Gorges

Romainmotier - La Sarraz

Wonder and explore... Visitors are treated to an impressive water display at the wild Choleren Gorge in Adelboden augmented by bridges and stairs.

Along a gallery of rocks and crossing under the Rhine. The path into the gorge was hewn is a seven-year labor of love (1907 - 1914) by Christian Pitschen-Melchior.

Sparse, Alpine and rocky, yet welcoming, too. Spread out beneath the visitor's feet, Ursern looks surprisingly peaceful, especially when you have just emerged from the hairpin bends of the Schöllenen-Schlucht ravine.

Healing hot water jets, up to 37° C warm, surge from the ground in the Tamina Gorge, sometimes forming geysers up to 70 m high. The first guests were lowered in baskets, and soon a spa came into existence.

Over thousands of years, ice and melt water of the Aletsch Glacier have carved fascinating forms and formations in the rock: the Massa Gorge.

Wherever the waters of the Jura tried to carve their way through the pleats of the Jura, gorges were created. And so it is with the Gorges de l'Areuse.

A natural catastrophe that happened about 14,000 years ago is responsible for the interesting landscape at the entry of the Surselva. When the mighty Rhine Glacier retreated in the interglacial period the Northern flank of the mountain, where the village of Flims is these days, lost its hold: 15 billion cubic meters of rocks and mud slid into the valley and dammed up the Rhine.

Less than one kilometer from the Village Square a thermal source footbridge crosses the Dala Gorges at Leukerbad.

In the olden days, those that crossed the Gotthard Pass still had a long way to the plains far below. There was another barrier in Rodi in the Upper Leventina: the narrow Piottino Gorge carved out of the Monte Piottino by the Ticino River.