Travel
Walking wonders of the Swiss Alps
Put on your walking shoes and explore the breathtaking 80km of walking trails in the Swiss National Park.
By Andrew Bain
If you believe in stereotypes, the Swiss are minimalists: clean, neat and spare. It’s a trait that Switzerland has even applied to its national park system, which consists of a single park, albeit one that was at the vanguard of European land protection.
Resting against Switzerland's eastern border with Italy, amid a beautiful collection of mountains, Swiss National Park is the oldest national park in the Alps, founded in 1914, and the second oldest in Europe.
A walker’s paradise
The park is a walker’s paradise, with around 80 kilometres of walking trails fanning out across its slopes and valleys, and bare rocky peaks towering overhead. For all its natural dramatics, however, this – more than so many Alpine areas – is a place that yields easily on foot. Of its 21 marked hiking trails, 12 are graded as easy, offering a gentle glimpse of its mountain wildlife and the peaks that frame the trails.
Access to the park is even easier than life inside it, for it is cut by a single main road that’s strung with nine parking areas, from where the trails begin. Postal buses from the town of Zernez, at the park's edge, also run along this road, stopping at the parking areas, making it easy to hop on and off for short explorations.
Venture through the Alpine meadows
One of the most inviting of the easy trails is the two-hour walk between the Alpine meadows of Champlönch and the Hotel Parc Naziunal Il Fuorn, a classic chalet-style building that is the only hotel inside the park. Stay the night and you’ll likely wake to the sight of deer grazing the meadows that surround the hotel.
The only other accommodation inside the park is the newly renovated Chamanna Clouza, a chocolate-box mountain hut that can only be reached on foot (the shortest walk to it is around three-and-a-half hours), though Zernez is just a 15-minute drive from the Il Fuorn and has more expansive options.
As I set out walking from Champlönch, marmots whistle an Alpine soundtrack and the gentian-covered meadows offer up views of the surrounding mountains.
Round out your exploration at Hotel Il Fuorn
Set out early enough, as I have, and the Hotel Il Fuorn is a beacon of sorts, quickening my steps with the promise of lunch and a beer. Across the slopes high above the trail, I can see red deer moving among the boulders. Before the national park was created, these deer were locally extinct, but today there are said to be more than 2000 in the park, along with other returning wildlife, including golden eagles, ibex and, more recently, even bears.
Head south from this pioneering national park, almost to Lake Como, and you’ll find the area prepping to become Switzerland’s second national park.
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The proposed Locarnese National Park will cover an area encompassing 500 kilometres of hiking trails, taking in an elevation range of almost 3000 metres, but even around its centrepiece – the deep and narrow Onsernone Valley – hiking isn’t necessarily the first thing on your mind.
Catch some rays in "Switzerland's sunniest town”
This proposed 220-square-kilometre national park is being established to also protect the cultural values of 13 Ticino villages inside its boundaries. In Berzona, claimed as Switzerland's sunniest town, I watch women from a local co-operative braid straw into hats, reviving what was once the village's major industry.
In Vergeletto, a resident has restored one of the village's five water mills, and now grinds corn flour once again, making the likes of pasta, biscotti and a corn beer – just the ingredients for a park picnic beside the Swiss-Italian border in this park in waiting.
Find information on Swiss National Park at www.nationalpark.ch/en, and book rooms at the Hotel Parc Naziunal Il Fuorn at www.ilfuorn.ch.
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