Swiss Review 4/2021

Swiss Review / August 2021 / No.4 15 Report horsepower Citroën, over open farm- land: meadows often at a dizzyingly steep angle, islands of bright-green livening up the sombre mountain for- est, houses scattered over the hillside and farmers applying strawblowers to the dried hay. The mountainside is in- accessible by road. Cable cars seemingly lost in time like the one at Eggenbergli are inex- tricably linked to the landscape culti- vated by the Uri mountain farmers. “The cantonal land improvement de- JÜRG STEINER Eggenbergli is a small plateau high up on the steep, shadowed flank of the deep Schächental valley stretching from the cantonal capital Altdorf to the rocky wilderness of the Klausen pass. As regards vehicle access, only themountain farmerswith their local knowledge can reach Eggenbergli by off-roadmotorcycle, but there are also two 1,500-metre-long wire cables stretching fromWeilerWitterschwan- den up to the Klausen pass road. They are crucial as they enable a mode of transport that is both historical and innovative. The two small cable cars, con- structed in 1953 and painted green to match the woods and meadows, look like lovingly restored exhibition pieces from a vintage museum. Up to four people can fit on the two benches; the luggage is kept in an outside hold- ing compartment. Adouble-sidedme- chanical grip, as thin as spaghetti straps, connects the cabin to the four wheels on the cable. The passengers start the cable car by inserting a token and pressing a button. When the elec- trically powered cabin starts to glide down the steep valley, it tilts sharply forwards, taking the passengers’ breath away, albeit only briefly. Connection to civilisation Then the passengers glide serenely in a type of suspended 2CV, the cult two partment supported the construction of many small cable cars in Uri after the SecondWorldWar,” says historian RomedAschwanden. He is head of the Kulturen der Alpen (Cultures of the Alps) institute, which is an outpost of the University of Lucerne in Altdorf and researches, inter alia, the cable car culture in Uri, including some quite original projects. For example, musicologistMichel Roth records the sounds of the swaying cables in the Schächental valley so he can make Switzerland’s biggest aerial transport network Mountainous Uri has more originally designed, small cable cars passing over gaping precipices than any other canton. Once a crucial link to the outside world for remote mountain farms, they now serve sustainable tourism as well. Higher, further, faster, more beauti- ful? In search of the somewhat different Swiss records. Today: a visit to the region with Switzer- land’s densest cable car network e tremes Swiss