Schin Gorge

The Schin Gorge (also spelled Schyn Gorge or Schin for short ) is a gorge in the Swiss canton of Graubünden . The approximately 9 km long gorge between Tiefencastel , Alvaschein and Sils im Domleschg is traversed by the Albula river from southeast to northwest.

The name of the gorge comes from a roughly 800 m high and over 20 m wide practically vertical rock face ( Schyn or Moir ) on its north side, through which the former connecting path, the «Old Schyn», ran around 500 m above the valley floor. Today, after widening to around 2-3 meters, this path is a well-secured hiking and cycling route. There is still a risk of quarries.

In Graubünden, the gorge represents the shortest connection between the two supraregional transport routes from the Lake Constance area and Chur to Italy, which were already drawn in the late Roman Tabula Peutingeriana :

• the "upper road" over the Lenzerheide , Tiefencastel , the Oberhalbstein and over Julier / Maloja or Septimer into the Veltlin and
• the "lower road" through the Domleschg , the Viamala gorge, the Splügen pass into Valtellina or over the San Bernardino pass into Ticino.

The main road 417 runs through the Schin Gorge from Thusis to Tiefencastel, first on the southern slope, from the Solis bridges on the northern slope. In the 1970s, the narrow street with many tunnels could only be used “very slowly and carefully”; today this area has two longer tunnels. The old cantonal road through the gorge is no longer passable after slides and spills.

In the middle of the gorge, the mountain road branches off in 21 hairpin bends to Mutten . Today it has been replaced for car traffic by a wider, flatter and less winding road with a long, curved tunnel through the Muttner Tobel.

The railway connection of the Rhaetian Railway from Chur via Tiefencastel and through the Albula tunnel into the Engadin runs through the gorge, on the same slope as the road . The railway crosses the Albula with the Soliser Viaduct . The supraregional electricity transmission lines run on the northern slope of the Schin Gorge.

View into the Schin Gorge

Schin Gorge with the Soliser Viaduct

Web links

Commons : Schinschlucht  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Jürg Simonett: Solos. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . 2012 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kurt Mair: The elevated roads of the Alps . Richard Carl Schmidt & Co., Braunschweig 1965, p. 323.

Coordinates: 46 ° 41 ′ 3 "  N , 9 ° 31 ′ 17"  E ; CH1903:  seven hundred fifty-nine thousand three hundred nineteen  /  172444