Piss vache

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Piss vache
Pissevache Valais 03.jpg
Coordinates 568285  /  110363 coordinates: 46 ° 8 '38.4'  N , 7 ° 1 '41.5 "  O ; CH1903:  568285  /  110363
Pissevache (Canton of Valais)
Blue pog.svg
place Vernayaz
height 116 m
f6

The Pissevache or Cascade de Pissevache , also Cascade de Salanfe (Salanfe waterfall), is a 116 m high waterfall in Vernayaz in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. The cascade is formed by the Salanfe torrent , which plunges into the Rhone Valley ; the highest level is 65 m high.

geology

In the gorge above the waterfall prevails shale from the carbon before, the rock face behind the case is made of gneiss .

history

Depiction of the Pissevache in a souvenir book around 1830

The waterfall, which is clearly visible from the Rhone Valley, was already considered to be “an essential stop on the journey through the Valais ” in the 16th century and was mentioned in travel reports, for example by Sebastian Münster or in the 18th century by Albrecht von Haller . Goethe mentioned the waterfall on his travels through Switzerland in 1779:

"At a considerable height a strong brook shoots down flaming from a narrow cliff into a basin, where it drifts around in the wind in dust and foam."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Saint-Maurice VS , November 7th 1779, In: Letters from Switzerland (1796)

Even Rodolphe Töpffer , Gustave Flaubert or Eugène Rambert endowed the Pissevache a visit. Around 1865, William England published a stereoscopic half-image of the waterfall, made in album print .

In 1866 a footbridge for tourists was built, which led through halfway up the 116 m high waterfall in a glazed part behind the waterfall. Entry to this tourist attraction cost one franc . In 1877 a visitor was killed by falling rocks.

In 1896–97, the Pissevache hydropower plant was built as a cavern power plant in a cave about 50 meters above the waterfall in order to “not disturb the natural beauty”.

In 1917 the waterfall was sold by the municipality of Vernayaz, which feared the destruction of the Pissevache. In 1923, the Swiss Alpine Club and the Swiss Homeland Security protested against concrete ideas to use the Salanfe plateau and the waterfall to generate electricity. In 1942 a concession was granted for the construction of a water basin and an electricity plant on the high plateau. From 1946 the Swiss Confederation for Nature Conservation (today Pro Natura ) and the Swiss Heritage Protection tried to prevent the construction work. The waterfall is an "inviolable jewel" and the plateau must be preserved. Several intellectuals from French-speaking Switzerland called for the establishment of a nature reserve similar to the Swiss National Park in the canton of Graubünden .

With the creation of Lac de Salanfe and the construction of the associated storage power plant at the end of the 1940s, the plans for a national park disappeared. Since then, water from the reservoir has been fed via a pressure pipe past the waterfall to the power plant center located in Miéville in the Rhone Valley. The intervention of the environmentalists led to the decision not to completely destroy the Pissevache, but to leave an adequate water supply. As a result, less water falls down the waterfall than before, making it less imposing.

In 1986 three French alpinists tried to conquer the rarely frozen waterfall for the first time by ice climbing , but failed.

Surname

Painting by Johann Jakob Biedermann , 1815

According to the Geographical Lexicon of Switzerland from 1905, the name corresponds to the Rhaeto-Romanic Pisch , in German roughly equal to "Giessbach".

In French , vache means cow and piss is slang for urine . In some historical travel reports, the name of the waterfall is translated as “cow piss”. Marc-Théodore Bourrit wrote in 1775: «His name is ignoble, but the thing is not; he is called Pissevache (cow piss). " Johann Jakob Hertel published an engraving of the waterfall in 1819 and subtitled it "the pissing cow".

Web links

Commons : Pissevache  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Charles Knapp, Maurice Borel, Victor Attinger, Heinrich Brunner, Société neuchâteloise de géographie (editor): Geographical Lexicon of Switzerland . Volume 3: Krailigen - Plentsch . Verlag Gebrüder Attinger, Neuenburg 1905, p. 750 f., Keyword Pissevache   ( scan of the lexicon page ).
  2. ↑ Bruno Baur, Raimund Rodewald: Waterfalls: Ecological and socio-cultural achievements of a threatened natural monument , Haupt Verlag, Bern 2015, p. 14, ISBN 978-3-258-07949-3 .
  3. ^ A b c Yvan Droz, Valérie Miéville-Ott: La polyphonie du paysage . PPUR presses polytechniques, 2005, p. 115 f. ISBN 978-2-88074628-5 .
  4. ^ William England : La Cascade de Pissevache près de Martigny . In: Views of Switzerland , approx. 1863–65, album print . Reproduction on the Rijksmuseum website . Quoted from: Gerlind-Anicia Lorch: Ferne Lands in 3-D. William England's (c. 1830–1896) stereoscopic travel photography . Dissertation, University of Hamburg 2017, Annex 9, No. 241.
  5. ↑ Un malheureux accident est arrivé à Pissevache, mardi dernier . In: Journal de Genève , August 21, 1877.
  6. ↑ La cascade de Pissevache vendue . In: Gazette de Lausanne , December 31, 1917, p. 2.
  7. ↑ Pissevache . In: Journal de Genève , February 13, 1918, p. 1.
  8. ↑ Pour sauver Salanfe et Pissevache . In: Gazette de Lausanne , February 7, 1923, p. 2.
  9. ↑ Salanfe et Pissevache menacées , Journal de Genève , March 1, 1946, p. 3.
  10. ↑ La ligue suisse pour la Protection de la Nature à Finhaut . In: Journal de Genève , June 19, 1946, p. 4.
  11. ↑ Ligue suisse pour la protection de la nature / Swiss Confederation for Nature Conservation : La cascade de Pissevache et le plateau de Salanfe doivent être sauvés! , Basel 1947. Quotation from p. 10 after Droz and Miéville-Ott 2005.
  12. ↑ a b Pierre-François Mettan: Salanfe ou L'histoire d'une convoitise, Evionnaz, Commune d'Evionnaz, 1991. Quoted from: Sandro Benedetti, Emmanuel Reynard: Géologie, géomorphologie et tourisme didactique dans le site de Salanfe (Evionnaz, Valais) . In: Géomorphologie et Tourisme , Actes de la Réunion annuelle de la Société Suisse de Géomorphologie (SSGM) Finhaut, 21-23rd September 2001. p. 186.
  13. ↑ Salanfe storage power plant. In: alpiq.com. Alpiq , accessed on April 24, 2019 .
  14. ↑ Struggle for nature and landscape protection . Swiss Folklore Society , accessed on April 24, 2019.
  15. ↑ Vernayaz: Cascade de la Pissevache. Vernayaz municipality (French).;
  16. ↑ Ils voulaient escalader la cascade gelée de Pissevache! . In: Gazette de Lausanne , p. 15, February 12, 1986.
  17. ↑ Jean Paul Friedrich Richter : Spiritual and powerful passages from all of his works . Eleventh volume. Franz Ferstl'schen Buchh publishing house. Johann Lorenz Greiner, 1836, p. 198.
  18. ↑ Marc-Théodore Bourrit : Mr. Bourret description of his journey to the Savoy Ice Mountains: From the French with notes and additions , Volume 2. Ettinger 1775, p. 95 .
  19. ^ Johann Jakob Hertel: Instructive excursions, or collection of remarkable German regions and old citizens from all parts of the German fatherland, but in so far as any other region has a particularly logical reference to Germany's history. Self-published, Augsburg 1819.
  20. ↑ Review in: Münchener Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, September 5, 1820, p. 564.