Pont du Diable Gorges

Through a large bar of limestone, the river Dranse has eroded and dug out deep gorges, which have kept intact their marvelous secrets.
Organized so that they are accessible to the public, the Pont du Diable Gorges each year attract several thousands of visitors. Open from May to September.
This site has been visited by tourists since 1893.
The walk starts by taking up through a magnificent beech wood; it continues some seventy meters further down, along a path anchored to the rock.
We come to the first stairway, trough a chaotic mass of huge blocks embedded between the walls of the gorge, giving us an unheralded spectacle : the Dranse running nearly fifty meters below our feet, at the bottom of a veritable chasm.
The sides of the gorge have the appearance of immense wall-hangings and there are curious excavations, the "giants'cooking-pots" carved out by the swirling waters, which add to the site's fantastic nature.
All the way along, erosion has produced veritable sculptures in a high-quality material : grey marble, a local "geological cousin"of one that used to be quarried in La Vernaz. The running water has covered it with richly coloured deposits and the morning walker is rewarded at around ten o'clock by a magical palette of greys, greens, ochres and blues, shifting and mingling at the whim of the sun's first rays.
These gorges were originally an underground layer hollowed out by water percolating through. The chaotic mass obstructing its upper part was caused when the roof disintergrated.
Another vestige of this collaps, an isolated rock, forms an imposing arch more than thirty meters above the torrent : the Devil's Bridge.