Cut off for twelve hours a day from the rest of the world, describes a unique hotel in Switzerland. While the country is full of Alpine huts and hard-to-reach hotels, Alp Grüm is a mountain anomaly like no other.
“Happily, there are no roads. There is only nature. Sunrises. Sunsets. Stillness. Nothing more”, says Primo Semadeni, the 57-year-old manager of Alp Grüm hotel in Graubünden, as he overlooks a high-altitude pass covered in perpetual snow. The soundtrack is whispering wind, singing birds and rushing water, as a river tumbles down the valley. “Look around, we have mountains and glaciers and are far from everyday life. This is a challenge, but also our blessing.”
Hard-to-reach hotels and huts are a Swiss specialty, with many preserved as monuments to Alpine history. The Jungfrau Region, within the Bernese Alps, has many lofty shelters in the car-free villages of Mürren, Wengen and Kleine Scheidegg, where accommodation can only be accessed by ski lift, cable car, or cogwheel train. These are places of meditation, where hikers wander, and the mind slows.
Then there is an alphabet of striking refuges hidden in mountain eyries, from the Appenzell Alps to Zermatt. Great St Bernard Hospice in Valais is a remarkable example, requiring access by snowshoe only in winter, or a high-altitude access road, which only opens to traffic after the thaw. But Alp Grüm, straddling a razor-edge ridge on the south side of the Bernina Pass at 2,091m, pushes such extremes to the limits.
It is caught between languages, with the immediate north speaking Romansh, and the valley below speaking Italian. There is no road to it beneath Piz Bernina, the highest peak of the Eastern Alps, and the only way to get there year-round is to hike in for hours – not recommended in winter – or take the Rhaetian Railway that climbs high between the little towns of Pontresina and Poschiavo near the Italian border.
The hotel’s identity is wholly drawn from the history of the rail company, and it doubles as a train station, platform and waiting room. Between 20:00 and 08:00, however, the trains leave the rails, (metaphorically speaking), and the hotel is cut off from the rest of Switzerland, left to exist in a bubble of its own.
The story of Alp Grüm started in 1906 with Bernina-Bahngesellschaft, a visionary rail company that unveiled an ambitious plan for an electrified train connecting Switzerland with Italy beneath a roll and tumble of mountains and glaciers. What made the idea so extraordinary was that it would become the Alps’ highest rail crossing, opening the area for tourists but also slashing travel time for traders – back then, it took horse-riding messengers nine hours to complete the dangerous journey between Samedan and Tirano. The struggle was intensified in winter due to avalanche risk and the possibility of becoming stranded by heavy snowfall.
On a sunny day in July 1910, the Bernina Line was opened and Alp Grüm began life – not as a stone-built, 10-room hotel and waiting room as it is today, but as a timber cabin, from where the station chief could check the line every morning. The Rhaetian Railway took control of the Bernina Line in 1943, and the idea, as company spokesperson Camille Härdi describes it, was simply “a rest stop” – a notion that is hard to believe today.
“The Bernina Line wasn’t even originally supposed to operate all year round,” Härdi said. “However, the railway’s management board decided in 1910 – once the line to Tirano had been finished – to acquire a snow plough. It first came into use in the winter of 1910/11 and proved to be a wondrous piece of technology, capable of cutting the considerable costs normally associated with snow-clearing.”
These days, the Bernina Line rarely, if ever, closes, meaning Alp Grüm is no longer the Shangri-La it once was. “Winter has changed over the years with the glaciers receding and other effects of global warming,” said Härdi. “Even so, it still happens there is plenty of snow. There’s a locomotive called a ‘Snow Blower’ that makes sure the train runs even after a heavy snowfall.”
Alp Grüm is also no ordinary mountain hotel. The reception doubles as a traditional train station cafe-bar, with a counter for speedy coffee and schnapps, and tables for hot snacks and Swiss-Italian fare. Through a side-door in the dining room, a staircase leads to the bedrooms, which sit above the train station’s waiting room. The 10 ensuite rooms, kitted out with simple wooden furniture and warm fabrics, offer glacier views and supreme silence after nightfall.
Alp Grüm is, without doubt, an unsung Swiss landmark – and there is splendour everywhere: An Alpine garden of lady’s mantle, edelweiss, lemon balm and peppermint blooms in summer. In winter, the high ground seems to close in at night, in collusion with the stars. And when the last train leaves for the day, there is an almost unattainable silence.
A definite entry for the Bucket List!
