Panorama Trail Calanca Valley

November 22, 2017 -- The Calanca Valley is a remote, wild and narrow valley, with the Italian influences from Canton Ticino, but is actually located in a Southern Arm of the neighbouring Canton Grisons, accessed from the Ticino side. The valley is not well-known, and has suffered the typical loss of inhabitants through emigration to more populated areas.

The Valley has earned its name "Calanca" which means "Steeply Sloping" and although the valley opens up slightly at the back to allow for a scattering of villages, there are a couple of villages on sunny terraces that are accessible only on foot or by cable car, and those are the ones we visited on Wednesday. We did a quasi Round Tour, ascending with the cable car on one side of the valley, walking back down to the Calancasca River, and then ascending with the cable car on the other side and walking down again.

Although most of the trees are leafless at this time of year (all dumped on our trail so we had to tread carefully), this means we had better visibility. Plus the larches hadn't lost all their needles yet so the air was all golden and mysterious. Even though the valley was steep and our destination village of Cauco and the final descent were already in shadow, we enjoyed a sunny afternoon and were quite satisfied with this, another 10-km mid-week hike.

Interesting note: The first village we visited, Landarenca, although originally a community of farmers who have worked these slopes for about 800 years, had pretty progressive ideas, being one of the first two communities / cities (Zurich being the other) to allow Swiss women the vote in 1960.

Our tour starts with a cable car ride from Selma in the valley to Landarenca 330m higher up. We could walk this, but the cable car ride costs only 4 SFr. 

View North up the valley, this village is Cauco where we ended our tour (walked down from the other side of the valley) but by then it was in shadow.

View South down the narrow Calanca Valley

Sleepy, sunny, vehicle-free Landarenca. From here we headed South. (At the back on the other side is the high plateau where we started the second part of the hike, heading North).

 

Landarenca is accessed only on foot or by cable car, so it is peaceful and quiet up here.

Landarenca, high above the Calanca Valley

Landarenca, high above the Calanca Valley

From Landarenca, we walked an hour back down to the river, then took a second cable car up the other side of the valley, to Braggio

On the way from Landarenca to Arvigo in the Calanca Valley

Looking backwards to the chapel that we passed by

Arriving in Arvigo. We still have to walk down through the village to reach the river and the cable car station.

 

The church at Arvigo, another lovely village near the valley bottom.

Down at the Calancasca river is the other cable car, the one that takes you up to Braggio on the East side of the Valley.

 

Calancasca River in the Calanca Valley

Village of Arvigo in the Calanca Valley

Cable car from Arvigo to Braggio, 500m higher than the valley bottom

From here we can see Landarenca on the West side of the valley

After hiking another 150m uphill we found this nice place to have lunch while admiring the view and basking in the sunshine.

We found the perfect sunny spot to have our picnic lunch!

From our sunny lunch spot we also looked down on the village of Braggio.

Church and Cemetery in Braggio (Zoomed View).

High above Braggio with a view of Landarenca on the other side, and our trail continues northward through the golden Larch forest.

I did not see this house in the forest until Urs brought it to my attention.

Golden larches and snow-covered craggy peaks: Simply Stunning.

And a view southward down the Calanca Valley. More than likely, that high peak in the background is in Italy.

The second leg of the hike was longer, about 2hrs 30mins, first through larch forests, then into the shady Auriglia Canyon (ice-covered cliffs) and past sunny hamlets before the descent to Cauco (in shadow since about 2 pm)

In the shady Auriglia canyon the cliffs were covered with ice.

On the other side of the Auriglia valley are sunny terraces which we continue on before descending to Cauco in the shadows below.

On the descent to Cauco, we're hoping to have sunshine as long as possible...

In these narrow valleys the lower villages have only about 3 hours of sunshine per day.... This is Cauco, and our bus stop is across the street.

Calanca Valley is in Canton Graubünden, but here the influences are Italian, and the language is also Italian. It takes us only 2 and 3/4 hours to travel here.

   

Hikes we have done in the southern part of Switzerland in the last four years.

