If you rush through the San Bernardino Pass, you miss out on a picturesque pass landscape. If, instead, you leave your car or bicycle on the pass road and continue on foot, you can discover a unique glaciated-knob mire landscape with small and large stretches of mire, small lakes and ponds.
During the last Ice Age, the ice flowed south from the Reginald forest into the Mason valley, polishing the rocks and forming the landscape. Both raised and blanket mires can be found south of the pass. Given their location at an altitude of almost 2000 metres ASL, the raised mires are among the highest in Switzerland.
The San Bernardino Pass is an historical crossing point. Thus, in addition to the pass road, which was painstakingly restored in the 1990s, and the refuge, the well-preserved ruins of a Roman road can also be found there.
Nature reserves and landscape protection areasA large part of this area is listed, inter alia, in the following federal inventories:
- Federal Inventory of Landscape and Natural Monuments of National Importance (BLN object no 1907 “Quellgebiet des Hinterrheins und San Bernardino-Passhöhe”)
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- Inventory of Mire Landscapes (object no 53 "San Bernardino")
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- Interactive map browser displaying the object included in the BLN (available in German and French)
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Other links- All of the federal Swiss inventories can be displayed on an interactive map using this map browser (available in German and French)
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- Detailed information on the effects of outdoor sport and leisure activities on nature (available in German and French)
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- ViaStoria website of the centre for transport history (in German and French)
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- GIS application for the inventory of historical transport links in Switzerland (in German, French and Italian)
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