Silum, the summer terrace above Masescha

Silum is one of those places that never makes it onto a signpost yet packs in half a century of the country’s history. It’s an alp on a terrace above Masescha, with meadows, wooden chalets and views into two valleys. I’d walk up, and I wouldn’t rush it.

A terrace between two valleys

Silum lies between 1,400 and 1,700 m and covers 40.7 hectares, 24 of them productive pasture. According to the Historisches Lexikon it sits north-east of Triesenberg centre, directly above Masescha, and spreads over both the Rhine and the Samina sides, with the Bargälla alp to the north and Sücka to the east. The terrace itself was created by the slope slumping between 12,000 and 8,500 BC.

The name comes from the Romansh sulam or sulom, meaning a plot of ground. It appears around 1509/17 as Salum, already described as a Walser alp, and in 1611 five Triesenberg men bought it from the people of Triesen. Today it belongs to a cooperative, the Alpgenossenschaft Silum, which holds 56 grazing rights, and since 1997 it has been capped at 20 livestock units.

The halfway step of the Walser year

To understand Silum you need to know how the Walser farmed. Between the village and the high alps they had an intermediate stage, the maiensäss, and Silum was one of them, along with Steg. The Lexikon explains that in late May the herds came up here, three weeks later they moved on to the high alps, and in September they came back down through the same step. Silum was sometimes even called the Aprilsäss, the April pasture.

From alp to summer retreat

The road from Triesenberg to Masescha was extended to Silum in 1880-1881, and the summer visitors followed. In 1912 Franz Xaver Beck opened a tavern with beds, the Silumer Hütte, and between 1914 and 1919 he replaced it with the Alpenkurhaus Silum, with room for 55 guests, which also ran a grocery from 1950 to 1970. The first holiday chalets appeared around 1930, some of them converted alp huts.

The mountain has taken its toll as well. In June 1910, after torrential rain, 25 landslides tore through Silum, and in 1968 avalanche barriers went up on the Samina side.

Hutterite refugees and a count’s title

What surprised me most when reading about Silum is what happened in the 1930s. Swiss border guards lived here from 1924 to 1929, and from 1934 to 1938 there was the Almbruderhof, where around 85 Hutterites, an Anabaptist community driven out of Nazi Germany, lived and worked. The Lexikon’s article on Triesenberg adds that in 1935 some villagers launched a motion to expel them, which narrowly failed at the municipal assembly. From 1939 to 1964, Caritas brought children in need up here every summer for a holiday.

And there’s a story that sounds like something from a novel. In 1939 Prince Franz Josef II made a German, Heinrich Georg von Stahmer, Count of Silum.

Silum’s neighbours

Silum borders two alps worth knowing by name. To the north is Bargälla, straddling the Kulm ridge between 1,100 and 1,960 m and covering 243.7 hectares; its name comes from a Romansh word for a hay barn, and the Lexikon suggests it may have been the first alp to pass into Triesenberg hands. To the east, on the Samina side, is Sücka, whose Berggasthaus at 1,402 m was one of the country’s first mountain inns. Silum itself once paid its dues to the lord in kind, two pounds of butterfat and four of cheese a year, a levy that wasn’t bought out until 1861. Small details, but they show how tightly every patch of grass up here was counted.

Getting there, and what not to count on

Silum has no bus stop. The nearest is Masescha, Foppa on route 22, about 800 m away in a straight line going by the stops’ coordinates, and uphill, so allow a decent walk. By car you follow the Silumstrasse up from Masescha.

What I can’t promise you is lunch. The Lexikon, with data to 2011, listed the old spa house as Berggasthaus Silum, but I haven’t found a current source confirming it’s still trading. I’d pack something and eat properly back down in Masescha. If you fancy more mountains afterwards, the Samina valley lies over the Kulm ridge, with Steg and the Sücka alp.