The bisses of Valais: nearly flat hikes along centuries-old water channels

Most people come to the Valais for the peaks. The locals walk the bisses.

A bisse is an irrigation channel, cut along the hillside to carry meltwater across the dry, sunny slopes to the vineyards and meadows below. Beside almost every one runs the path the keepers used to maintain it, and because the water only flows downhill gently, the path barely climbs. Kilometres of high traverse, mountain views the whole way, and almost none of the uphill. The two we walked were both dug in the 1400s.

Valais for hiking is always a good idea, so we booked a house in the area and went for some easy days. The first was the Bisse du Tsittoret, above Crans-Montana: about 8 km one way, a really nice walk that led us deeper and deeper into a side valley, the channel running alongside. The second was the Bisse de Clavau above Sion, nearly six hundred years old, roughly the same length and completely different. It follows a stone wall through terraced vineyards high above the Rhône, with stretches where you walk through tunnels in the rock and hold on to a metal wire to keep your balance and not fall.

A few years earlier my wife would have asked to turn around at the first wire. Not anymore.

That is the range in one weekend: a walk you could do with anyone, and one that quietly tests your nerve, built on the same idea. Follow the water. The bisses are easy to reach, easy on the legs, and most visitors chasing the famous summits never hear of them.