Larches and Sgraffito 2: The Upper Engadine

I thought I could call it quits on the larch hunt after my big success in S-charl, in the Lower Engadine. Or maybe I was hoping I could call it quits; it would have been convenient. After all, I was hemorrhaging money on hotels and food (as one does in Switzerland), I seeing several days of steady rain in the weather forecast, and I was beginning to get sick.

So, thinking I might be done, I took a train from Scuol to Chur, a small city along the Rhine River with warmer temperatures and greater transportation options. I spent two nights there, mostly resting, working, and drinking orange juice in a desperate attempt to ward off the chest infection that I felt coming on.  

At the same time, I was obsessively checking the Engadine Larch Traker website. One of the webcams it profiles does a big sweep around the Upper Engadine Valley, allowing viewers a 360-degree view of the mountains surrounding St. Moritz. That camera was showing a lot of orange.

A few days earlier, I’d considered taking the easy train ride from Scuol to St. Moritz. But, after I couldn’t find anywhere remotely affordable to stay in that swanky ski town, I’d written it off.

As I stared at the foliage on my computer screen, however, the idea cropped up again.

Clearly, St. Moritz was THE place to see larches. It was still only an hour and half’s train ride away—on a UNESCO world heritage train ride. I felt like my coughing was subsiding a bit. While the next two days looked overcast and wet, the two days after that were predicted to be clear and sunny with temps in the 30’s and 40’s.

“I’ll do one more round of hotel checking,” I said. “Then I’ll give up.”

I hopped online and found a hotel in Celurina, a small town just a couple miles from St. Moritz. It was out of my price range, but only slightly. “I might never be in Switzerland in late October again,” my justification voice said. I took and deep breath and clicked on the “reserve now,” button.

The next morning, I was on the Bernina Express headed from Chur to Celurina with my nose pressed to the glass. This is the world’s steepest railway line and probably one of the most beautiful too. As it climbs into the Alps, it travels through multiple tunnels and gorge-spanning bridges as well as vineyards, valleys, glaciers, and forests.

Some of those forests were larch forests. The moment we pulled out of one particularly long tunnel between the village of Bergün and the hamlet of Preda, the windows were suddenly flooded in gold. Instantly, I knew I’d made the right call. I was going to hit the larch jackpot in the Upper Engadine.

This was further confirmed when I got off the train in Celurina and toted my luggage down the street towards my hotel, conveniently located right next to the Inn River (the same one that runs through the Lower Engadine and the same one that flows through Innsbruck—places I had visited over the previous two weeks).

Right across the river sat a large swath of open space. That open space was rimmed on all sides by chunks of forest, and those chunks of forest contained larches that must have been peaking. They were the brightest trees I’d seen yet.

I checked in, dropped my bags, put on my running shoes, and strode out into the open space. Its extensive trail system is perfect for strolling and dog walking in the summer and fall. Apparently, it also makes for terrific skate skiing in the winter, judging by the presence of wands and snow making equipment strewn about.

After a few minutes of walking, I got up on a mound surrounding the Church of San Gian, as structure first built in 1478. There, I could take in a view a lot like the one on the webcam I’d been monitoring for weeks—only much, much better. Everywhere I turned, the trees popped out from their backdrop of evergreen neighbors, looking like balls of fire against the bright blue sky.

I had committed to not running that day, since I was still trying to rest my congested lungs, so I walked for hours, instead—first through that open space, then to Lej de Staz (Staz Lake), and then to the St. Moritzee (St. Moritz Lake). Both bodies of water created amazing reflective surfaces for the trees that surrounded them. And somehow, in my attempt to get back to my hotel without walking on a busy road, I ended up walking the Olympic bobsled run.

Although the next day was dark and rainy, I still managed to see some good trees on the bus ride from my hotel to the St. Moritz pool. I also had a chance to wander the streets of Celurina and check out more of the Engadine’s classic Romantsch architecture, complete with its sgraffito ornamentations.

Most importantly, however, I prepared to do a run which always makes the shortlist of the best routes in the Alps: the Val Roseg. Multiple people and websites had described this valley, located outside the town of Pontresina, as one of Switzerland’s most spectacular in any season. And it looked like I was going to see it in full larch glory, if the weather held.

