Davos - Engadin: The scenic way

What to do with two days off in summer during a global pandemic? In Switzerland there is only one answer: social distancing in the mountains. And with moonless weekend with clear skies we it was absolutely obvious that we had to choose a scenic spot for some astrophotography.

So what about lakes situated at 2500m altitude? I present you the Jöriseen:

The series of lakes is based in the triangle between the Vereina, Fless, and Flüelapass between Davos, Klosters and the Engadin Valley.

Friday
Having to work on Friday meant that we needed an easy first access into the region so that we could arrive in the evening at Davos without having to hike too far to reach the first camp. Our choice fell to the region of the “Hüreli” a 2400’ish peak looking over the the Lake of Davos and being a perfect start for the summit on Saturday, the Pischahorn.

Saturday
After summiting the Pischahorn we left the Flüela Valley side and crossed over into the Vereina Valley, enjoying a break at the Berghaus Vereina. From that point it was a 2-3h hike up to the Jöriseen. We set up camp and after having dinner the skies were still cloudy so i started to fear for my pictures of the nightsky.

We went to bed and i set the alarm for 01:30 to check if the sky had cleared. It had. I woke up, opened the zip of my tent and got greeted with an almost cloudless sky. I took multiple exposures of the lake and the reflection on the one side and the tents under the stars on the other. to my disappointment the ratio between height of the mountains in the background and width of the lake made for a lot of the mountain in the picture at 24mm – my widest lens I had with me, but see for yourself:

Sunday
In the morning the sun came finally out and warmed us for the first time during the trip. We started to hike over the Jörifless in direction of Rövers and took a left turn over the Flesspass (where we encountered the cows with one of the most amazing views ever) and made our way up the Vereina. Finally we had reached our last “peak” on the hike, from there it was only down the Val Sagliains to Susch. During the hike down we were amazed by the abundance of flowers and other vegetation in this valley, while still being at over 2000m above sea level.