Walks in the Engadine – Switzerland

In this guidebook Kev Reynolds describes 100 of his favourite walks and treks in Switzerland's Engadine, Val Bregaglia and Val Bernina.Tucked away in the south-east corner of Switzerland, the Engadine is a region of sublime lakes and mountains, pretty alpine villages and the country’s only national park.

Lying in the southeastern corner of Switzerland, the Engadine Valley forms a trench almost 100km long. In it, and on hillsides that flank it, there’s something for every walker’s taste: gentle valley rambles for a family outing; craggy mid-mountain walks for the more adventurous; high-level routes that lead across glacier, snowfield and rugged pass for the experienced mountain trekker. Dazzling lakes make tempting picnic sites. There are forest walks with deer leaping through the undergrowth; high pastures with ancient haybarns linked one with another by narrow trails, and snowpeaks gleaming as a backdrop.

It’s a high valley, a valley of contrasts. In the Upper Engadine between Maloja and St Moritz, several large lakes almost fill the valley floor at an altitude of around 1800m, while snowpeaks of the Bernina Alps rise nearby. Shapely mountains like Piz Palü, Bellavista, Piz Roseg and Piz Bernina spawn glaciers that hang like frozen cascades, or spill into side valleys among lengthy walls of moraine.

In the Lower Engadine, which runs northeastward and gradually loses altitude between Cinuos-chel and Martina, the valley narrows. In places the River Inn squeezes through tight gorges, wild and foaming in cataracts as a fine white-water river. But while the Inn may thunder into these gorges, the valley itself is a green and verdant land, with forests clothing the lower slopes. Flower-rich meadows ease between romantically attractive villages. Some of these are in the valley; others catch the sunshine from a natural terrace on the northern hillside.

The mountains here are quite different to those of the upper valley; mostly bare of snow in summer, grey turrets rising from a world of greenery. But push into some of the northern tributary glens and you’ll come up against the Silvretta Alps that display small glaciers and snowfields, and charm those drawn to them with their individuality.

But this guidebook is not limited to the Engadine (though if it were there’d be quite enough walks to justify it). Instead we look at some of its neighbouring valleys too, for each one broadens the walker’s opportunities, and adds to the scenic dimension. In the south, for example, at the Engadine’s head where the lake of Sils gives way to meadows around the village of Maloja, a sudden drop over the valley’s lip shows the Maloja Pass writhing its way with countless hairpins into a deep shaft of a valley filled with the soft air and warmth of Italy. This is Val Bregaglia, still Swiss but running into Italy and absorbing its atmosphere. It’s a captivating region with abrupt side glens topped by jagged granite peaks, slabs and walls like those of Piz Badile and Cengalo. Perched upon hillsides that rise from chestnut woods nearby, unspoilt villages appear to have been built there precisely to capture the most dramatic views. Some of these villages count among the loveliest in all the Alps.

Branching either side of the Upper Engadine, other little valleys are worth exploring: Fedoz, Fex, the narrow wedge of Val Champagna, Suvretta, Val Bever and the seductive Val Susauna. Val Bernina forms a link between Engadine extravagance and modest Val Poschiavo. Like the Bregaglia, Poschiavo too is Italian by nature, lying as it is far below the Bernina Pass and draining across the border into Valtellina. Val Bernina, administered by Pontresina, is the gateway not only to Poschiavo and Valtellina, but – more importantly for us – to the massif from which it takes its name. Access to the Bernina Alps is through either of two tributary glens: Val Roseg or Val Morteratsch. The first is a real gem of a valley, the second dominated by its retreating glacier and an astonishingly beautiful headwall of snow and ice.

