TL;DR: A 105-minute audio companion for the classic Upper Engadin lake walk, one of the finest easy hikes in the Alps. This 16-kilometre trail links four luminous lakes -- Lej da Champfer, Lej da Silvaplana, Lej da Segl, and the hamlet of Maloja at the head of the valley -- through a high-altitude landscape of larch forests, granite peaks, and light so distinctive it inspired an entire school of painting. Flat, well-marked, and accessible to walkers of all abilities.
Tour Overview
| Duration | ~4.5 hours walking + narration (listen in sections) |
| Distance | ~16 km (one way, St. Moritz to Maloja) |
| Elevation | 1,800 m start / 1,815 m finish (virtually flat) |
| Difficulty | Easy (T1 -- wide, well-maintained paths) |
| Start | St. Moritz Bad (lower village) |
| End | Maloja (bus return to St. Moritz) |
| Best Time | June to October; peak colour in late September/early October (larch season) |
| Accessibility | Largely accessible; some sections have gravel surfaces |
Introduction
[00:00]
Welcome to the Upper Engadin, and to one of the great easy walks of the Alps. I am your ch.tours guide, and over the next few hours, you are going to walk from St. Moritz to Maloja along a chain of four lakes whose colours will rearrange your understanding of what water can look like.
The Upper Engadin, or Oberengadin in German, is a high-altitude valley in the canton of Graubuenden, oriented southwest to northeast at an elevation of roughly 1,800 metres. It is one of the highest inhabited valleys in the Alps, and its combination of altitude, dry climate, and nearly 300 days of sunshine per year produces a quality of light that is genuinely unlike anywhere else in Switzerland. The air here is thin and dry, and colours appear with an intensity that startled the first artists who came to paint here in the 19th century.
The four lakes of the Upper Engadin, Lej da St. Moritz, Lej da Champfer, Lej da Silvaplana, and Lej da Segl, are strung along the valley floor like beads on a necklace. Each is fed by streams draining the surrounding glaciers and peaks, and each has its own character and colour. The trail that links them is flat, well-marked, and suitable for anyone who can walk on a gentle path for a few hours. There are no steep ascents, no exposed ridges, and no technical difficulties. This is walking at its purest: one foot in front of the other, with beauty on every side.
We will begin at St. Moritz Bad, the lower village of St. Moritz, and walk southwest along the valley, passing each lake in turn, before arriving at Maloja at the head of the valley, where a PostBus will carry you back to your starting point. Along the way, I will tell you about the geology that created these lakes, the Romansh culture that shaped this valley, the painters who tried to capture its light, and the winds that make Silvaplana a world-class destination for kite-surfers.
Lace up your shoes. The lakes are waiting.
Chapter 1: St. Moritz Bad and the Inn River
[06:00]
GPS: 46.4920°N, 9.8340°E
Begin at St. Moritz Bad, the lower of the two parts of St. Moritz. While St. Moritz Dorf, the upper village, is famous for its luxury boutiques and grand hotels, Bad has a quieter, more local character. The name "Bad" means bath, and it refers to the mineral springs that were the original reason people came to this area, long before skiing and glamour arrived.
The mineral springs of St. Moritz have been known since the Bronze Age. Archaeological finds suggest that people were using the iron-rich carbonated springs over 3,000 years ago. In 1535, the physician Paracelsus visited and praised the waters. The springs are rich in iron and carbon dioxide, and they were prescribed for a range of ailments. The old pump room, the Mauritius Quelle, still exists in St. Moritz Bad, and you can taste the slightly fizzy, iron-tinged water if you wish.
From St. Moritz Bad, walk toward Lej da St. Moritz, the first lake. You will cross the young Inn river, which flows through the entire Engadin valley before continuing northeast into Austria, where it passes through Innsbruck (the name literally means "bridge over the Inn") and eventually joins the Danube. The Inn at this point is a modest stream, recently emerged from the lakes, and it is hard to believe that this gentle watercourse will become one of the great rivers of central Europe.
Lej da St. Moritz is the smallest and most urbanised of the four lakes, with hotels and buildings along its northern shore. In winter, its frozen surface hosts the famous White Turf horse races and cricket on ice. In summer, its surface reflects the Piz Rosatsch and the Corviglia ski area above.
Follow the path along the southern shore of the lake, heading southwest toward Champfer.
