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Wolfgang
1'632 m
Graubünden
The Wolfgangpass is a low, gentle threshold rather than a dramatic crossing – so gentle that official maps and scientific sources simply call it "Wolfgang" after the hamlet at its crest.
1'632 m
Graubünden
The Wolfgangpass is a low, gentle threshold rather than a dramatic crossing – so gentle that official maps and scientific sources simply call it "Wolfgang" after the hamlet at its crest.
ROUTE
ELEVATION PROFILE
ROUTE MAP
DESCRIPTION
The Wolfgangpass is a low, gentle threshold rather than a dramatic crossing – so gentle that official maps and scientific sources simply call it "Wolfgang" after the hamlet at its crest. At about 1,631 metres it links Klosters in the Prättigau with Davos in the Landwassertal, and it is curiously lopsided: from Klosters the climb is a good 400 metres, but from the Davos side, up from the Davosersee, barely 60. It marks the watershed between the waters of the Landquart and those of the Landwasser, the doorway into the great high valley of Davos. An old packhorse trade route ran over it; Davos became the largest Walser settlement in eastern Switzerland, and it was across this saddle that Walser settlers from Davos crossed in the early 14th century to found what became Klosters. The Rhaetian Railway has climbed it since 1890.
Just south of the crest lies the Davosersee, formed when a rockfall from the Totalp dammed the valley. For generations the lake earned its keep in winter: its ice was cut and carried by rail across Switzerland, and since 1922 it has fed the Klosters power station – drawn down so hard that in the cold months the basin largely runs dry. Today it is a reliably windy sailing and surfing lake in summer, and the Wolfgang a busy, year-round road and railway into the resort of Davos. A modest crossing, but the very threshold of one of the Alps' great high valleys.
SELECTED ROUTE