Gorges du Chauderon

A cliff-side trail

Starting from Montreux station, you climb slowly through the paved lanes of the old town before plunging into a world out of time. Laid out from 1869 at the request of the Société d’embellissement et d’utilité publique de Montreux, the trail follows the Baye de Montreux, by turns peaceful and raging, beneath vegetation so dense that for a moment you might think yourself in the tropics. In spring, wild garlic covers the undergrowth with a fragrant white carpet.

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It is a genuine mountain route, along the cliff face: a sign at the entrance warns from the outset of its danger, and caution is required. The entrance is on the left; on the right rises the Sentier du Télégraphe and its 1,055 steps towards Glion. On the way back, in the regained light of Lake Geneva, it is not unusual to spot a chamois at the edge of the wood.

The cradle of La Lyre de Montreux

The gorges have a place in the town’s musical history. In 1878, some ten musicians founded the band La Lyre de Montreux. They first rehearsed in the cellar of a certain Pierre Blanc, then in a café for more room. But they also had to learn to march, and it was for fear of being watched that the first attempts took place in the forest: “And so it was the trees and rocks of the picturesque Chauderon gorges that witnessed the first marches of the Jeune Lyre,” the society’s historical note reports.

It is hard to imagine those shy musicians rehearsing away from prying eyes: twenty years later, La Lyre won first prize in its division at the international competition of brass and wind bands in Nice. The story did not end there: on 31 March 2000, La Lyre de Montreux (1878) merged with the Fanfare de l’Avenir (1912) to form the Corps de Musique Montreux-Clarens, today’s Harmonie de Montreux, which keeps this tradition born in the gorges alive.

Ty Dolla $ign’s video

The gorge and the forests above it have also served as a set for today’s music. In 2016, while visiting the 50th Montreux Jazz Festival, the American rapper Ty Dolla $ign filmed a sequence of his video “$” in the woods of these heights, between Les Planches and Glion. The same video also roams the lake, in front of the Château de Chillon, and up onto the roof of today’s Mona.

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