The Lower Engadine has its fair share of delightful side valleys too. Although they may not be as well known as some of those of the upper valley, they’re no less rewarding to visit. Val Tuoi behind Guarda is a classic example. At its head the dominant peak is Piz Buin, along whose ridges runs the border with Austria, where Vorarlberg and Tyrol merge in the Silvretta Alps. There’s Val Tasna, flowing parallel to the east of Tuoi, a delight of forest, meadow and running streams, with a wild and stony inner core of glens leading up to the frontier again. Then there’s the Val Sinestra, broad and open where it empties into the Engadine, but enticingly mysterious in its upper reaches. There’s Val S-charl too, on the south side of the Inn, with the boundary of Switzerland’s only national park being drawn along its river.

The national park comprises a number of fine valleys. Contained solely within the Lower Engadine, the park is extraordinarily rich in wildlife, and the sensitive visitor will quickly come to appreciate its unique qualities. Here is a wilderness rarely found in Europe, for the needs of humans are subordinate to those of Nature. Man has a very low priority, and the natural world is allowed freedom to develop as it will, without his moulding influence. Some of the valleys are out of bounds to walkers, while in those that do have access, one can sense an air of calm, and gain opportunities to observe wildlife grazing or roaming untroubled in a pristine environment. That alone makes a visit to the Engadine worthwhile.

The Engadine is perhaps best known as a winter playground. With international resorts like St Moritz, Pontresina and Scuol, and with such classic ski grounds as those of Corvatsch near Silvaplana, and Diavolezza and Lagalb in the Val Bernina, together with the world-renowned Crest Run hurtling between St Moritz and Celerina, this is hardly surprising. The international jet set, with all its supposed glitz and glamour, has given St Moritz a reputation it’s happy to trade on. But that is not the full story, for as grand as the Engadine may be in winter, it’s in summer and autumn that the valley really triumphs. This is when the world of aprés-ski gives way to the seduction of winding trails, high pastures and hamlets inaccessible when the snow lies deep. In summer there’s colour and fragrance on the hillsides and in the valleys; wild flowers in profusion, marmots bounding across the slopes, mountain lakes and tarns, and tiny pools that reflect distant views. Observant walkers who go quietly among the mountains stand a good chance of being rewarded by the sight of red or roe deer, of chamois, marmot and ibex. There are mountain hares, foxes, and red squirrels among the larchwoods. There are buzzards and eagles and alpine choughs, capercaillie and woodpeckers, and numerous finches to be seen.

Leave your bed or tent early one summer morning, and slip noiselessly through the woods to find a glade where you can observe the valley’s wildlife; or bivouac high when the weather’s settled, and capture the magic of daybreak spilling over the mountains. Then you’ll understand there’s even more to the walker’s experience of the Alps than the basic joy of wandering through a series of magnificent landscapes.

One of these additional pleasures will be found when visiting bow-walled villages and alp hamlets seemingly unaffected by the passage of time, apparently unmoved by the advance of technology. The Engadine and Bregaglia have their fair share of such villages and hamlets, quite aside from the hybrid abstractions of jet-set resorts. On hillsides remote from the world of fashion houses and discos, trails lead to wonderful belvedere villages like Soglio in the Bregaglia; tiny groups of houses like Blaunca and Grevasalvas above Maloja; Isola, on a spillage of land beside the lake of Sils. There’s Guarda, Ardez and Bos-cha in the Lower Engadine, their romantic sgraffito patterns etched in the plaster of their walls; old Scuol with its fabulous village square; Tarasp with the brilliance of its window-boxes and a castle atop its rocky knoll. And there’s S-charl, tucked away from the world, surrounded by dashing streams and green pastures.

Set high upon some of those pastures, summer-only hamlets still draw a few hardy farmers who graze their goats and cattle and make cheese as they have done since time immemorial. Plan Vest and Tombal are magnificent examples. Timber and stone constructions with flat slabs of quarried stone on their rooftops, and tiny windows that look out across napkin-sized meadows, out beyond an empty drop of mountainside, to distant peaks like granite teeth on the skyline, often divorced from their roots by wisps and drifts of cloud.

A world above the world, accessible only to the walker.