Val Pontirone
The Val Pontirone (German: Pontironetal ) is a side valley of the Valle di Blenio , in the Swiss canton of Ticino in the Lepontine Alps .
geography
The valley belongs to the eastern extension of the municipality of Biasca . It consists of the parish villages, which have not been inhabited all year round since around 1950 (order down the valley) Mazzorino ( Ticino dialect : Mazorign), Fontana, Pontirone, Pontironetto and numerous smaller hamlets, most of which have fallen into disrepair. The Legiuna (Lesgiüna) river winds through the narrow valley and, from the hamlet of Biborgh ( 1295 m ), the winding road to Malvaglia ( 369 m ) in the Blenio valley is over 13 kilometers long . The valley entrance of this hanging valley is around 400 meters above the valley floor of the Blenio valley near Pontiretto.
history
The valley is said to have got its name from the skill of its inhabitants in building bridges (Ponti = bridges). Between the Pizzo Magn ( 2329 m ) and the Pizzo Muncréch ( 2251 m ) there are only a few flat pieces of land that are suitable for agriculture. In the 18th century around 500 people lived here all year round, the same number as in Biasca. The Pontironetti were mainly employed as lumberjacks ("Burratori", Burre = tribe) and had specialized in exploiting the inaccessible mountain forest. “Timber traveling” (letting logs slide on snow and transporting them away with horses) was not possible in the Pontirone, as there were no pathways to remove the wood.
The logs were transported from great heights into the valley in a “Soveneda” (also known as “Sovenda”), a slide (ice channel) built in summer, which often led by bridges over gorges and streams and was lined with snow and ice in winter. In winter, the “Burratori” let the logs slide down into the valley, where they were often loosened to the sawmill . In one night shift, up to six thousand Burren thundered down the 90 centimeter wide Holzleiten into the valley. Every 200 meters there were guards who were on call to check that the trunks were running smoothly.
With the advent of the suspension railways (“funi a sbalzo”, “funi a freno”) from the middle of the 19th century, the “Sovenede” disappeared. One of the surviving witnesses is the route of the "Soenda" on the south side of the valley, on which the wood was led from the upper valley down to the Ticino. The section "Via di Fracc" from the bridge below Pontirone to Piena ( 727 m ) is still "accessible" today (level of difficulty T4 +). An isolated section is visible opposite the "Al Morign" grotto in Pontirone.
An old mule trail leads over the 2118 m high pass Giümela the village Rossa in Calancatal in the canton of Grisons . The pass was used in the Middle Ages for the exchange of goods and passenger traffic between the old Confederates in Leventina and Messrs. Trivulzi in Misox .
At the top of the valley is the wide Cava basin, which is dominated by the seven peaks of the Cime dei Torrioni (Torrone Alto, Torrone d'Orza ( 2956 m above sea level )). The Capanna Cava UTOE is located there at 2066 m .
Before the construction of the roads, the valley was opened up with a material ropeway from the station of the then Biasca-Acquarossa railway on the Lesgiüna via Pontirone to Biborgh. The middle station is still above the first houses in Pontirone and the mountain station in Biborgh. An older transport cable car led from Pontirone to the Ghiacciaio di Basso (Cava Basin), where ice was mined before the First World War and exported to northern Italy.
The road from the Lesgiüna bridge via Pontironetto to Pontirone was built in the early 1930s and the road from Alpe di Sceng to Alpe di Cava in the 1950s. Today's valley road from Malvaglia dates from the 1960s.
literature
- Biasca and Val Pontirone, SAC yearbook 1923
- Silvia Fantacci, Ueli Hintermeister: The bridge builders of the Val Pontirone . In: Val Calanca. 21 hikes in a pristine southern alpine valley. Rotpunkt Verlag, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-85869-238-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Filipponi: Elvetismi-Ticinesismi
- ↑ NZZ of October 23, 2003: The Alpine panorama from the south - an unusual picture
- ^ Biasca and Val Pontirone: Agriculture and Commerce, SAC yearbook 1922
- ↑ Silvia Fantacci, Ueli Hintermeister: The bridge builders of the Val Pontirone . In: Val Calanca. 21 hikes in a pristine southern alpine valley. Rotpunkt Verlag, Zurich 2002
- ↑ Huts in Ticino: Capanna Cava, Riviera, Val Pontirone
- ↑ Alpi ticinesi: Pontirone
Coordinates: 46 ° 22 '54.6 " N , 9 ° 1' 14.3" E ; CH1903: seven hundred twenty-one thousand six hundred and ninety-nine / 137943