Shady hike in Valle Verzasca on an Otherwise Sunny Day

Saturday Dec.7th, 2019 -- My planning was way off for this outing! Every second excursion we do these days is to the sunny Ticino, but instead of staying in the wide open and sunny Magadino Plain, we picked the absolute steepest and shadiest valley to walk in!

The Verzasca Valley has become exceedingly popular in summer, you can barely get in there for all the tourists that want to go to Lavertezzo, that town that became famous for its clear blue waters and the iconic "Bridge of Jumps" (Ponte dei Salti). But in winter the valley has only about three hours of sunshine. From my first foray into the valley 30 years ago (before the Internet made it popular) I remembered it was about 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. But that must have been before the time change to winter time, because when we got there at 11 a.m., the sun was already quickly heading to behind those peaks....

The hillsides in Ticino are full of scattered groups of stone buildings on steep mountain pastures, where the farmers used to live in summer while tending their goats and harvesting the abundant mountain hay. Mostly they had fountains with ground water supply, but in one particular area there is no surface water, and so the farmers devised a system of hand-hewn stone tubs to collect the rain water, and this is what we wanted to discover.

So although we ended up with only about an hour of sunshine, it was good exercise to walk up through the chestnut forests, and very interesting educationally, plus it wasn't cold, thankfully. We did try to reach a sunny hillside at the end of our hike, but the shade was too quick for us, and we had still two hours to wait for the bus out of the valley, so instead of sitting in a restaurant, we caught the bus to the back of the valley before heading back out, and got to see more of this beautiful valley. As luck would have it, as we got back out of the valley, we got to see the sun just setting in the West...

Heading up by bus to the entrance of Valle Verzasca... Here at Lago Maggiore there is lots of sunshine!

The mighty Contra Dam at the entrance to the Valley

 

The town of Corippo on the West side of the lake

We decided to start further up the valley and walk back to Lavertezzo, because we thought there would be sun longer there, but that wasn't the case. At least the uphill climb to Revöira went fairly quickly (1 hour)

At Motto on the highway where we started our uphill climb (to the left) it was obvious that this part of the valley gets very little sun. As it turns out, we probably should have ended here instead, and had some coffee in the little restaurant...

Heading up through Motto, the steps were icy and slippery

This part of the valley doesn't seem to get any sunshine at all.

 

It didn't take us long to reach an altitude where there was sun (about 20 minutes). 

 

Across the valley

Looking Northwest into Valle Verzasca

The first set of houses we reached were called "Ca d Dént" (Casa di Dentro) with the "monolithic" tubs, hand-hewn basins to capture rainwater, which right now is frozen!

The basins we came to see!

 

Even though we only had a little over an hour of sunshine, at least it was pleasant and mild

 

This is information about the basins

Urs reading about the use and construction of the basins up here on the steep mountain sides.

A little past "Casa di Dentro" is the real goal of our journey, a cluster of buildings called Revöira. We enjoyed a picnic lunch here after admiring the basins and the town well

   

Climbing the stairs into Revöira

Below Revöira a few more homes and another information panel. This was 12:15. Barely 20 minutes later, this was already in shadow

Down below at that picnic table we had a quick lunch

 

We had a quick lunch here, spent only 20 minutes in this village and continued back down through the forest toward Lavertezzo in the hope of catching the sunshine in that village

Revöira also has a cistern, larger than the individual basins. This is the view looking Southeast in the direction we are going. The hope is to still have sunshine in an hour after getting to Lavertezzo.

Heading back down into the forest we spent the next 45 minutes in shadow.

Some very large chestnut trees

Down at valley bottom on the other side of the Verzasca River, there is apparently no sunshine at all in winter to melt snow and frost

In the village above Lavertezzo, there is unfortunately no more sunshine. Which is too bad, because for a long time now I have been wanting to spend some time here. Usually we only pass by at the very bottom of the valley. 

But past the village on the other side of a ravine, there is sunshine, so we headed that way but weren't able to keep ahead of the shade

Below us the iconic church in Lavertezzo, and the turquoise water which attracts so many tourists in summer

By the time we made it up to the village of Rancone, the sun was also gone here (Actually, we did make it up for just one minute of sunshine before the shade caught up)

Back down at road level in the village of Lavertezzo, we decided instead of going into the restaurant (on the left) and waiting an hour there, we would catch the bus up the valley for 30 minutes, and return with the next bus.... It gave us ideas for future hikes in this valley....

We caught the bus to the back of the valley, got out in Frasco and waited there for 10 minutes for the bus back out of the valley to the South

The purple trail is what we walked this time, starting in Motta on the left. It took us an hour to walk up to Revöira, and another hour back to Lavertezzo.