Anyone have any good linkys to websites or books for trails around Zermatt. My meagre search skills keep bringing up holiday companies who I don’t want to play with. Probably staying at Attermenzan so options for transport up and down valley would be good as well if you’re feeling helpful. Will have my van but not allowed to drive into Zermatt as far as I know.

Plenty of car parks around Zermatt – next to stations and you can out bike on train, which will take you to the top! Though there are / were access problems with some trails with walkers, the Swiss being very rules driven and all that.

Don’t know if he is still there but the guy who ran the Attermenzen camp site 6 or 7 years ago was a good laugh. Best bet up to Zermatt would be to take the bike or walk. It’s not that far. The train is the best way to get around the valley. Can’t help with trails as I was climbing at the time.

Have you checked out Cervinia, the Italian side of the matterhorn?

The whole Valley from Visp up is a maze of trails. There are a load in and around Zermatt itself, but there are also loads of tiny cablecars further down the valley that take bikes and are also serviced by post bus and trains. Getting around by train is definitely the best option as it allows you to do routes that don’t start and end in the same place.

The local singletrail maps can be purchased in any of the local bike shops for about 25CHF each and are a pretty decent starting point for that area. The normal OS maps can be printed out from here: http://map.geo.admin.ch/

The trails that are for bikes will be marked as such, the trails that are for just walkers will be market as Fussweg

The Swiss are probably less anal that ramblers here TBH …

http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Switzerland-for-Dummies-Zermatt-Part-5-of-6-2012.html

Thanks folks. Saw the pink bike one which was useful. Looking at a weeks biking then a week climbing. Hopefully the uplifts will give me a bit of acclimatization more fun than plod up and then down.