NATURAL HAZARDS : Camping in Switzerland carries certain risks

Some hikers in Lake Lucerne. Photo by Jon- Unsplash. NATURAL HAZARDS : Camping in Switzerland carries certain risks.

NATURAL HAZARDS : Camping in Switzerland carries certain risks

From Swissinfo.ch

I’ve found this post on Swissinfo.ch about Switzerland, but this applies to all mountainous areas all over the world really.

It states that about one in three campsites in Switzerland located in or near a risk zone along rivers, lakes or in avalanche regions, are in danger. This was found in an in-depth analysis by the Sonntags Zeintug and Le Matin Dimanche newspapers.

Photo: SB VonLanthen. Unsplash. NATURAL HAZARDS : Camping in Switzerland carries certain risks.
Photo: SB VonLanthen. Unsplash. NATURAL HAZARDS : Camping in Switzerland carries certain risks.

There are 444 campsites across the country of which some are open all year round. People living in these zones during the winter or bad weather spells with high waters could be killed.

I have been last year trekking with my family in Courmayeur during a week when it was raining a lot every afternoon – one day we’ve been up the mountain and we made it down and to the multi-sports enclosed centre when it started raining, and the next day, we’ve heard that just up the road a bit, in Val Veny, there was a massive mudslide as the rivers got really full with lots of rain in a short period of time, and a couple had been wiped away in their car and perished. One has to respect these areas, as nature can turn very hard against one really quickly.

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A Rockslide, with a boulder of a size of a house, wiped out a section of the highway in SW Colorado

An aerial image of the road obstruction. Photo: CDOT. A Rockslide, with a boulder of a size of a house, wiped out a section of the highway in SW Colorado

A Rockslide, with a boulder of a size of a house, wiped out a section of the highway in SW Colorado

From The Journal, Denver Post and CDOT

A crew Sunday night blasted one of two boulders that shut down Colorado Highway 145 north of Dolores since Friday, and built a temporary road to allow traffic through.

Trucks hauled way the rubble beginning Sunday, and the bypass road opened Monday afternoon.

The explosion of the boulder - photo CDOT. A Rockslide, with a boulder of a size of a house, wiped out a section of the highway in SW Colorado
The explosion of the boulder – photo CDOT. A Rockslide, with a boulder of a size of a house, wiped out a section of the highway in SW Colorado

The rock slide prompted three days of work to try to reopen the highway, a key route between Dolores and Telluride, and an alternate route to the Iron Horse bicycle race from Durango to Silverton.

On Saturday, officials assessed the ridgeline above the highway for additional threats. CDOT had two priorities: to “patch the damaged road” and to ensure the stability of the rock ridge formation.

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