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Grimsel
2'164 m
Berne / Valais
The Grimsel is the only direct mountain road pass connecting Bern and Valais, climbing to 2,164 metres across a wild, rugged world of grey-green granite between the Haslital and the upper Rhône.
2'164 m
Berne / Valais
The Grimsel is the only direct mountain road pass connecting Bern and Valais, climbing to 2,164 metres across a wild, rugged world of grey-green granite between the Haslital and the upper Rhône.
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The Grimsel is the only direct mountain road pass connecting Bern and Valais, climbing to 2,164 metres across a wild, rugged world of grey-green granite between the Haslital and the upper Rhône. For centuries it was a hard trading route: mule traders carried Swiss cheese over its dizzying paths to Piedmont and returned with wine, rice, corn and leather, the barter often struck at the old Grimsel Hospiz near the summit, a refuge for travellers since the Middle Ages. The little lake on the crest, the Totensee, still recalls the soldiers who fell here in the fighting of 1799: the "Lake of the Dead".
Today the Bernese side is unlike any other Alpine crossing: a chain of reservoir lakes and high dam walls, power plants and lines raised by the Oberhasli company dominate the landscape. The old hospice itself now lies flooded beneath one of those lakes, its work carried on by a hotel on the rocky spur above. And from the valley below climbs one last marvel: the Gelmerbahn, the world's steepest funicular, hauling its passengers up a 106% slope to a hidden mountain lake.
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