Beauty and the bisses

CRANS-MONTANA, VALAIS

(Yes, it’s Switzerland but it’s French-speaking Switzerland, so there.)

I want to tell you about bisses. I’m not entirely sure where else you’ll find them in the world but in the Valais region of Switzerland they have been around for donkey’s years. Because it is the country’s driest region.

A bisse is small waterway which delivers priceless water from mountain streams – thanks to snow melt – to arid pastures and fields, vineyards and orchards.

They now provide excellent hiking paths because they traverse the hills and are a more civilised way to climb.

We were hiking in Crans-Montana during summer 2024 and met our guide in Aminona, a suburb above the main town. I'm not a believer, but I think we might have found heaven up there.

Our guide Etienne – a real mountain sprite – had just done two UTMB hikes back-to-back because a colleague had fallen ill.

He was excellent company as he led us on a slow hike via the Bisse de Tsitoret to a plateau full of flowers, snow-melt rivers and waterfalls.

The Bisse du Tsittoret carries water from the Tièche to the Noble Contrée region where it is used to irrigate the meadows and vineyards of Venthône, Randogne, Mollens, Miège, Sierre and Veyras.

The plateau was so perfect I wanted to hike past the waterfall and check that there wasn't a Truman-Show-style curtain that parted just beyond the mountain. Etienne said the heavenly scene had been barren rockfall only a few years ago.

During our lunch (which he magicked out of nowhere before manifesting a perfect picnic spot in the shade in really ‘spritey’ way), Etienne explained more about bisses.

They are mentioned in Roman writing but no one really knows when they were first built to channel mountain water for irrigation.

They are simple channels dug into the hillside which are communally maintained and there are water guardians who share the flow between residents.

They use a gate system to control how long each family has access to the water to irrigate their land and grow grass for cows, sheep and goats – before shutting it off and letting it flow to the next place.

We also learnt about the way the mountain folk used to live until after WWII when there was mass industrialisation in the Valais valley.

It’s called remuage; rémuer is ‘to stir’ in French and the noun is mostly used to describe turning the bottles in wine making.

Here though, it’s used to describe the way people moved with their animals according to the season.

They would have two houses and would leave one for months on end, taking all their belongings with them on mules to where the weather was better for their animals (down in winter, up in summer).