It was a summer’s morning in the Lepontine Alps in Ticino, Switzerland’s Italian-speaking canton, and there was the vague threat of a storm on the horizon. I was already out on a trail through larch and hazelnut forest, backpack shouldered, aiming for a mountain pass. Up ahead, a herd of short-haired goats grazed, their bells chiming merrily, while behind me the peaks that tower over the Maggia Valley shuffled in and out of view from behind the clouds – each top grimacing, stone teeth chipped and bared.
I hike in Switzerland every summer, but this time I’d been drawn to a new adventure, billed as the world’s first hammock hiking trail, west of popular Locarno. Launched last year, it begins in the village of Bosco Gurin and appeals to those who like combining vertiginous hikes with the more horizontal pastime of lounging in a hammock. It’s low-key, low-impact travel, offering a chance to get to know one of Switzerland’s most extraordinary valleys.
So far, the project, called Ggurijnar Hermi, has a dozen stations equipped to take one or more hammocks, each site measured for ideal span and height, with fixed rubber straps attached to pine trees, and clip-on carabiners for split-second set-up. The sites are also chosen for their soothing views. One is an easy uphill stroll from Bosco Gurin’s 15th-century church. Another, with space for up to seven, sits by a riverbank, with firepit and woodshed stocked with timber. Others are scattered on the upper valley’s signposted trails. My plan was to walk the whole circuit, which a hiker of average fitness can tackle in around two days. It meant committing to the elements and re-evaluating the idea of time well spent in the mountains.
I began with an anticlockwise ramble to four of the sites, including one directly below the 2,137-metre Passo Quadrella, a mountain col offering a quick escape route into Italy. I had scheduled a swim at the first, a snack at the second, a rest at the third, and planned to sleep at the fourth, by the river.
In my rucksack was a lightweight rented hammock (£14 a day/£35 a night, a map is also provided) from the Panetteria Sartori bakery (one of three places in the village that stocks them), which was also handy for picking up supplies – a nut-filled pastry felt essential.
The hammock trail is a community-spirited initiative and part of the idea is to engage, support and communicate with locals, so they can share their passion for the valley’s quiet places with outsiders.
Before setting out, I’d chatted to the project’s architect, Zita Sartori, who was inspired to create the trail and share some of her favourite spots after being given a hammock as a birthday present during lockdown in 2021. “Hammocks are a great tool to understand the landscape in a new way,” she told me. “The point is not to post photos on Instagram. It is to stay outside and think differently.”
Alone, I walked uphill from the village and soon found the first set of support points, dangling over a natural pool. The ritual of unfolding and hanging my cradle was simple, and I thought about surrendering my day to a long, lazy afternoon. The pool was clear but looked very cold. Instead of a swim, I simply swayed back and forth above it like a metronome, listening to its sounds in silence.
The air turned drizzly and I pushed further up the mountain towards the second station, hidden in a belt of trees. A red kite soared. Under a pop of blue from behind the clouds I unfurled the hammock again. Ahead I could see Grossalp, a huddle of empty stone houses built around 1235 by Walser settlers, who came east from the canton of Valais to escape conflict with feudal lords. To me, it looked like a mini kingdom, almost existing outside history.
“The Walsers didn’t want to own the land; they wanted to live simply, quietly and independently without taking anything away from the land,” Francesca Pedrocchi, vice-president of Bosco Gurin’s Museum Walserhaus, told me before I began my hike. We can still learn something from them today, she added, about mindfulness towards the environment. In some small way, it felt like I was following in her ancestors’ footsteps, continuing their migration and starting again in a new place each time.
By mid-afternoon, I was swinging beside a waterfall below Passo Quadrella. I’d been prepared to spend the rest of my day there, contemplating moody clouds and listening to the slap of water on rock, but storm clouds had gathered and, with heavy rain now forecast, I made the steep descent at pace. The drizzle turned into a storm, so instead of slinging my hammock in the open air by the riverside, I made a beeline for Bosco Gurin. Some compensation lay in the fact that the village’s main employer, Hotel Walser, balances community engagement with sustainability, and its kitchen firmly supports local farmers.
Bosco Gurin is often described as one of the most beautiful villages in Ticino. Woodsmoke spools from chimneys, houses are painted with allegorical scenes: a horse-riding angel spearing a crocodile; an ibex haloed by a mountain. Stone streets lead to fountains where locals have filled their buckets for centuries. It reminded me of a summer I spent in Tibet, and the well-orchestrated modernity of Zurich and Basel felt light years away.
Next day dawned to lingering mist, a white smear on the mountaintops and no one on the trails. I had more stops to visit and, picking up where I left off, turned to the Weltu forest, following a trail alongside the Rovana River. I spent the best part of the morning at the site where I would have overnighted, nursing a flask of coffee in my hammock and listening to the rumbling cough of the river. With binoculars, I scanned the trees for hawks.
The wilderness that had so taken Sartori and first led her to thinking differently about her own environment was now working on me. By lunchtime, I’d climbed to higher ground, through the silent orchards of Bawald-Wolfstaful, and along a ridgeway. For the rest of that afternoon, my hammock – now attached to the underside of an obsolete wooden avalanche shelter – was my bunk, my window on to the valley. And for those final moments on the trail, the rest of the world was a mere ripple in the distance.
The trip was provided by Ticino Tourism. For more information about the Ggurijnar Hermi hammock trail, visit ggurijnar-hermi.ch. Hammocks can be rented from Panetteria Sartori, Museum Walserhaus and Casa Moni B&B. Doubles at Hotel Walser from £184 half-board. More information at myswitzerland.com
