Sanetsch-Muveran-Weg

«Derborence, the word has a soft ring; the sound lingers in the ears, soft and rather sorrowful. It begins with a solid, authoritative sound, then falters and falls into emptiness while we are still letting it ring; Derborence; as if it wanted to suggest doom, isolation and oblivion.» Another book which belongs in your rucksack: «Derborence» by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz tells of the landslide on Derborence but is also a love story. The book makes you keen to start out on the Sanetsch-Muveran-Weg. Because Ramuz' descriptions of the scenery are as beautiful as the route itself.

The Sanetsch-Muveran-Weg begins in the Saanen region, on the first day leading over the Col du Sanetsch, a historic pass from the Bernese Oberland into the Valais. On the second stage, the scenery is dominated by the glaciated «devil's mountains» of Les Diablerets and the Tsanfleuron karst fields, while the steep route leads down into the landslide area of Derborence, with its lake and primeval forest, grown over a period of three hundred years.

«You follow the banks of a beautiful water course... the water, forced between step banks, is like many heads and shoulders urging each other to advance more quickly. Calling to each other with loud yells, laughter, voices; as when children come out of school and the door is too narrow to allow them to all pass through at the same time.» That's how Ramuz described the stretch between Vaud and the Valais, which – in the opposite direction - forms the third stage of the Sanetsch-Muveran-Weg. Over the Col de la Forcla, sometimes already snow-covered in autumn, face to face with the Grand and Petit Muveran down to Ovronnaz, where weary hikers can plunge into a warm thermal spa.