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Zermatt, ValaisThoughtaccess

The chalet

Gneiss from Randa to the ground floor ceiling, larch frame and boarding above, a roof at eighteen degrees, and a basement under the whole footprint.

1961

The Perren family farmed the slope behind this plot and built the chalet in the year the last road scheme for the valley was abandoned for good. Sixteen rooms was large for the village then. The stone base holds the ground floor and the basement; everything above it is timber, and the two are connected by nothing more complicated than bolts set in the stone.

The roof pitch is the thing visitors ask about. Eighteen degrees holds snow rather than shedding it, which is what you want on a street this narrow, and it is why the structure is heavy: the roof is designed for 450 kilograms a square metre and has carried it.

Replaced

  • 1987: the heating, from oil to a central boiler shared with the house next door.
  • 2001 to 2007: the sixteen bathrooms, two a summer.
  • 2011: the basement emptied when the village opened the ski depot at the station.
  • 2014: the second floor relined in ash, because the 1980s wallpaper had taken the larch with it.
  • 2018: all forty-four windows, triple glazed, to the original divisions.
  • 2023: the basement lined, wired, heated and fitted out.

Not replaced

The stone. The larch on the first floor and in the stube, which has never been sanded and never will be. The balconies, which are the originals with new rails. The stair, which is steep by any modern standard and has a handrail on both sides as a result.

Snow

The roof is cleared twice in a normal winter and four times in a heavy one, by two men with wooden shovels, which takes a morning. The street below is closed while they do it. If that is the morning you wanted to sleep late, we are sorry, and we will tell you the night before.

The people

Thirteen of us in winter and seven in summer. Three on reception, four in the kitchen and the stube, three on the rooms, and two on the basement door and bar with a third on Friday and Saturday. Nine live in the village and four come up from the valley.

Section through the chalet A stone base holds the basement and the ground floor. Three timber floors of rooms sit on it under a shallow roof. The basement, which was the ski cellar and boot room until 2011, is now the gaming room, one flight below reception. Third floor, four rooms Second floor, six rooms First floor, six rooms Ground: reception, stube, drying room Basement: the old ski cellar, now the gaming room larch boarding, roof at 18 degrees stone base
The section, which says more about the building than another paragraph would.

Gaming takes place in one room of this chalet and nowhere else in it. The Thoughtaccess Room runs no game over the internet, holds no account and settles no payment through this website.