Word: zermatt
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Imagine the surprise, then, of villagers in the base town of Zermatt when none other than Italy's Walter Bonatti turned up last week to try a Matterhorn ascent. Bonatti, 34, is one of the best-known mountain climbers in the world -the handsome, brooding hero of a dramatic rescue on France's Mont Blanc, the youngest member of the triumphant Himalayan expedition up K2 in 1954, the fellow who in 1955 spent six days and five nights alone clawing his way up sheer rock and ice to become the only man ever to conquer Mont Blanc...
...covered with fresh ice. Finally, at 6 p.m. they reached the base of the vertical wall and collapsed, exhausted, on a narrow ledge-the first horizontal surface they had seen in five days. They had not eaten or drunk in 72 hours, and when they staggered back into Zermatt after seven days on the Matterhorn, they discovered that newspapers had already given them up for dead. Dead? Next day Bonatti went skiing for exercise, and two days later he was back on the mountain, attacking the north wall again-this time by himself. Said Bonatti...
...South America. In countries where water supplies are kept free from sewage contamination and where food handlers follow the basic rules of cleanliness, typhoid is a rare disease. When it erupts in a place that prides itself on good sanitation, as it did in the Swiss ski resort of Zermatt 18 months ago, it causes a violent flap. Last week there was a new typhoid flap in clean Aberdeen, Scotland (pop. 186,000). There were 324 confirmed cases (two deaths) and 55 suspected, with still more expected...
Last week Zermatt was regretting its laxity. Already dead were three Zermatt citizens and a British tourist. At least 350 confirmed or suspected cases of typhoid had been traced to recent Zermatt visitors in Switzerland and eight foreign countries. Little Zermatt was suddenly in the headlines all over the world. Virtually all the 10,000 tourists had staged a hurried exodus, leaving Zermatt a ghost town occupied by 120 green-uniformed Swiss army medical corpsmen. By sealed train and helicopter, the army men evacuated local victims, and health inspectors poking through Zermatt's water system discovered the probable cause...
...week's end, denounced at home by the Valais Medical Association for a conspiracy of silence, and disgraced abroad, the Zermatt authorities at last closed down all the hotels and restaurants. To the villagers left stranded in dismal unemployment, it seemed a pity, for nearly a foot of new powder snow fell on the slopes that night. "Absolutely wonderful skiing conditions," mourned Gottlieb Perren, head of Zermatt's famed ski school...