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

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.