My hack for a family hiking holiday? Take the ski lifts in the Swiss Alps

Times

7 hours ago

A week before our hiking holiday in the Swiss Alps, I realised we might have a problem. We'd driven out into the Kentish countryside for a short walk — barely a stroll — through dappled woodlands and across a sunny meadow, as a test run of attire and attitudes. The scene couldn't have been prettier, the temperature more pleasant, the snacks more bountiful, but barely 15 minutes in: mutiny. 'We hate walking!' my children erupted. 'We're too tired! Can we go back now, this is horrible!'
Their dad and I exchanged looks, and reached for the Mentos (nothing hastens pace like sweet bribery). This bucolic romp was nothing compared with what we had planned for the following week's summer holiday. We were headed for the Swiss Alps, for a self-guided, multiday hike, carrying all our kit, taking in high mountains up to almost 3,000m, with no chance of pressing pause as we'd be moving on each day to a different hotel in the next valley.
We did have a trick up our Gore-Tex sleeves, though, a holiday and parenting hack to make this kind of challenge possible even for whingy bairns whose legs ache — honest they do — after ten minutes on a flat path. And that was ski lifts.
They continue to whirr in summer in increasing numbers of Alpine resorts, in a bid for year-round tourism in the face of climate change, helping mountain bikers and hikers scale high peaks that kiss the clouds.Our plan was to take advantage, riding up then walking down, making it far easier for the children (if not our ageing knees).
Lenzerheide, an upmarket, under-the-radar Swiss mountain town, was our starting point, a three-hour drive north from Milan airport (Zurich is closer), where we hired a car. Through Italian lakes traffic we skirted south of Lake Como, stopped for pizza by Lake Lugano, then drove up into the vivid green foothills of the Swiss region of Graubünden, where the road turned snakey and the high mountains reared into view.
That our first stay, the Lenzerhorn hotel, had an indoor pool meant the children — Heidi, ten, and Hamish, eight — were on board with the holiday from the off, and didn't complain about putting on their hiking boots next morning as we set out past chic boutiques selling designer skiwear and elegant leather boots to ride the PostBus (the service that links even the remotest Swiss villages) a mile along the teal-green Heidsee lake to the Rothorn Bahn cable car.
Among dirt-spattered mountainbikers in bulky body armour, here for the bike parks and trails that weave down the mountainsides, we hopped aboard the gondola and watched them from above as we swung up into wispy cloud, until rows of icy peaks and turquoise lakes spread before us.
From the bare-rock crest of Parpaner Rothorn (2,861m), once a centre of iron ore mining, and from where they say you can spot a thousand other peaks, we would descend northeast to Arosa.
A not-small amount of meticulous plotting and planning, and a few evenings spent poring over maps, had gone into our self-designed route. Because while various tour operators arrange Alpine hiking holidays, none exactly fitted our specifications, with a downhill focus and special places to stay. We know the Alps well, and what we came up with was, I think, a brilliant five-day plan through blockbuster scenery, covering 4-8 miles every day, going from Lenzerheide to Arosa, to a mountain refuge in the Sapün Valley, over to Davos, then looping back via a slightly different route.
During that first descent, all the natural elements that make an Alpine holiday so wonderful soon burst forth between the crags: green bee-buzzed pastures, clouds of butterflies, tiny wildflowers in so many shades our game of taking turns to spot something of each colour of the rainbow was too easy. Other games of guess the animal and 'granny went shopping' passed the time. I relished hours just talking to my children, and they liked having our attention, even if my son, who had recently discovered Minecraft, only wanted to discuss that. For hours. At least the views were riveting while my education on Piglins and Villagers ensued.
After three miles we came upon Älplisee, a lake of the brightest blue, cold as ice and so shiveringly delicious to swim in that after following the path along the shore we had another dip at the other end. Why not? Carrying all our stuff on our backs meant our swimwear and trek towels were always to hand.
Down and down, and then another unexpected treat — a mountain inn of dreams, Alpenblick, neat and chic like most in Switzerland, with a sun deck serving joyous slabs of berry tart (£7) and a local unfiltered beer (alpenblickarosa.ch). I'm not sure the children had even noticed they were on a hiking holiday yet.
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The inn had rooms but our beds awaited down in the valley in Arosa, at a converted TB sanatorium — there were dozens in the area in the early 1900s. Revamped as the cool Faern hotel in December 2022, it featured globular lighting, abstract grey/black art, and brass and matte black fittings in place of medical wipe-down white. Wes Anderson but monochrome was the voguish effect.
Alpine walking holidays traditionally mean refuge dorms and basic family-run farmhouses where gingham was the last design feature introduced. I'll never forget, years before, the dishevelled hiker washing his feet in the only bathroom basin at the Theodulhutte above Zermatt, sticking his toes right up inside the tap we needed to use to brush our teeth, or the offer to kip on hay bales in a cobwebby barn in Austria's Wilder Kaiser region for an 'authentic farmstay experience'.
These days the Alps have become rich pickings for stylish, contemporary hotels — some upmarket spas, others reinventions of cute wooden chalets made luxe. It was to one of these we were headed next on our shortest walk, three and a half miles, but the greatest climb (555m) — though only after a sweetener of a swim in the Faern's indoor lazy river and a game on its tennis courts to keep the kids onside.
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They marched out into the sun, revived and, dare I say, even excited for the hike ahead. Beside Lake Obersee, where holidaymakers were out on pedalos as if it were the Med, we caught a little red train 15 minutes down the valley to Langwies, watching it curl back on itself as it looped over a viaduct.
