Thanks! For our mode of travel, we are going to be driving...surprisingly, a one-way rental from GVA to LUG clocks in at 233 francs a week - quite reasonable. I don’t mind not going directly in the most efficient manner to Como, so going to Champnix or Zermatt don’t bother me too much.

For Zermatt - how similar to Cortina do you feel it would be? That was a bit larger than I would have preferred last summer. At the same time, I don’t want to be too isolated - and I do want to stay somewhere nice, and a cursory look at Hotels.com didn’t reveal a lot of choices outside of Zermatt. The locations to stay are largely for centrality - so even if we stay in Zermatt, I don’t mind taking the train to Tasch and driving to somewhere nearby to hike. I care more about staying somewhere nice than parking myself right next to certain hikes. I also would rather spend a block of nights somewhere as opposed to jump between different towns after 1-2 nights.

Hopefully that gives more a sense what I am looking for I will definitely look up some of these places you have mentioned though!