Hiking in Ticino: smuggling trails and spas

For Giuseppe Maggetti there is no finer place than up here on Corte Nuovo on the eastern ridge of Ticino’s Pizzo Ruscada. Here he feels high above it all. The day is just beginning: the lights of Lago Maggiore are still glittering in the east while the sky is getting ready for the sunrise. Wild mountain peaks line the horizon. Rugged and exposed, they plummet down into narrow valleys. Mountain pastures – or monti, as they are called in Ticino – are perched on narrow ledges. Further down, villages cling to the steep slopes. Giuseppe could sit here for hours gazing at this topography of extremes, fascinated by the play of light and shadow, by the virgin forest – endless expanse.

Nowhere else in Switzerland do the forests extend as far as they do here on the southern side of the Alps. Over 60 percent of this forested area is not used for forestry purposes. In 1992, the first natural forest reserve was created in the Valle di Vergeletto, a branch of the Onsernone Valley. Today there are five in the Locarno region alone. The largest – the Riserva forestale dell’Onsernone – covers 781 hectares on the north side below Corte Nuovo, with its unique white fir population.

A new perspective

All of this could have been a national park if more than half the population had said yes. The referendum on 10 June 2018 was extremely close: 49.35 percent were in favour of a Parco Nazionale Locarnese. ‘All eight municipalities involved were officially behind the project,’ the SRF reported the following day. But it was the hunters in particular who feared new restrictions. Giuseppe had put his heart and soul into the park project.

The national park was to extend from the Brissago Islands to the Vergeletto Valley and around Bosco Gurin in Valle Rovana, from 193 metres above sea level to the 2,864-metre Wandfluhhorn, from the subtropical to the high Alpine. Formed by the collision of the African and European continental plates, this region offers every type of rock to be found in the rest of the world. Researchers have counted 1,421 plant species. The rough topography conceals wild corners almost untouched by humans. No wonder that wolves have returned. It’s only a matter of time before the bears follow them. Gamekeepers even spotted Ticino’s first golden jackal here in 2020.

Corte Nuovo would have been at the heart of the national park. The mountain pasture was still used for grazing goats until the 1960s. After that, the buildings increasingly fell into disrepair. With the help of the national park project and numerous donations, one of the huts was restored and since 2017 it has served as a self-catering ‘rifugio’ with a large kitchen, wood-burning oven and sleeping quarters for six people. A small solar power system provides the lighting. Anyone can use the regularly replenished provisions store – and wood for the oven – for an appropriate contribution. Pure luxury.

It wasn’t always so comfortable here, as we glean from a book on display in the hut: ‘Costa – alte Centovalli’. Everything the residents needed had to dragged up by hand or by mule, as the photos in the book show. Today you can get to Monte di Camino by cable car from Verdasio railway station and from there it takes little more than two hours. With every step you feel more at peace as you leave the hectic world behind. Only here and there do you catch the echoes of a barking dog in the valley below. Corte Nuovo is a place to recharge your batteries. To feel the freedom and independence that shine from the proud faces of the Alpine families in the book’s yellowing photos. Far from officialdom and bureaucracy, this place was subject to different laws.

The forests stretch far up the steep slopes. In many places only the ridges are bare. It’s hard to imagine that just over 100 years ago, clear-cutting was the norm with the wood used for fires and the land for cultivation. Nevertheless, it was not enough for the large families. Many were forced to emigrate or send one of their children away. Quite a few boys had to work as ‘spazzacamino’, or chimney sweeps, in neighbouring Italy. You can follow in their footsteps on the Via del Mercato starting in Intragna. In the village museum, Museo Centovalli e Pedemonte, visitors can inspect the kind of narrow chimney that eight-year-olds once had to squeeze into. For a long time the Via del Mercato, or market trail, served as the only connection between Domodossola and Locarno. Once used by traders, lumberjacks, shepherds, emigrants and chimney sweeps, the historic route – now signposted as hiking trail number 631 – offers an intensive impression of the Centovalli. You pass by mills and washhouses; Giuseppe recalls how his mother would scrub the laundry there by hand. Further up, Alpine trails and smuggling routes criss-crossed the mountain landscape.

‘Scary smugglers’ trails’

‘The smugglers found their way through this wild, inhospitable, rocky region full of boulder scree and sheer cliffs. It was dangerous and full of pitfalls, but there were no border guards, no soldiers, no sniffer dogs lurking here. They were safe,’ writes Aline Valangin in her book ‘Dorf an der Grenze’ (Village on the Border), which looks at the smuggling trade.

The green border runs right through the head of the Onsernone Valley, and behind the Pizzo Ruscada – a great climb starting from the Rifugio Corte Nuovo. In Aline’s day, rice was the main contraband. They would carry it around on the street in broad daylight, negotiate in hallways and kitchens, argue about the price – which was slowly rising – and joke around. ‘However, they hardly needed to watch out anymore: everyone in the village was in cahoots and, to protect their own interests, they were careful not to talk about it to strangers,’ writes Aline. If you follow the ridge route to Pizzo Ruscada you may find yourself teetering along a narrow ridge. ‘Scary, the smugglers’ trails. They show what the rice was worth.’

Beyond the summit you can look out into the wide basin that is part of Valle Vigezzo and which was to be included in the national park. At least the ruins of the Craveggia spa were spruced up a little. An avalanche destroyed this once popular spa in 1951. The old bathtubs in the basement of the historic building are now accessible again, and two tubs filled with healing waters invite visitors to indulge an outdoor treatment.