More than 620 trails –1,300 kilometres in total – have had to be closed to hikers due to heavy rains and flooding that hit some regions of the country at the end of June.
Hiking association Suisse Rando said the storms left many trails impassable whilst some have simply been washed away. Hundreds of others have been damaged and need repairs.
Certain cantons have been more affected than others with Valais particularly badly hit.
“During the bad weather spell in June, many transport links and hiking trails were damaged, especially in Valais and Ticino, according to Sébastien Rappaz, who is responsible for hiking trails in French-speaking Valais for the organisation Valrando.
“It’s difficult to give an exact figure for the number of kilometres of trails that have been affected, because there are still all the paths that are not accessible because of the snow in the mountains,” Rappaz said.
“All we can do is inform people to prevent them from finding themselves in situations without a path that they had planned to pass.”
Not all the affected trails will be reopened, however, because the “means of repair” of these paths are limited, Rappaz said.
It will ultimately be up to individual communities to decide whether to undertake these repairs, but he said that some trails may be lost forever. And he warned the situation will only get worse due to the impact of the human-caused climate crisis.
“We may have to think about the future of certain paths, are we going to reopen them or not, are we going to have to build a particular infrastructure or not? There are two or three questions that will come to the table in the near future,” Rappaz said.
“We have paths on moraines [landforms left behind by moving glaciers] which are sinking. We have paths in the high mountains which were protected from falling rocks by permafrost, but as it disappears, these areas become exposed.
“We have the phenomena of floods and lava torrential attacks which are not new, but which have become more important in recent years and which are not always predictable,” he said.
Walkers are advised to try to check in advance whether trails are open, by contacting walking clubs or tourist information offices. They are also advised to check with the sites Suisse Rando and SuisseMobile for the latest news on the state of the trails.
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