Autumn hike to Lagh da Saoseo and a night at Rifugio Saoseo

We spent the night with our friends Markus and Sabrina in Schübelbach so that we would not have to leave Basel quite so early. At 8 am the four of us set off in Markus’s car, and at 11 am we reach Sfazù on the road over the Bernina Pass. This is where the Val da Camp begins, a side valley of the Valposchiavo that is surrounded by Italy on three sides. Only cars with a permit may drive into the valley, and from the end of May to the end of October there is also a PostBus minibus for which you have to reserve a seat. We leave the car at Sfazù and go on foot.

Through the larches to Lagh da Saoseo

Instead of the gravel road we take the hiking trail through the forest. It leads through larch and Swiss stone pine forests, many of the larches have already turned yellow, and it is beautiful. The larch is the only native conifer that sheds its needles in autumn, and before they fall they turn yellow. The most common tree in the valley, though, is the Swiss stone pine. Light rain is forecast for today, and it does drizzle a little on the way.

When we reach Lagh da Saoseo, the rain stops. Clouds are still hanging over the mountains, and we enjoy the mood. The lake is almost as smooth as a mirror, and the larch forests on the shore and the mountains behind them are reflected in it in full. From the northern shore we see the freshly snow-covered pinnacles of the Scima da Saoseo above the forest, and the grey rock mass of the Scima da Rügiul. Lagh da Saoseo lies at 2028 metres in a wooded hollow. It covers only about two and a half hectares, but it is up to 17 metres deep and known for its intense blue. You can only reach it on foot. We sit down on the shore and unpack our picnic.

We send up the drone. From above you can see how round the lake lies in the forest and how turquoise the water is. Near the northern shore a large boulder sticks out of the lake as a tiny island, and behind it the valley keeps rising under the clouds.

Afterwards we walk a short way on to Alp Camp. On the way we see a ridge above the larches with fresh snow on it. The Ristoro Alpe Campo stands at 2065 metres at the end of the PostBus line, a house built of stone and lime. In 2026 it is open from 13 June to 18 October, except on Wednesdays. We drink Möhl, from the cider house in Arbon that has been making drinks from apples since 1895, and eat Bündner Nusstorte, the walnut tart of Graubünden. It was modelled on the tarte aux noix of south-west France, which has no pastry lid. At the end of the 19th century the bakers Heinz and Tester from Graubünden took their inspiration from it in their bakery in Toulouse. Fausto Pult worked for them, and from 1926 he baked the walnut tart in his own bakery in Samedan and made it widely known in 1934 at the Mustermesse trade fair in Basel.

An evening at Rifugio Saoseo

From Alp Camp it is not far to where we are staying tonight, Rifugio Saoseo at 1985 metres. The hut of the Bernina section of the Swiss Alpine Club stands at Lungacqua, is staffed from the beginning of June to the end of October and used to be a farmhouse. The Casa Lungacqua was built in 1935 for 18 cows, and at the end of the 1930s the SAC rented part of it. From 1940 to 1957 the other part housed the border guards, and later Lungacqua is said to have been an exchange point for smugglers from Italy. Next to the hut, a few more stone houses stand on the meadow of Lungacqua.

We check in and settle into our four-bed room. The hut has 50 beds in shared rooms and a dormitory, and in our room there is even electricity. Shortly afterwards we have a small incident with a cheese from our provisions. It smells so strongly of farts that we swiftly banish it to the windowsill outside.

Then it is already time for dinner, which the hut always serves at 7 pm. Tonight it is almost fully booked, so the menu is simple: First a bouillon with croutons, then spaghetti with tomato sauce or Bolognese, and lemon muffins for dessert. After dessert we play three rounds of Brändi Dog, which the hut has in the small XS edition. Brändi Dog is a variant of the classic race game Eile mit Weile that is popular in Switzerland, played with cards instead of dice. It is made by the Brändi Foundation, which provides work for people with disabilities. We also have a grappa.

Stars over the Val da Camp

Quiet time starts at 10 pm. Before we go to our room, we stand outside for a while and look up at the sky. The starry sky is incredible, because there is hardly any light pollution here. That has become rare in Switzerland. According to the Federal Office for the Environment, natural darkness could still be observed on 28 per cent of the country in 1994, but only on 18 per cent in 2009. The light shining upwards more than doubled between 1994 and 2020. On top of that there is a new moon today at 5:50 pm, and no moon brightens the sky.

We are even hoping a little for the northern lights. Aurora activity is very high today, and in the early evening the Kp index, which measures the disturbance of the Earth’s magnetic field, reaches 7. That counts as a strong geomagnetic storm. Of all moments, the aurora chooses now, when we are no longer in the north, to be this active. Really cheeky of it. On the photo we take at half past ten, however, there is no aurora to be seen. Instead the Milky Way with its dark dust lanes stretches across the sky, and at the top right the Andromeda Galaxy shows as a small oval smudge. It is 2.5 million light years away, and in good conditions you can even make it out with the naked eye as a faint glow.

Then we go to our room, snuggle into our hut sleeping bags and try to sleep.