The high life in Zermatt: glass-bottomed, Swarovski-encrusted gondolas are whisking millennials to the top
Everyone from Valais locals to groups of (ski-less) Japanese twenty-something girls are piling into the crystal-emblazoned cabins
It’s easy to live the sky-high life in Zermatt: the Swiss ski resort lives in the eternal shadow of the Matterhorn, one of Europe’s tallest peaks, and its slopes are among the steepest on the continent. Now you can also see it all from the world’s highest tri-cable gondola lift, which rolls in and out of – you guessed it – Europe’s highest mountain station.
Already dizzied by the thought of it? Try adding a US$60 million price tag, a glass floor, and more than 1 million sparkling crystals.
Since it opened in late November, the Matterhorn Glacier Ride – a collaboration between Italian ski lift manufacturer Leitner Ropeways; legendary car design house Pininfarina, and crystal giant Swarovski – has been carrying up to 2,000 passengers an hour across 2.5-mile-long cables. It climbs 2,950 vertical feet in nine minutes from Trockener Steg station to the Klein Matterhorn, the baby sister to Zermatt’s famous jagged-tooth peak, where it deposits skiers and snowboarders at a breathless 12,740 feet.
Four “crystal cabins”, marked by blingy Swarovski exteriors, come with an extra perk: matt glass floors that turn transparent once the lift hits 560 feet, offering a spectacular view of the glacier that wraps around Matterhorn’s base.
For Zermatt regulars, it’s a welcome upgrade. The previous system was 40 years old and in high season you could wait for up to 90 minutes to get a seat. Capacity has now been trebled.
It’s also plush, considering that passengers slide in with their snow- and mud-covered boots. In all 25 cabins you will find heated leather and faux suede seats designed by Pininfarina and emblazoned with the mountain’s logo (in Swarovski crystals). “The design of the cabin is pure, harmonic, and dynamic – a perfect display of the best Pininfarina design,” company chairman Paolo Pininfarina says.
All this comes at a steep cost to Zermatt Bergbahnen AG: at US$60 million, the gondola is an investment eclipsed in Europe only by Austria’s US$72 million Stubai Glacier Ride, which also has Pininfarina seats. Here the cost isn’t just increased by luxury materials; besides all the crystals, the cost was determined by ambitious engineering feats that included distance (the longest cable spans 1.6 miles between two towers, a record in Europe), wind- and fog-related weather constraints, and the challenges of working at such high altitude (for 30 months, this was the highest construction site on the continent).