Our
walk starts by taking up through a magnificent beech wood;
it continues some seventy meters further down, along a path
anchored to the rock. We come to the first stairway, trough
a chaotic mass of huge blocks embedded between the walls of
the gorge, giving us an unheralded spectacle : the Dranse
running nearly fifty meters below our feet, at the bottom
of a veritable chasm.

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The
sides of the gorge have the appearance of immense wall-hangings
and there are curious excavations, the "giants'cooking-pots"
carved out by the swirling waters, which add to the site's
fantastic nature. All the way along, erosion has produced
veritable sculptures in a high-quality material : grey marble,
a local "geological cousin"of one that used to be
quarried in La Vernaz. The running water has covered it with
richly coloured deposits and the morning walker is rewarded
at around ten o'clock by a magical palette of greys, greens,
ochres and blues, shifting and mingling at the whim of the
sun's first rays.
These gorges were originally an underground layer hollowed
out by water percolating through. The chaotic mass obstructing
its upper part was caused when the roof disintergrated. Another
vestige of this collaps, an isolated rock, forms an imposing
arch more than thirty meters above the torrent: the Devil's
Bridge. |