Trek outlines
A Tour of the Silvretta Alps
This fairly strenuous hut-to-hut tour makes a counter-clockwise circuit of the Silvretta Alps over the course of about a week. With magnificent scenery throughout, there are several rugged passes to negotiate and a number of beautiful valleys to wander through – some of which exude a surprising sense of remoteness. Add to that the glorious flower meadows, one or two extremely attractive villages and a variety of accommodation, and you have a trek to savour. The route crosses and recrosses the international border that runs along a high crest of peaks, providing wild but inspiring views, but there are some extremely steep ascents and descents to make, and several exposed sections that might deter anyone with a history of vertigo.
The Prättigauer Höhenweg
The Prättigauer Höhenweg is a medium-grade multi-day route that works its way along the south flank of the Silvretta and Rätikon mountains between Klosters and Landquart. Signed with the number 72, the route is described in this guide from its official starting point of Klosters Platz as far as Seewis, a village overlooking the Prättigau valley into which a bus descends to the railway station at Grüsch, a short distance from Landquart. This very fine trek is demanding in places, but it rewards with numerous memorable views, especially of the abrupt walls of the Rätikon mountains.
The Rätikon Höhenweg
The Rätikon Höhenweg Nord runs along the Austrian flank of the mountains, while a roughly parallel route known as the Rätikon Höhenweg Sud takes a similar course on the Swiss flank. For much of the way the two routes are never far apart, but are separated by a crest of frontier mountains. By linking them at either end of the range, a first class hut-to-hut circuit can be achieved.
There are two obvious starting points for this clockwise tour; one on the Swiss side of the mountains, the other on the Austrian. Both St Antönien and Brand are accessible by public transport (see Getting there). The route described in this guide begins in St Antönien, but trekkers preferring to start in Brand on the Austrian flank should go to the end of Stage 4 and follow the route from there.
Linking all three treks
Given sufficient time and energy, it would be possible to link all three treks in a 14-stage, figure-of-eight tour, as outlined below.
Begin by following the Tour of the Silvretta Alps from Berghaus Vereina (Stage 1) to Schlappin (Stage 6A). Since Schlappin is reached at the end of the first day’s walk along the Prättigauer Höhenweg, it’s possible to join that route at the start of Stage 2. This heads northwest to St Antönien and continues to the Schesaplana Hut at the end of Stage 4.
The Rätikon Höhenweg also visits the Schesaplana Hut, but then departs from the final stage of the Prättigauer Höhenweg by going up to the frontier ridge leading to Liechtenstein. This is on Stage 3, continuing into Austria at the Gamperdonatal and returning eastwards via the Douglass, Lindauer and Tilisuna Huts before returning to St Antönien in Switzerland at the end of Stage 7.
Now that would make a great fortnight’s holiday (plus two days for travel)!
Hut-to-hut routes
The route to the Schlappiner Joch is well signed (Hut-to-Hut, Route 4)
The three treks described above represent the best multi-day walking routes in the Silvretta and Rätikon Alps. But a glance at a map of the region will reveal numerous possibilities for creating shorter hut-to-hut tours and pass crossings. In fact when it comes to walkers’ passes, the Silvretta/Rätikon district must be one of the richest for its size in the whole Alpine range. The 12 outline routes, working from east to west, described in the fourth section of this book, represent a small sample of what is possible.
Wildlife and flowers
No summer trek in the Alps would be complete without the sighting of wildlife, while the flowers that adorn both meadow and rock face add their own undeniable beauty. The Silvretta and Rätikon Alps are not short of either.
Alpine animals
Marmots may be seen in many Silvretta and Rätikon valleys
Undoubtedly the most common mammal to be seen here is the marmot, a sociable and endearing creature that lives in colonies below the snowline in a range of habitats, their burrows sometimes having been excavated beside the busiest of trails. Growing to the size of a large hare and weighing as much as 10kg, the marmot spends five or six months each winter in hibernation, emerging in springtime looking rather lean and scrawny, but soon fattening up on the summer grasses. The well-known shrill whistle – given to warn of danger – is emitted from the back of the throat by an alert adult sitting up on its haunches.
Chamois are likely to be seen from a distance. These shy, agile members of the antelope family have short curved horns, a distinctive white lower jaw and a dark, reddish-brown coat with a black stripe along the spine. The chamois has acute hearing and an incomparable sense of smell, which makes it notoriously difficult to approach; if you should disturb one, it will probably give a sharp, wheezing snort of warning before racing away.
The ibex is more elusive in the Silvretta and Rätikon Alps than the chamois, but when sighted, the adult male is a noble-looking creature, with its large, knobbly, scimitar-shaped horns. Short-legged and of stocky build, the adult male leads a more-or-less solitary existence until the autumn rut, when one dominant buck fights all-comers for the prize of a harem of females. Less stocky and with shorter horns than the male, the female ibex feeds within a group of other females and their young. Their coat is similar to that of the chamois, but without the black stripe along the spine or the white lower jaw.
The small, streamlined and long-tailed stoat inhabits the upper pasturelands and preys on ground-nesting birds, marmot cubs and even the mountain hare. In the summer months its fur is a russet fawn, with white underbelly and throat. In winter its coat turns completely white.
Both red and roe deer may be seen in the forested lower slopes and outlying meadows, while the red squirrel scampers among the pine and larch woods. In these same woods, jays and nutcrackers make their presence known with their distinctive cries of alarm; the nutcracker is well-named as it uses its strong beak to break open pine cones to get to the fatty seeds hidden inside.
Perhaps seen more than any other bird in the Alps, the ubiquitous alpine chough scavenges for picnic leftovers on accessible summits and around mountain huts. This member of the crow family has an unmistakable yellow beak and coral-red feet, and is often seen in small, boisterous flocks among the high rocky places.
Alpine flowers
Clockwise from top left: Trumpet gentian; Gentian lutea; Glacier crowfoot; Daphne cneorum (all photos: Linda Reynolds)
But it is the sheer volume and variety of alpine flowers that in the early summer transform the Silvretta and Rätikon Alps with a bewitching palette of colour. Wandering along the track that leads to the Chamanna Tuoi (Tuoi Hut) on one occasion, we were struck by open meadows in the lower Val Tuoi in which there were so many flowers in bloom that we could imagine there was no space left for a single blade of grass to intrude. Elsewhere the screes and boulder fields below the southern face of the Drusenfluh and Sulzfluh were transformed into magnificent rock gardens, whose visual beauty was matched by the fragrance of scores of tiny daphne flowers (Daphne cneorum).
All the main zones and habitats of mountain flowers are represented, from lush valley meadows to glacial moraines and