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.