Wandering through the Villages of the Capriasca Region of Ticino

Saturday November 18, 2017 -- Sometimes a hike consists of a leisurely 10 km walk in an area of closely-spaced villages with poetic Italian names, admiring the local architecture, peeking into every community church to discover the artistic treasures there, and enjoying a meal of Piccata al Marsala and Risotto Milanese in the local Trattoria where you get personal service because you are the only visitors off-season on a work day.... 

And most often we find something interesting along the way, which in this case consisted of artwork in two churches in particular. The beautiful Church of Santo Stefano in Tesserete, which is over 1000 years old, contains ancient and peeling frescoes, one of which depicts a baby Jesus with six fingers on one hand. Why would the artist paint this? Unfortunately, the information brochure doesn't hint at why this would be. 

More interesting even is the copy of the "Last Supper" painting which I saw in the Church of Sant'Ambrogio in Ponte Capriasca. When I looked at it, I thought it was just a modern copy, but reading about it later, it seems that this "Copy" of Leonardo da Vinci's famous work was painted barely 50 years later than the original (1494 in Milan) by an anonymous painter, who may or may not have been a student of Leonardo's, having made improvements on the original, possibly because Leonardo might have had to give up early on the original due to quickly deteriorating surface conditions**....How did he know exactly how to paint it, in a church 70 km North of the original? From memory? A pencil sketch?  What an interesting little discovery! 

**Side Note: Apparently very little remains of the original painting in Milan, despite numerous restoration attempts. And apparently the replica I saw was one of only 2 or 3 such early replicas in existence.

Chiesa di Santo Stefano in Tesserete, Ticino. The origins of this church are from over 1000 years.

Chiesa di Santo Stefano in Tesserete, Ticino. The origins of this church are from over 1000 years.

A long time ago the people were a whole lot smaller....

 

Sculptures, marble inlays and frescoes adorn the inside of this beautiful church.

On this primitive painting, there are six fingers on the hand of Baby Jesus.

Each community we walked through had a piazza something like this one.

Our 10-km walk from Tesserete to Lamone through the villages of Capriasca, near Lugano, Switzerland

On our way from Campestro to Cagiallo to Luggagia

It wasn't all city walking. In the background, the distinctive "Denti della Vecchia" ("Old Lady's Teeth")

A beautiful day for a walk in the mild southern temperatures while the North lays under a chill...

The lovely landscape of the Capriasca

A couple of years ago we walked along the pinnacles of the "Denti della Vecchia"

An interesting discovery: Three of the villages we walked through had these massive community washing basins

This fountain / washing basin we found in Vaglio. These were surely all cut and carved by hand.

Not all the churches are old. This intricately designed building in Vaglio dates only to 1916.

Looking East into the Val Colla

This area is warm enough to grow persimmons (and also kiwis, lots of kiwis)

In the village of Ponte Capriasca we were looking for a restaurant across from this really rather unassuming-looking church, and I just quickly popped in for a look. Near the entrance was a rendition of "The Last Supper" by Leonardo Da Vinci, so I took a quick photo to compare later on to a photo of the original I looked up on the Internet. 

The similarity is amazing, only the colours of the clothes are slightly different, and besides the painting being generally in much better condition, I was surprised to learn upon later reading that the copy was possibly done by a student of Leonardo, who finished the background much more elaborately than Leonardo did. It is theorized that Leonardo might have given up on finishing the painting as originally planned, because the surface was at that time already starting to deteriorate (too damp). It also seems like this is only one of two or three such early replicas in existence.

This is my photo of the ca.1550 replica of DaVinci's "Last Supper", inside the Church Sant'Ambrogio in Ponte Capriasca, Ticino

This is a photo of the original "Last Supper" (Wikipedia). The painting has greatly deteriorated.

We had lunch at a quaint little trattoria, we were the only guests and were treated well!

Piccata al Marsala and Risotto Milanese in the Trattoria del Giardino in Ponte Capriasca

This is a Mediterranean Pine, or Umbrella Pine, from which we get those expensive Pine Nuts.

This is my second time in Origlio, it has a very pretty old core

In Origlio

Walking around Lake Origlio in the late afternoon sun (that would be 14:30!)

Lago d'Origlio

The last village we walked through, Lamone, before catching the train to Lugano and then back North to the Cold!

Our 10-km walk from Tesserete to Lamone through the villages of Capriasca, near Lugano, Switzerland