History

Did you know about the cat that climbed the Matterhorn more than 70 years ago? Various newspaper articles corroborate the events.

The Kleine Zeitung, an Austrian daily newspaper, for example, writes in October 1950:

 

The cat on the Matterhorn. Cp.

A ten-month-old kitten from a hotel on the Hörnligrat, from which tourists are wont to set off for the ascent of the Matterhorn, recently started out one morning and followed a party of mountaineers. Towards evening, the animal arrived at the Solvay Hut. It continued to climb briskly the following day. On the third day, after spending a second night in a couloir, it reached the summit of the giant mountain, where a group of alpinists shared their breakfast with it. Aware that the descent is probably more dangerous than the ascent, even for cats, and unwilling to leave the animal unprotected, the mountain guide took the cat with him in his backpack to the Rifugio Principe Amedeo di Savoia hut on the Italian side. The unusual mountain tourist remained a boarder there until a party brought him back to Zermatt, where he has since arrived safely.

 

0 Artikel Kleine Zeitung

This story inspired the idea of creating an extraordinary mountain playground: Wolli Wonderland.