dry stone walls on Gemmiweg

After the equally adventurous and successful first stage in 2021, we were looking forward to this year's second assignment on the historic Gemmiweg. From Kandersteg, this 1.5 meter wide mule track winds steeply up the northern flank towards Sunnbühl. The path is supported above and below by countless old dry stone walls, some in good condition, some in very poor condition. We rebuilt the most precarious spot last year. Since then, further down, above a hairpin bend, a retaining wall has collapsed onto the path. We had already chosen this wall as the second stage in advance, as well as the wall below the curve, which we also wanted to build from scratch. The municipality of Kandersteg, as the client, provided us with an experienced machinist and a great team member in Thomas, who is responsible for the Gemmiweg all year round. Before our assignment, he prepared the construction site perfectly so that we could start building from day one.

In the group we had a good atmosphere, lots of manual skills and enjoyed the work. This meant that we were able to build over 40 m2 of solid retaining walls in four weeks. This is more than twice as much as originally planned! In addition to the stones from the old walls, the forest next to the construction site served as a source of stone. This grows on a huge field of rubble with almost no humus. An endless number of top-quality stones - that makes the dry stone mason's heart beat faster! Thanks to the mini excavator and gantry crane, we were also able to use large stones weighing more than half a ton. This made the wall really stable and will hopefully last for several hundred years. We used an estimated 70 tons of stones, pinched several fingers or hit them with a hammer, feasted, danced, laughed, argued, saw bearded vultures and eagles and together added a small component to a historic path. Thank you to everyone involved for their outstanding efforts! We are looking forward to the next stage!!