When a devastating landslide all but swallowed up his Swiss village and toppled his three-generation family-owned hotel in May, Lukas Kalbermatten didn't dwell or get emotional: He snapped into action to rebuild.

The hotelier's response sums up the mindset of many of the 300-odd residents of Blatten: They could have left the bucolic village in the southern Lötschental valley for dead — but instead wanted to see it come alive again one day.

It might have been different: Authorities evacuated villagers and livestock, but a 64-year-old man was killed as 9 million cubic meters of ice, stone and earth tumbled down from the Kleine Nesthorn peak on May 28, leaving a trail some 2-1/2 kilometer (about 1-1/2 miles) wide and 100 meters (about 330 feet) high in places.

If the toll had been higher, locals say, Blatten might have seemed cursed — and many might not have wanted to return.

Many hope for a return to home, if not their destroyed houses, within about five years.

Kalbermatten, whose web site for his Hotel Edelweiss in Blatten shows it half-sunk in a pea-soup-green pond created by the disaster, joined up with other local families to set up a “temporary” hotel at the summit of a gondola lift in the neighbouring village of Wiler — one of three villages in the valley where most Blatten residents relocated.

“For tourism in this valley it’s also a catastrophe because we don’t have enough beds for all the tourists," he said.

Laurent Hubert, co-owner of the Nest- und Bietschhorn hotel and restaurant near Blatten, said tourism in the valley was “crippled” and that his wife, Esther Bellwald, is spearheading the new hotel with Kalbermatten.

Its web site said the families of the staff were “all deeply shaken and endlessly sad.”

"This project gives us hope, and we also want to help rebuild Blatten, or at least the valley”, Hubert said in knee-deep snow near the construction site, with crews in short sleeves below sunny skies working quickly for a planned Dec. 18 opening of the “Momentum” hotel.

A 30-centimeter (12-inch) dump of snowfall over the weekend gave the valley its white wintertime gleam again.

In recent months, work crews have restored electricity and telecom lines to the Blatten area, used backhoes to dig a drainage canal, and cleared high roads that lead to Blatten, allowing for some exiled residents to briefly return to collect some belongings.

Some used rowboats to access the attics of their inundated homes.

Others queued up to claim lost items that were found by clean-up crews — books, family photos, and heirlooms like a wedding dress, as much as more-mundane bedding materials.

AP video by Jamey Keaten