A Comfy Way Around the Mountain

THE highest mountains in Western Europe are Mont Blanc, in France, and Monte Rosa, in Switzerland and Italy -- the white mountain and the red. Like Snow-White and Rose-Red in Grimm's fairy tale, Mont Blanc is famous; Monte Rosa, the obscure second sister. Yet at 15,203 feet it is only an imperceptible 570 feet lower than Mont Blanc. And this ''red'' mountain is as white as Mont Blanc: its name derives from the rosy flush that suffuses its vast snowfields at dawn.

The 100-mile Tour Monte Rosa is a hiking route around the mountain that was completed in 1997. Hiking tours of several days that circle a mountain have long been popular in the Alps: the best known is the Tour de Mont Blanc. Often touted as the classic alpine walk, it is taken by several thousand hikers annually. The new Tour Monte Rosa promised to be comparably scenic but free of crowds.

In August, my husband, Philip, and I set out to try the new route. We would be hiking -- as well as riding buses and cable cars -- for eight days through Switzerland and Italy, as this huge mountain is divided between the two countries. Information was still scant. In Zermatt, where we began the tour, we found maps but only vague information on accommodations.

Then, a stroke of luck came when we mentioned our plan to the young man who runs the Berggasthaus Trift, a historic inn above Zermatt. ''You must talk to my mother!'' he exclaimed. ''She made the tour last fall and loved it.'' We met her, and everything fell into place.

Margrit Biner had hiked with a group organized by the Swiss Alpine Club and led by some of the local mountain guides who are familiar with both sides of Monte Rosa. The itinerary they had devised varied from the ''official'' route. Instead of hugging the mountain as closely and as high as possible and sleeping at Italian Alpine Club huts (spartan and isolated), they followed trails that avoided slopes scarred by ski runs and stayed overnight in hotels in the villages on the Italian side of the mountain. This sounded ideal, and we decided to follow their route.

Armed with a general map for the tour and detailed section maps that we purchased in Zermatt, as well as Mrs. Biner's itinerary, the two of us set out. Some of the trails we followed were part of the official tour, others part of the Italian national trail system, all marked and numbered. We hiked 50 miles in eight days -- the same number of days required for the official route. (We traveled by bus, lift and cable car another 50 miles or so.) The hiking was moderate, with some steep stretches but no real scrambling; we walked for four to seven hours a day.

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