Tour Monte Rosa — Stage 4: Macugnaga → Saas-Almagell

EEExperienced hikersummer

Distance

20.1 km

Ascent

+1608 m

Descent

−1424 m

Duration

11.5 h

Fitness level

Map & route

GPX track — verify on the ground before hiking

Description

From Macugnaga climb over boulder fields and old Walser paths to the Monte Moro pass (2,853 m), where the golden Madonna faces Monte Rosa’s east face, the most Himalayan wall in the Alps. Descend into Switzerland along the Mattmark lake to Saas-Almagell (1,673 m).

From Staffa, beneath Monte Rosa’s east face — a 2,600-metre wall without equal in the Alps — you climb through pastures and then paint-marked granite blocks to the Monte Moro pass. The gilded Madonna of 1966 and the old customs ruins tell of centuries of Walser trade between Ossola and Valais. To save 1,500 metres of ascent, take the cable car to the Smeraldo lake, twenty minutes below the pass. The Swiss descent skirts the long Mattmark reservoir — whose dam recalls the 1965 tragedy — down to the meadows of Saas-Almagell.

Key points

Passo di Monte Moro
2853 m · 6.8 km from start

Earth sciences

Geology & landscape

Monte Rosa is the core of the Penninic nappe of the same name: gneisses and granites of subducted, exhumed European continental crust. Around it the tour crosses the Zermatt-Saas ophiolite zone — green serpentinites, metabasalts and metagabbros, the floor of a vanished Jurassic ocean — outcropping at the Olen, Theodul and Cime Bianche passes. The 2,600-metre Macugnaga east face is the highest wall in the Alps and exposes the nappe in full section.

History & culture

The Monte Moro was the Walsers’ front door: through here the founders of Macugnaga descended in the 13th century. The gilded summit Madonna (1966) and the Mattmark dam — whose construction cost 88 lives in 1965 — bracket eight centuries of the pass’s history.

Water sources

Water at the stage's support points (Macugnaga, Saas-Almagell). On the high ground and at the passes springs are not guaranteed: fill bottles in the valley and at the huts.

Getting there

Cross-border stage: on the foreign sides local public transport applies (PostAuto in Switzerland, line buses in France/Piedmont). Check seasonal timetables; in peak season several access links run by reservation only.

Warnings