2'048 m
Valais
The Moosalp is not a grand crossing but a high, sun-drenched plateau pass at 2,048 metres, rising above the old Valais villages of Bürchen, Törbel and Zeneggen, on the terrace high above the Vispa valley beneath the Augstbordhorn.
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The Moosalp is not a grand crossing but a high, sun-drenched plateau pass at 2,048 metres, rising above the old Valais villages of Bürchen, Törbel and Zeneggen, on the terrace high above the Vispa valley beneath the Augstbordhorn. It is a balcony of alpine pastures, larch forest and little tarns, with sweeping views across the Rhône valley to the chain of the Bernese Alps – one of the best-loved day-trip destinations in the region, and for road cyclists a punishing climb of some 1,400 metres up through sun-baked villages and vineyards.
But these quiet pastures hold a surprising claim to fame. Since a village treaty of 1483, the communities here have collectively managed their meadows, forests and water channels under clear rules – and the Törbel commons, the Moosalp among them, became a central case study of how shared resources can be governed. The anthropologist Robert Netting documented the system in Balancing on an Alp (1981), and the political scientist Elinor Ostrom built on his work in Governing the Commons (1990), research that won her a share of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics, the first awarded to a woman. So this modest pasture helped prove that communities can steward shared land sustainably for centuries. And a slice of the Moosalp restaurant's cream cake, famous far and wide, makes a fitting reward at the top.
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