Mattmark Memorial 1965: Course, Elevation & Route Profile

Course & Elevation

The loop starts working on you immediately. From kilometre 0.5 three ramps at around 16 percent average stack on top of each other and lift you roughly 1,240 metres out of Saas-Grund to Kreuzboden and the Weissmieshütte within the first nine kilometres. Only the traverse to Almagelleralp and the descent to Saas-Almagell hand back a few runnable kilometres.

Kilometre 22.5 brings the hardest single block of the day: 3.1 kilometres at over 18 percent up towards Plattjen, with some 1,500 metres of climbing already in your legs. Past Saas-Fee the course climbs twice more from kilometre 31, to Hannig and Mällig, a good 600 metres between them, before the long descent through Sengg back to Saas-Grund.

A good seventy percent of the route sits in steep up or steep down terrain; much of this trail is walked, not run. The start is at 6:15 a.m. in the dark by the schoolhouse in Saas-Grund, the field is capped at 200, and a headtorch is mandatory kit on this distance only. The race commemorates 30 August 1965, when an ice avalanche off the Allalin glacier buried the Mattmark dam construction site and killed 88 people, 56 of them Italian guest workers.

Pacing Strategy

The first nine kilometres decide what the rest of the day looks like. Twelve hundred metres of climbing in one go is a hiking effort, not a running one: settle on a pace you could hold at that gradient for a good hour without gasping, and let the groups that run at the first steep ramp go. The only genuinely runnable stretch in the first half is the descent to Saas-Almagell, and even there, extra speed costs more than it returns.

The race is decided on the climb towards Plattjen from kilometre 22.5. Anyone who overcooked the opening ramps spends 3.1 kilometres at over 18 percent right on their limit here, and then loses the descent too. Treat that climb as its own race within the race, and eat at Almagelleralp and Saas-Almagell beforehand.

The second trap is the descending. More than a third of the course drops steeply, and with a twelve-hour cut-off it is wrecked quadriceps on the final descent through Sengg that stretch out the closing hours, not the climbs. Cold air at 2,750 m and the start in darkness also mean keeping jacket and gloves within reach rather than buried in the pack.

Training plan for Mattmark Memorial 1965: 12-week build

For age-group runners, seven to eleven hours is realistic; the cut-off is twelve. The demand is anything but even: long blocks of brisk uphill hiking alternate with technical descents, and there is barely a stretch in between where a rhythm settles. So what you train is aerobic base across many hours plus the ability to move economically on steep ground.

The decisive sections come late. The Plattjen climb at kilometre 22.5 and the two ramps to Hannig and Mällig from kilometre 31 demand climbing with 1,500 to 2,000 metres already in your legs. That is exactly what belongs in training: long sessions whose biggest climb sits at the end, rather than hill repeats done fresh.

More than a third of the course descends steeply, and the final drop to Saas-Grund arrives after eight to ten hours. Downhill running under fatigue is therefore its own training topic: technically on rooty, blocky ground, and muscularly as eccentric loading your quads have to tolerate for hours.

For conditions, altitude and cold are what count. The high point is 2,750 m, the start is in darkness, and September can bring snow up there. Get used to sessions above 2,000 m, run with a headtorch, and test the full mandatory kit including pack, food and a litre of water in training; semi-autonomy means carrying everything you need between the posts at Kreuzboden, Weissmieshütte, Almagelleralp, Plattjen, Saas-Fee and Hannig.