The next morning, I took a bus to the trailhead and found the first section of trail closed due to recent rockfall. Luckily, I could still get up valley by running the road that paralleled it. Thanks to its smattering of small buildings and bridges, the presented some amazing photographic opportunities that I wasn’t alone in exploiting. In fact, the only other people I passed in the Lower Roseg Valley had telephoto lens-equipped cameras dangling from their necks.

After I got about halfway up the valley, I was alone for the rest of the day—alone in some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever encountered.

The larches were a huge part of the beauty, adding warmth and color to the copses of trees and punctuating the gray glacial moraine with their glow. But they were like icing on the cake, since the land itself was so stunning. The width of the valley and the size of the peaks encapsulating it made sure I stayed in a state of awestruck insignificance.

I ran alongside the river all the way up to the lake, then turned uphill and climbed up towards the Chamanna Coaz cabin. From there, I couldn’t help but head up to Surlej Pass, which I knew would be snowy but suspected would still be fairly easy to tromp through.

I knew the official Val Roseg run dropped over the St. Moritz side of that pass and traversed through a ski area down to the village of Silvaplana, so I wanted to at least check out that option. When I got there, I stopped to sit on a rock and consider my options. Part of me wanted to do the “official” run and not backtrack. But then it hit me: Why wouldn’t I want to backtrack over some of the most beautiful terrain I’d ever seen?  Why run through a ski area when I could see everything all over again, in different light and from a different angle?

So I took a bunch of pictures in the snow, then started back down to the Roseg Valley, but on a different trail. It was still gorgeous, and it did look different.

Part of the way down, I was startled by the sound of moving rocks and quickly looked up. There, crossing my path, was one of the most elusive critters in the Alps: a chamois. Chamois are, as Wikipedia calls them, “goat-antelopes” that live in the central European mountains.

A few weeks earlier, Josh thought he’d seen a herd of chamois from one of his paraglider flights. That prompted us to do a little research about them, and what we learned was that they are rarely seen. Since they are frequently hunted by humans, they’ve learned to be skittish and secretive. Add to that the fact that they blend in very well with their surroundings, and the chances of spotting any become pretty slim.

I knew the animal crossing my path could also be an ibex—an equally exciting creature to spot, and one that I’d seen in late August outside of Zermatt. But this guy looked darker as he ran down the slope below me. I stopped and stared. He did the same and immediately blended in with the dried grasses around him. When I finally picked him out again, I could see the curl of his small backturned antlers: the telltale mark of a chamois.

I knew chamois traveled in packs, so l looked back upslope to see if I could find his companions Sure enough, there were two, slowly grazing their way downhill. “Wait, no,” I said a minute later, when I spotted three more traversing the steep rocks above the others. Then, when I swung my eyes back to the slope from which I’d come, I saw three more. Nine chamois in total. I smiled. This is why I didn’t go through the ski area.

After a while, I left them to their devices. Even from several hundred meters away, I could tell my presence was affecting their behavior, so I thanked them and moved on.

I eventually rejoined the main trail and made my way back out to the road in the fading fall light. When I got there, I boarded the next bus that passed by and collapsed into my seat. It wasn’t the right bus, and I ended up needing to walk back to the hotel from a station about a half-hour away, but it didn’t matter.

I’d gone 21 miles in total, spent the day in the jewel that is the Roseg Valley, and seen the larch trees I’d come to love in their full glory.

On my last day in the Upper Engadine, I used my tourist card (which gives you access to free public transport) to ride a different train, the Glacier Express, from Celurina up to Diavolezza, the year-round ski resort that lies along the train’s route towards the Italian-speaking portion of Switzerland.

After checking out the views from the top of the Diavolezza tram, I ran back down valley on a trail that paralleled the train line.

Because I was at a higher elevation than the Val Roseg’s, I ran through larches that were past their peak. Most of them had dropped their needles, which meant that there was a rust-brown carpet under my feet.

At some point, I stopped in my tracks and thought how perfect it felt to be there. I was closing the circle. I was seeing these trees—trees that had welcomed me to the Alps, kept me company on many long, hard runs, and given me a goal to chase—at the end of their seasonal cycle.

As I was finishing up the last big run of my European adventure, the larches were finishing up their summer of photosynthesis. We were both transitioning from dynamic, energy intensive chunks of time into dormancy, quiet, and restoration.

Later that night, when I got back to my hotel room and took off my running shoes, rusty brown needles poured out of them. I wondered if I should collect them and put them back in.