“Woo! Girl power!” a fellow hiker cheered, pumping a fist in the air. Our all-female group – a rare sight even these days in the Swiss Alps – had just started the ascent of Saas-Fee’s 4,027m Allalinhorn. It’s one of 45 peaks in the Valais region that’s over 4,000m, 18 of which are in the Saas Valley. A purple rope threaded between us all, leading to Elsie Trichot at the front, our female guide. In front of her sloped the almost spherical dome of the Allalinhorn, glistening white against the contrasting blue sky.
“Around 90% of mountaineers are men,” Elsie told me before our ascent, while we waited among the summer skiiers at the bottom of the Alpine Metro – the longest funicular in the world – in Saas-Fee village. Small, softly spoken yet strong and assertive, Elsie is one of just 42 female mountain guides in Switzerland: the other 1,556
