843 m
St. Gallen
The Wasserfluh is a low, gentle crossing at 848 metres in the canton of Sankt Gallen, linking the little town of Lichtensteig with Brunnadern in the Neckertal – so modest that, as one cycling guide puts it, it would hardly be worth a mention were it not officially registered as a pass.
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The Wasserfluh is a low, gentle crossing at 848 metres in the canton of Sankt Gallen, linking the little town of Lichtensteig with Brunnadern in the Neckertal – so modest that, as one cycling guide puts it, it would hardly be worth a mention were it not officially registered as a pass. Yet it carries real history: long an important part of the link between St. Gallen and central Switzerland, its old path was widened into a carriage road by the prince-abbot of St. Gallen in 1786–87, and just north of the summit stand the ruins of Neu-Toggenburg, the castle raised by the Counts of Toggenburg around 1270. The name itself has been in use since the 15th century – Wasser and Fluh, "water" and a steep rocky slope.
But the Wasserfluh's real drama lies underground. Between 1905 and 1910 the Bodensee-Toggenburg railway bored a tunnel of three and a half kilometres beneath the pass, linking the Neckertal with the Thur valley – a troubled, costly undertaking, beset by two work stoppages and financial difficulties, which the company had to finish under its own direction, and which cost several workers their lives. Today the trains still slip through that tunnel while cars, motorbikes and cyclists take the quiet road over the top, open all year round. A smart little pass, easily overlooked – but with a castle on its shoulder and a hard-won tunnel through its heart.
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