & Walking the Sarnetal

Chapter one

Arriving

Three ways up. In winter the railway is the only one that never closes, which is why the 1911 architects put the lodge twelve minutes from the halt rather than at the summit.

By rail: Mainline to Sarnetal, then the narrow-gauge branch to Vesserand-Halt, hourly at :06 past, forty-one minutes, single track with three passing loops. Sit on the left going up. From the halt it is a twelve-minute walk with one flight of stone steps, or a three-minute lift from the lodge car if you tell the desk your train. The last connection up is 22:06; the first down is 06:11.
By road: Valley motorway to junction 14, then 21 km of the old pass road with eleven hairpins and an average gradient of 7.4 per cent. Winter tyres are legally required from 1 November to 15 April and chains are sensible above the seventh bend. The road closes above the lodge when the avalanche bulletin reaches level four, typically eight to twelve days a season. Free parking for nineteen cars, two of them with chargers.
By air: One hour fifty-five minutes from the regional airport in normal conditions, two and a half in heavy snow. A shared car service meets the 14:40 arrivals daily; the desk arranges it, and it is charged to your room rather than sold here.
On foot: The Sarnetal Way passes our porch. Walkers coming over the pass from the north descend 418 metres from the summit in about ninety minutes; the boot room and a bowl of soup are available whether or not you are staying.

Chapter two

Six routes from the porch

Times are honest round-trip times for an unhurried walker who stops to look at things. Every route starts and finishes at the lodge door.

Route 1 · 40 min

The orchard loop

Level, gravelled, lit until 22:00. Forty apple and eight quince trees, a bench facing the summit, and the gorge viewpoint at the halfway rail. Passable in town shoes and the right first walk after any long journey.

Route 2 · 1 h 50

Sarnetal gorge path

Down 180 metres on cut steps to the meltwater channel, then back along the mill leat. Loud and spectacular from late April to early June. No mobile signal at any point, and the steps are genuinely slippery after rain.

Route 3 · 3 h 15

Kandel shoulder

A steady 520-metre climb on a shepherds’ track to the 2,204 m shoulder, with the whole pass laid out below. Snow-free from mid-June. Take water; there is no source above the second gate.

Route 4 · 5 h 40

The pass and the old customs house

Up to the 2,102 m summit, along the border ridge to the abandoned customs post, and down by the cable-car service road. Exposed for ninety minutes; not a route to start after eleven in the morning.

Routes 5 & 6 · winter

Snowshoe and toboggan

Route 5 is a marked snowshoe circuit of 6.4 km through the larch plantation, tracked by the lodge each morning after fresh snow; snowshoes are lent free from the boot room. Route 6 is the toboggan run from the pass road hairpin down to the quarter — 2.1 km, lit on Wednesday and Saturday evenings, with the funicular carrying sledges back up. Both are genuinely suitable for beginners, and both end within five minutes of a hot basin.

Chapter three

The Vesserand quarter, honestly described

The quarter is a compact stone arcade of about forty premises built around a bandstand square in the 1890s, when the railway first brought visitors up for the water. It is a working district, not an attraction: the bakery opens at ten at night for the funicular crews, the ironmonger still sells crampons at seven in the morning, and the theatre’s repertory programme is printed on a single sheet each month.

Its rhythm matters more than its map. Monday and Tuesday are shuttered and calm — two wine rooms, the theatre dark, the square yours. Wednesday brings the toboggan lighting and a market. Thursday through Saturday the arcade is busy from eight until one, and the licensed gaming venues along the north side keep their own hours and their own door policies, all of them checking identification. Sunday is late-starting and slow, and the bandstand hosts a brass band at four in the afternoon that has been playing the same six pieces since anyone can remember.

If you want a quiet night out in a busy week, walk the south arcade rather than the north, eat at the second wine room before eight, and take the funicular up before the theatre empties. If you want the noise, Friday after ten delivers it. Either way, our desk can tell you what is open and what is closed for maintenance — we are not connected to any venue in the quarter and take no commission from any of them.

Chapter four

Kit, weather and judgement

The lodge lends snowshoes, poles, a rucksack, a headtorch and a paper map of every route above. It does not lend boots, waterproofs or gloves, and it will not lend crampons because fitting them badly is worse than not having them. The ironmonger in the quarter sells everything we do not.

The weather board by the porch is updated at seven, thirteen and eighteen hundred with the valley forecast, the freezing level, the avalanche bulletin and the state of the pass road. Read it before you leave; the mountain changes its mind faster than any forecast can follow. If a route is unwise, the porter will say so plainly rather than politely.

Nothing on this page is a package or a product. There are no tours sold, no prices published and no bookings taken through this website. It is simply the folder from behind the desk, typed out.

Ask the desk a route question Common questions