Practical tip: The Engadin Bus runs frequently between Maloja and St. Moritz, so you can begin or end the walk at any point along the route.
Chapter 2: Lej da Champfer
[18:00]
GPS: 46.4850°N, 9.8130°E
Leaving Lej da St. Moritz, the trail passes through the small settlement of Champfer and reaches the second lake, Lej da Champfer. This is the smallest of the four main lakes, but it has a particular beauty that rewards attention.
Lej da Champfer sits in a natural depression between moraines, the debris ridges left by glaciers that retreated at the end of the last Ice Age roughly 10,000 years ago. The entire Upper Engadin valley was shaped by glacial action: the lakes themselves occupy depressions scoured by ice, and the flat valley floor is composed of glacial sediments deposited as the ice melted. If you look at the landscape with geological eyes, you can read the story of the Ice Age in every hill, every depression, and every pile of rounded boulders.
The colour of Lej da Champfer varies with the seasons, the weather, and the time of day. In summer, when glacial meltwater flows strongly, the lake takes on a milky turquoise hue caused by rock flour, the same phenomenon that colours Lake Brienz in the Bernese Oberland. In autumn, when meltwater diminishes and the water clears, the lake can appear a deep, almost sapphire blue. On still mornings, the reflections of Piz Julier, Piz Nair, and the surrounding peaks are so perfect that it is genuinely difficult to tell where the mountains end and the water begins.
As you walk, listen for the sound of Romansh, the fourth national language of Switzerland, which is still spoken in the Engadin. The place names around you are Romansh: Lej means lake, Piz means peak, and Val means valley. Champfer itself comes from the Romansh word for field. Romansh is a Romance language descended from the Latin spoken by Roman soldiers and settlers who came to this valley two thousand years ago, and it survives in the Engadin and a few other valleys of Graubuenden as a living, daily language, though it is spoken by only about 60,000 people.
Chapter 3: Silvaplana and the Maloja Wind
[30:00]
GPS: 46.4580°N, 9.7950°E
The trail continues southwest along the valley floor to Silvaplana, a village that sits on the narrow strip of land between Lej da Champfer and Lej da Silvaplana. The name Silvaplana comes from the Romansh for "flat forest," and the village's position at the junction of two valleys gives it a distinctive character.
Lej da Silvaplana is the third lake and perhaps the most dramatic. It is larger than Champfer, deeper, and wilder, with a surface that can change from mirror-calm to white-capped fury within minutes. The reason is the Maloja wind, one of the most remarkable meteorological phenomena in the Alps.
The Maloja wind, known locally as the Malojawind or Maloja snake, is a thermal valley wind that develops on warm afternoons. As the sun heats the valley floor and the surrounding slopes, warm air rises, creating a pressure differential that draws cool air up the valley from the Maloja Pass and the Bergell valley to the southwest. This wind typically begins in the early afternoon and can blow steadily at 20-30 kilometres per hour, with gusts exceeding 50 kilometres per hour, until evening.
For walkers, the Maloja wind is a refreshing breeze on a warm day. For kite-surfers and windsurfers, it is the reason Silvaplana has become one of the premier wind-sport destinations in the world. On any summer afternoon, you will see dozens of colourful kites dancing above the lake's surface, their riders carving across the turquoise water at exhilarating speeds. International competitions are held here regularly, and the combination of reliable wind, stunning scenery, and warm-enough water (the lake reaches 18-20 degrees in summer) makes Silvaplana unique among Alpine wind-sport venues.
Walk along the eastern shore of Lej da Silvaplana. The views across the water to the Corvatsch massif, rising to 3,451 metres, are magnificent. The Corvatsch glacier, one of the southernmost in the Alps, clings to the upper slopes, though it has retreated dramatically in recent decades.
Chapter 4: The Painters' Light
[42:00]
GPS: 46.4480°N, 9.7780°E
As you walk between Silvaplana and Sils, you enter the stretch of the valley that inspired one of the great artistic movements of the 19th century. The Engadin light, that particular quality of luminous clarity produced by the altitude, the dry air, and the reflective surfaces of the lakes, drew painters to this valley from the 1850s onward.
The most famous of these was Giovanni Segantini, the Italian Divisionist painter who spent the last years of his life in the Engadin and produced some of the most powerful Alpine landscapes ever painted. Segantini arrived in the Engadin in 1894, drawn by the light and the high-altitude landscape. He settled in Maloja and devoted himself to capturing the Engadin on canvas with an intensity that bordered on obsession.
