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If you’re looking for thrill—and you’re not afraid if heights—consider adding Switzerland’s coolest new form of transit to your bucket list.
Videos by Outdoors with Bear Grylls
When the Matterhorn Glacier Ride II opens this summer, you’ll be able to travel between the Swiss and Italian Alps in a high-elevation cable car—with a glass bottom. The mile-long ride connects Matterhorn Glacier Paradise with Italy’s Testa Grigia and covers a vertical elevation difference of nearly 1,200 feet.
The new cable car is the final piece of the Matterhorn Alpine Crossing, which will connect Zermatt, Switzerland, with Brueil-Cervinia, Italy. Currently, the only way to get between these two points is to ski between them in the wintertime—or else drive all the way around the mountain on a 3.5-hour road trip. Now, you can complete whole journey in a single (very scenic) hour. Right now, it’s Europe’s highest alpine crossing.
Image by Matterhorn Paradise/Zermatt Bergbahnen
The full Crossing will be open year-round starting July 1. You’ll have views of the iconic Matterhorn peak for the entire trip. But if staring at the 14,692-foot peak from a traditional cable car isn’t enough of an adrenaline rush, you’ll want to try to snag a seat in one of the two Crystal Ride cabins. These special cars will be decked out with a special glass floor that changes from opaque to transparent so you can see the valley floor beneath you.
Tickets for the existing portion of the Crossing start at about $101 full-price, though can get them for half-price if you have a valid Swiss Travel Pass, which grants you unlimited use of the country’s public transit network during your visit. That includes the panoramic Glacier Express train between Zermatt and St. Moritz).
Can’t wait for summer to get to the Alps? Ski season is still on. Check out the Swiss Tourism Board’s live snow tracker, which has webcams stationed around the country. The tracker can show you on a map exactly where—and how much—it’s snowing.
