St. Moritz - La Tscheppa
I did this hike together with a friend on the 31st of October, 2026. It was the last of three days hiking in Engadin and around the Bernina Pass, chasing autumn colors and golden larches. As my friend was coming from Zürich, we decided to start directly from the train station in St. Moritz and walk up above the city and lakes in direction La Tscheppa.
Full route: Swisstopo
It was a cold but lovely morning when we walked from the train station up through St. Mortiz. It had been snowing very lightly in the early morning hours, so everything was covered in a white and sparkly layer in the city. Making our way up above the city, the snow disappeared as the sun rose higher on the sky. The trail was for the first kilometers following normal and gravel roads, which was a nice easy start to the day.
Above St. Moritz, we followed stage 2 of Via Engiadina for a while. The views from up here were absoulutely stunning. As we had started early, the lower most trees were still covered in light snow and frost, which just added to the beauty of the landscape. I have done a couple of hikes in this area, but I was never on this side of the lakes, so I was very happy about the hike right from the start.
Following the trail, we walked into Val Suvretta da San Murezzan where the moon stood perfectly above the mountain peaks. We didn’t walk for long into the valley before the trail turned around, continuing towards and above Silsersee, but I would like to come back and walk through the valley to the other side in summer.
Although it was the end of October, the larch trees were still beautifully golden on this part of the trail, and as we walked down towards Silvaplana, we could really enjoy their colors close up. There weren’t that many people on the trail, so we had a very nice descent with plenty of time to enjoy the views.
Before reaching Silvaplana, we crossed the road and started the second ascent of the day up in direction La Tscheppa. As this part of the trail was in the shade, we knew there was a risk of icy trails, and we were both very happy that we had brought our micro spikes along, cause it made the ascent a lot easier. We met quite a lot of people coming down as we hiked up, some of them sitting more than standing because of the very icy trails.
After about an hour, we reached the start of the plateau, where it again was sunny and the trails without ice. The landscape up here was very different, as we were now above the main tree line, but the autumn colors were still great. The trail was generally easy and not steep, and went past several smaller lakes as we made our way towards Lej da la Tscheppa.
It was by now early afternoon, and the sun slowly disappeared behind the mountains as we came closer to the lake. The last part of the trail was steeper, although not in any way difficult, and we once again had great views down over Silvaplanersee and the larch tree covered mountains behind.
We finally reached Lake Tscheppa just above 2600 m of elevation. The lake is really beautifully situated, and offers amazing views over the mountain peaks around Maloja and Val Bregaglia. We had a short break up here to enjoy the views and some chocolate, but as it was quite windy and therefore cold, we quickly started the descent to Sils Maria.
It was at times a quite steep descent, but with more flat parts in between. Because it was afternoon, the sun had started to set and the light was really amazing as we walked down. I have heard many people mention Sils Maria, and after this hike, I can see why it is so popular, as it is really well situated between the two lakes and seem to offer more peace than St. Moritz.
Walking down, we again made it below the tree line. Here, we again entered larch tree forest which we walked through for the last hour of the hike. I really liked how we started and ended the hike walking through the larch trees, and it was a perfect ending to this years autumn hiking. We reached Sils Maria and caught the bus back to St. Moritz, from where we made our way back home to Zürich with the train.