Segantini's technique, Divisionism, involved applying paint in small, distinct dots and strokes of pure colour, similar to but distinct from French Pointillism. When viewed from a distance, these individual marks merge into luminous, vibrating surfaces that capture the quality of Engadin light with extraordinary fidelity. His paintings of haystacks, mountain pastures, and labouring farmers radiate with an inner glow that anyone who has walked this path will recognise.
Segantini died on the Schafberg above Pontresina in September 1899, at the age of 41, while working on a massive triptych intended for the Paris World Exhibition. The triptych, titled "Life, Nature, Death," was never completed, but the two finished panels are among the masterpieces of 19th-century European art. The Segantini Museum in St. Moritz houses the largest collection of his work and is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand how this landscape has been perceived and represented.
Other painters followed Segantini to the Engadin. Ferdinand Hodler, Cuno Amiet, and Alberto Giacometti's father, Giovanni Giacometti, all worked in the valley. The tradition continues today, and galleries in St. Moritz, Sils, and Maloja regularly exhibit work by contemporary artists drawn to the same quality of light that captivated their predecessors.
Chapter 5: Sils Maria and Nietzsche
[54:00]
GPS: 46.4430°N, 9.7640°E
The trail arrives at Sils Maria, a quiet village on the isthmus between Lej da Silvaplana and Lej da Segl. This small settlement holds a significance in the history of European thought that is entirely out of proportion to its size.
Friedrich Nietzsche spent seven consecutive summers in Sils Maria, from 1881 to 1888, and it was here that he conceived and wrote some of his most important works, including "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" and "Beyond Good and Evil." Nietzsche rented a modest room in a house on the main street, now the Nietzsche-Haus museum, and followed a strict daily routine: writing in the morning, long walks in the afternoon, and early bed.
Nietzsche was drawn to the Engadin for its climate and its altitude. He suffered from severe migraines and digestive problems, and the dry, high-altitude air provided relief. But the landscape also fed his thought. The concept of the "eternal recurrence," one of the central ideas in his philosophy, came to him during a walk near Sils, beside a large pyramidal boulder at the edge of Lej da Silvaplana. A plaque marks the spot today.
The Nietzsche-Haus, open to visitors in summer, preserves his room much as he left it: a simple iron bed, a washstand, a writing desk by the window, and views across the rooftops to the mountains. It is a strikingly modest setting for some of the most ambitious thinking in the Western philosophical tradition.
Walk through Sils Maria and continue toward Lej da Segl, the last and largest of the four lakes. The village has maintained a quiet, literary character to this day. Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and Rainer Maria Rilke all spent time here, drawn by the same combination of natural beauty and contemplative stillness that Nietzsche prized.
Practical tip: The Nietzsche-Haus is open mid-June to mid-October, Tuesday through Sunday. Admission is CHF 8. The small bookshop has editions of Nietzsche's works in multiple languages.
Chapter 6: Lej da Segl
[66:00]
GPS: 46.4370°N, 9.7400°E
You are now walking along the shore of Lej da Segl, known in German as Silsersee, the largest and most remote of the Upper Engadin lakes. At 4.1 square kilometres, it is considerably larger than the other three, and its position at the head of the valley, backed by the wild peaks of the Forno and Fedoz glaciers, gives it a grandeur that the others lack.
Lej da Segl has several distinctive features. First, it is the highest lake in Europe on which a regular public boat service operates. The small motor launch that crosses the lake from Sils to Maloja and Isola has been running since 1962, and a ride across the water, with the mountains rising steeply on every side, is one of the most serene experiences available in the Engadin.
Second, the lake has a distinctive island. The Chaviolas, a tiny wooded island near the southern shore, is one of the few natural lake islands in the Engadin. It is uninhabited and undeveloped, a small wilderness in the midst of the valley.
Third, and most remarkably, Lej da Segl is the birthplace of the Maloja wind that you may have felt at Silvaplana. The wind originates as cool air flowing up from the Bergell valley through the Maloja Pass, and it first touches the surface of Lej da Segl before continuing northeast along the chain of lakes. On windless days, Lej da Segl can be perfectly still, its surface a flawless mirror reflecting the surrounding peaks with hallucinatory precision. On windy days, white-capped waves race across its surface, and the water takes on a darker, more turbulent character.
