The Grass Is Greener

When the snow melts in the Swiss Alps, the chic ski town of Verbier takes on a second life as a warm-weather playground.

- Nina Caplan

MANY OF US associate Switzerland with skiing and chocolate, and when it comes to chocolate, fair enough. But in summer, the melted snow feeds mint-green rivers, the sun warms the lakes to bathing temperature, and on the freshly exposed slopes, hiking trails thread past picturesque slate-roofed homes and forests of fir and larch. The Swiss, who love the outdoors more than any nationality I know, swap skis for mountain bikes, and the farmers usher their cows up to the pastures that nourish them. After all, the country has no cacao trees; what it has is amazing milk-the reason Swiss chocolate is so great.

Snow still capped the highest peaks but the weather was hot enough for a T-shirt.

In Verbier, a small town nearly 4,000 feet above Lake Geneva, the soundtrack of summer is the sweetly dissonant ring of cowbells-that, and the creak of the overhead cable cars that never let you forget this is, first and foremost, a ski resort. Prince Harry goes there, Leonardo DiCaprio and Barack Obama have visited, and Richard Branson loves it so much he owns a ninebedroom chalet just a five-minute walk from the town center.

None of them seem to go in summer, though. When I arrived in late June, snow still capped the highest peaks but the weather was hot enough for a T-shirt, and the only traffic I saw was the flock of sheep that delayed my bus to the spectacular Mauvoisin Dam. This wasn't a problem, as my guide, Cherries von Maur, who was coming from the other direction, was also held up-by a herd of cows.