Alpine & Riviera Alpine & Riviera

The Approach

A trail above Zermatt at approximately 2,600 metres, early September. The Matterhorn demands a kind of vertical attention that other peaks do not — there is something in the geometry of the form, the way it stands apart from the surrounding ridge, that makes it impossible to look at anything else in the frame while it is present. The path in the foreground continues upward, out of frame, for several more hours.

The photograph was made in the mid-morning, when the air had cleared of the haze that sits in the valley but before the afternoon cloud that typically builds around the summit. The light on the north and east faces of the peak is always in some degree of shadow; the west ridge catches the full sun at this hour.