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The Grass Is Greener

Travel+Leisure US

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March 2024

When the snow melts in the Swiss Alps, the chic ski town of Verbier takes on a second life as a warm-weather playground.

- Nina Caplan

The Grass Is Greener

MANY OF US associate Switzerland with skiing and chocolate, and when it comes to chocolate, fair enough. But in summer, the melted snow feeds mint-green rivers, the sun warms the lakes to bathing temperature, and on the freshly exposed slopes, hiking trails thread past picturesque slate-roofed homes and forests of fir and larch. The Swiss, who love the outdoors more than any nationality I know, swap skis for mountain bikes, and the farmers usher their cows up to the pastures that nourish them. After all, the country has no cacao trees; what it has is amazing milk-the reason Swiss chocolate is so great.

Snow still capped the highest peaks but the weather was hot enough for a T-shirt.

In Verbier, a small town nearly 4,000 feet above Lake Geneva, the soundtrack of summer is the sweetly dissonant ring of cowbells-that, and the creak of the overhead cable cars that never let you forget this is, first and foremost, a ski resort. Prince Harry goes there, Leonardo DiCaprio and Barack Obama have visited, and Richard Branson loves it so much he owns a ninebedroom chalet just a five-minute walk from the town center.

None of them seem to go in summer, though. When I arrived in late June, snow still capped the highest peaks but the weather was hot enough for a T-shirt, and the only traffic I saw was the flock of sheep that delayed my bus to the spectacular Mauvoisin Dam. This wasn't a problem, as my guide, Cherries von Maur, who was coming from the other direction, was also held up-by a herd of cows.

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