Daugher of Davenporter leads Alps’ treks

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By Shirley Davis | Thursday, May 22, 2008 9:29 AM CDT | () comments

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Ussher Von Maur of Verbier, Switzerland, was in the Quad-Cities recently to visit her father, Henry Von Maur of Davenport. She’s in the business of developing personalized Alpine walks for visitors to her home country.

If you like to ski and hike through the mountains, there may be no more inviting place in the world to live than Verbier, Switzerland, an Alpine resort located high in the Rhone Valley and overlooking Mont Blanc.

Ussher Von Maur, daughter of Henry Von Maur of Davenport, obviously is aware that her hometown of Verbier is recognized worldwide as being Europe’s leading ski resort, and it’s here she decided to go into the business of leading others through the Alps.

In Davenport to visit her father recently, Ussher told of working in an office in Geneva, Switzerland, when she decided she’d like to do something more adventurous. She thought she’d be good in a treking business in which she’d be the “mountain leader” for visitors to her part of the world.

“I signed up for a four-year course that involved learning first aid and security, studying orientation and how to find your way out of various mountain situations, and then we concentrated on the study of flora and fauna and how you can use certain flowers for eating or curing purposes,” she explained.

Ussher came by her Switzerland connection quite simply; she was born there. “My father was a banker; he married my mother in New York City and then moved to Switzerland. It was a good place to be if you were in the banking business.”

Ussher, who has dual citizenship, has two older brothers, Denison, who lives in Montana, and Winslow, who lives in Switzerland.

After visiting her father in Davenport, she and her boyfriend took off for Montana to visit her brother before returning to Switzerland. “I’d like to convince Europeans to try hiking in Montana,” she said.

“My boyfriend is a mountain guide, and he can take you to the top of the Matterhorn or the Eiger. I’m not trained to take clients on glaciers, as that means working with ropes and ice axes.” She mentioned that his work resembled the type of climbing Quad-Citians saw in the recent IMAX film, “The Alps,” which told of a breathtaking climb to the top of the Eiger.

“Going to the top of a mountain is an endeavor, but if you take a walk through the mountains you have time to see things,” she said, and she tailors her walking tours to her clients.

“Sometimes I suggest a 10-day walk around Mt. Blanc, staying in mountain huts. “All you have to do is carry your own windbreaker, backpack, sun hat, water and picnic food,” she explained. “They cook dinner for you at the huts.”

Of the Alps, she said, “We’ve civilized our mountains. We don’t have bears or wolves like they have in the Rockies, so we don’t have to worry about dangerous wild animals when we trek.

“If we see a squirrel we get excited, and we do see ibexes (wild goats with large, backward-curved horns).”

Because she speaks French, English, Spanish and Italian, she can escort a variety of visitors through the Swiss Alps. “Most of my clients are over 50; they don’t want to read maps or get lost in the mountains, so they hire me as a guide.”

Where does one go on vacation when you live surrounded by so much Alpine beauty? “I sometimes vacation in Davenport,” Ussher said, adding, “Last summer, however, my boyfriend and I put my front door key under the doormat and walked through the Italian Alps to the Mediterranean. It took us 30 days. I tried to get him to walk back to Switzerland, but we finally decided to take a French express train home; that took only five hours.”

I asked if she attended school in the United States. “I came to a boarding school in Massachusetts for high school and went to college at the American University in Washington, D.C.”

She now leads clients in all seasons, “on snowshoes in winter and walking in the summer. The length of our trek depends on the client. Some can walk for seven hours, others are more interested in shorter trips where they can study the wild flowers. I have a lot of visitors from England who are very interested in the flowers.

“My clients come from many parts of the world. We are just a 45-minute drive to Italy, and the base of Mont Blanc — Europe’s highest mountain — is only an hour away. It’s a wonderful location.”

Her resort city of Verbier has four large cable-car systems and two chair-lifts and is considered to have the largest ski lift and cable car system in the Alps. It starts at the Le Chable railway station and stretches over five mountain ranges, linking 12 ski areas, of which Verbier and the “4-Valley” regions is the largest.

Her resort town is also known for Para Gliding, with courses for beginners as well as more advanced flyers. There are nine snowshoeing itineraries in the area, and Verbier has three snowboarding areas.

The resort is an hour and a half from the Geneva Airport and three-and-a-half hours from the Zurich Airport.

Shirley Davis can be contacted at (563) 383-2281 or sdavis@qctimes.com. Comment on this column at qctimes.com.