Walk along the northern shore path. The trail passes through patches of larch forest, and in late September and early October, these trees turn a luminous gold that contrasts magnificently with the turquoise of the water and the grey of the granite peaks. The Engadin larch season is brief, lasting only two or three weeks, but it produces some of the most spectacular autumn colour in the Alps.
Chapter 7: Maloja Pass and the Valley's Edge
[78:00]
GPS: 46.4020°N, 9.6950°E
As you approach the southwestern end of Lej da Segl, the valley begins to narrow and the sense of being at the edge of something grows. You are approaching the Maloja Pass, one of the most unusual mountain passes in Switzerland.
Most Alpine passes climb gradually to a summit and then descend gradually on the other side. The Maloja is different. From the Engadin side, the approach is almost flat; you barely notice that you are crossing a pass at all. But on the southern side, the pass drops nearly 300 metres in a single dramatic descent to the village of Casaccia in the Val Bregaglia, the valley that leads down to Chiavenna in Italy. This abrupt change in elevation is what creates the Maloja wind: the temperature difference between the warm Bergell valley below and the cooler Engadin plateau above generates the thermal circulation that drives the wind up and over the pass.
Maloja village sits right at the pass, at 1,815 metres, and it has a frontier quality that distinguishes it from the other Engadin settlements. This is where the Romansh-speaking Engadin meets the Italian-speaking Bregaglia, where the watershed of the Danube (via the Inn) meets the watershed of the Po (via the Maira). Stand at the Maloja Pass and you are on the Continental Divide in the most literal sense: rain that falls on one side of the road reaches the Black Sea; rain that falls on the other side reaches the Adriatic.
Segantini built his last studio here in Maloja, a rough stone structure on the hillside above the village, now marked with a plaque. From this spot, he painted the panorama of the valley stretching northeast, with the chain of lakes shimmering in the distance. The view from his studio door was essentially the reverse of the walk you have just completed.
Walk into Maloja village and find the bus stop. The PostBus back to St. Moritz takes about 30 minutes and follows the road along the north side of the valley, offering a different perspective on the lakes you have walked beside.
Chapter 8: Conclusion
[92:00]
GPS: 46.4000°N, 9.6920°E
You have walked 16 kilometres through one of the most beautiful valleys in the Alps, past four lakes whose colours encompass every shade of blue and green that nature can produce. You have crossed a Continental Divide, passed through the spiritual territory of Nietzsche and Segantini, and experienced a quality of light that has no equivalent at lower altitudes.
The Upper Engadin is a landscape of extremes held in perfect balance. It is high but not forbidding, remote but accessible, wild but civilised. The lakes at its heart are the product of geological forces operating over millions of years: the collision of tectonic plates that raised the Alps, the grinding of glaciers that carved the valley, the retreat of the ice that left the depressions now filled with water. And the light that illuminates it all is the product of altitude and atmosphere, of thin air and dry skies that allow the sun's rays to reach the earth with unusual directness and clarity.
What Segantini tried to capture on canvas, what Nietzsche tried to articulate in prose, and what thousands of walkers experience each summer is the same thing: a sense that in this valley, the world reveals itself with unusual openness, that the clarity of the air corresponds to a clarity of perception, and that walking slowly through this landscape, lake by lake, is one of the most rewarding ways to spend a day in Switzerland.
The PostBus stop is at the main road in Maloja. Buses run roughly every 30 minutes back to St. Moritz, and the Swiss Travel Pass is valid. Thank you for walking the Engadin Lakes Trail with me. This has been your ch.tours audio guide.
Practical Information
- Getting there: St. Moritz is reached by the Rhaetian Railway from Chur (2 hrs) or via the Bernina Express from Tirano
- Return from Maloja: PostBus 4 runs every 30 minutes to St. Moritz (30 min); Swiss Travel Pass valid
- Shorter options: Walk only Silvaplana to Maloja (10 km, 2.5 hrs) or Sils to Maloja (6 km, 1.5 hrs)
- Dining: Hotel Margna in Sils Maria for a mid-walk lunch; Maloja has several restaurants near the bus stop
- Equipment: Comfortable walking shoes are sufficient; bring sun protection (strong UV at 1,800 m), water, and a light windproof layer for the Maloja wind
- Larch season: Late September to mid-October for golden autumn colour; exact timing varies yearly