From the banks of the Rhone River on the wide valley floor, the road to Leukerbad appears as an improbable ribbon of asphalt that switches back up steep slopes before it disappears inside a cleft of the Bernese Oberland Alps. Visitors don’t end up here accidentally. And yet a steady stream of voyagers has traipsed through this hanging valley since Roman times on journeys over Gemmi Pass. Rumors are that they were not enchanted by the frightening gradient that gains 913 meters over 3½ kilometers – a vertical increase of 1380 feet per mile!
They could also have been interested in more hedonistic pleasures. The tiny village of Leukerbad – the baths of Leuk – contains several thermal springs that have soothed the weary, with or without the long hike over the Gemmi. In a canton of fluid linguistic boundaries, it sits at the edge of German speaking Wallis. Not far away French speakers think they are in the Valais; Leukerbad is known as Loèche-les-Bains.
I am here to take to the waters.
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