Our path rose through a forest full of butterflies and unfamiliar bees, purple scabious and clover, the ground crunching with pinecones. We ate our Co-op picnic on a bench above a steeply sloping field at 1,695m at Egga, supplementing our plastic punnet of supermarket strawberries with handfuls of wild ones plucked beside the path: 'These taste much nicer — and they're free!' Heidi said.
We were up in the high pastures now, steep grassy meadows full of grazing cows, peppered with small enclaves once dedicated to farming. In Sapün, a tiny, seemingly deserted hamlet of centuries-old chalets, like a living museum, I paused to photograph the sweet wooden schoolhouse, dating to 1849, and a vending machine selling fresh local cheese, then sneezed. 'Gesundheit!' someone called from inside one of the sunbaked buildings.
Beyond a farm where the workers were hand-cutting grass for straw was Heimeli, a 300-year-old wooden chalet turned into one of the cutest guesthouses in the Alps and possibly the world — our enchanting base for the night.
After the hours of hot, sweaty uphill, it was sweet relief to plonk ourselves at one of the terrace tables among potted edelweiss, order Heimeli's own craft beers and homemade soft drinks flavoured with mountain herbs and, like at every stop, get out the playing cards — the kids never tired of Shithead.
A garden opposite provided more fun, with a hammock and swing, a slack line and an elf-sized chalet wendy house hung with felt toadstools and gonks. While the kids played there, we settled in to relax on the terrace, before the owner, Vita Gabriella, showed me inside.
Heimeli itself was like a slightly larger wendy house, with low wooden ceilings, antiques, chairs with loveheart cutouts and ladders leading to compact spaces — a cellar with shelves of Crocs to borrow, a bar/museum in a phonebox-sized indoor pigsty, and ten guestrooms, including singles and our quad.
She told me that they used to pack seven people into each room on the floor, but she had moved the place upmarket after taking it on with her husband in 2007. This had been a dream come true, thanks to a surprise payout from an investment her husband had made — somewhat reluctantly — in the company he worked for in order to help save it.
'We are both from poor backgrounds, but suddenly we had a million,' she said. 'We didn't know what to do with it. A friend said to me, 'You are a rich woman, what did you dream of doing with that kind of money?' I realised — 'Oh, I would love to buy Heimeli!' It had been for sale for three years then. We thought we'd run it for ten years, but here we still are.'
The result could not have been more atmospheric, and dinner was a feast: rösti, macaroni prettied up with edible flowers, kid-pleasing burgers, homemade wild berry ice cream (mains from £21), so too breakfast, with homemade bircher and jams. I could've stayed for a week, if not for ever.
A storm was forecast for lunchtime the next day, and we knew we needed an early start to get up over the exposed Strelapass before it hit. The path became greyer and more grinding as the clouds built, pouring over the sky like dry ice. The rain came down as we reached the the top at 2,352m, so we sheltered in the Strela Pass Restaurant (more Shithead) before hotfooting it down the other side towards Davos. A crack of lightning made us terrifyingly aware of being out on the exposed rocky tops, the kids went wild with storm fever/fear, screaming and laughing all the way down until a final hungry trudge through forest brought the spate of whingeing we'd long been waiting for.
At least a cosy hotel, the simple Edelweiss, greeted us in Davos, a larger town, today devoid of world leaders and of quite so much character as the other stops.
From here an exciting funicular, the Parsennbahn, took us up to the Weissfluhjoch at 2,686m and we came across patches of snow big enough to supply a family snowball flight that of course ended in tears.
But the children seemed to be generally ecstatic to be exploring these landscapes, scrambling over them as if they were an adventure playground, jumping from rocks, dipping their hands in streams, running for no reason and pointing out the marmots we constantly heard whistling. Shockingly, they never even asked for sweets.
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Swimming helped maintain the good vibes. The path back to Langwies through the rumpled folds of the Fondei Valley descended beside the charging Fondeier Bach river and we skinny-dipped in hectic pools, crossing narrow bridges beside waterfalls at the foot of the gorge that was, for now, more impressive than anything Minecraft could create.'Look around, this is amazing!' Heidi yelled — music to her parents' ears.
And back in Arosa, after another night at the Faern, we spent the morning in the town swimming lake, Untersee — a natural municipal lido with diving boards, an inflatable platform with slide, play areas and 1930s wooden changing rooms, all for £4.50, or free with an Arosa Card that came with our hotel stay.This sort of facility is not uncommon in the Alps, convincing me that those who are born in the region have won the geographical lottery of life.
One last gondola, Urdenfürggli, and a long sunny descent, and we were back at the start in Lenzerheide. What a sense of achievement! What a thrill to return to the same hotels, feeling changed by adventure, though it had only been a few days! What blisters!
The children had had a look of joy on their faces almost the entire time. They had giggled madly together. We'd bonded. I had learnt much about Piglins. So how did they feel about walking holidays now?
'We hate them,' they said. But all the smiley photos, and their proud expressions when we totted up our stats — some 30 miles of walking — they told a different story… Gemma Bowes was a guest of Switzerland Tourism (myswitzerland.com) and the Lenzerhorn hotel, which has B&B doubles from £229 (hotel-lenzerhorn.ch), the Faern Arosa Altein, with B&B doubles from £177 (faernresorts.com), Heimeli, with B&B doubles from £172 (heimeli.swiss), and Edelweiss, with B&B doubles from £122 (edelweiss-davos.ch). Fly to Milan or Zurich