The Tamina is a river in the south of the canton of St. Gallen in

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

, running close to the border to the canton of

Grisons The Grisons (; ) or Graubünden (),Names include: * ; *Romansh language, Romansh: ** ** ** ** ** **; * ; * ; * . See also list of European regions with alternative names#G, other names. more formally the Canton of the Grisons or the Canton ...

. It has a length of almost , flowing through the Tamina Valley, of which Tamina Gorge () is an impressiv part, before it enters the

Rhine The Rhine ( ) is one of the List of rivers of Europe, major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Austria–Swit ...

as a left

tributary A tributary, or an ''affluent'', is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream (''main stem'' or ''"parent"''), river, or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries, and the main stem river into which they ...

Course

The river starts below the Sardona Pass () and between the Surenstock () and the Trinserhorn () of the

Glarus Alps The Glarus Alps () are a mountain range in central Switzerland. They are bordered by the Uri Alps and the Schwyz Alps to the west, the Lepontine Alps to the south, the Appenzell Alps to the northeast. The eastern part of the Glarus Alps contains ...

. Within its first half, the river flows eastwards through the valley ''Calfeisen'' and the

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

Lake Gigerwald () until it reaches Vättis at , where it is joined by the ''Gorbsbach'' and where it turns sharply towards the northeast. Further below, the Tamina flows into the '' Mapraggsee''. The lower section, heading northwards through Pfäfers, forms a deep and narrow

gorge A canyon (; archaic British English spelling: ''cañon''), gorge or chasm, is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from weathering and the erosion, erosive activity of a river over geologic time scales. Rivers have a natural tend ...

called the '' Taminaschlucht'' (). The river then flows through

Bad Ragaz Bad or BAD may refer to: Common meanings *Evil, the opposite of moral good * Erroneous, inaccurate or incorrect * Unhealthy, or counter to well-being *Antagonist An antagonist is a character in a story who is presented as the main enemy o ...

before it finally merges with the Alpine Rhine.

Tamina Gorge

Between Valens and the hamlet of Bonadivis, the water of the Tamina digs up to into the ground. Over the last 15,000 years, the small river has eaten its way into the rock and, between Valens and Ragol, it is sometimes even completely covered by natural bridges. The narrow crevice is around long and deep. The gorge, which is accessible by a pedestrian bridge, also contains a

hot spring A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a Spring (hydrology), spring produced by the emergence of Geothermal activity, geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow ...

used for a spa. At Pfäfers, the gorge widens so much that for the last there is also space for a single-lane road next to the river, which since 1838 connects

with Altes Bad Pfäfers (a former spa and hotel, now a museum and restaurant). The road is closed to cars, but a

bus A bus (contracted from omnibus, with variants multibus, motorbus, autobus, etc.) is a motor vehicle that carries significantly more passengers than an average car or van, but fewer than the average rail transport. It is most commonly used ...

(line 453) operates on it, departing from Bad Ragaz railway station. There are two hypotheses about the origin of the Tamina Gorge: * First the river

eroded Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as water flow or wind) that removes soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is disti ...

a narrow channel through the thick Nummulite

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

, which forms the upper part of the gorge today. As the water pushed deeper over time, it eventually reached the softer Seewer Schist below. This allowed the river to widen its bed through lateral erosion of the surrounding rock. As the Tamina cut through the rock obliquely in an eastward movement, the western wall of the gorge tilted slightly and thus wedged the Nummulite limestone banks against each other, creating the natural bridges above the river. * It is also conceivable that the Tamina eroded through the harder limestone and the gorge is actually a cave. However, the most important outcrops on the natural bridges are neither accessible nor visible. In the upper part of the Tamina Gorge there is a hot spring, pumping out of water per minute with a temperature of . Discovered in 1240, it was used on site and later in Altes Bad Pfäfers between the years 1350 and 1969, and since then it is used in the Valens medical clinic and the spa in Bad Ragaz.

History

Historically, the Tamina Valley (, also ) was owned by the Pfäfers Abbey, joined to the canton of St. Gallen at its formation in 1803.

References

External links

Altes Bad Pfäfers
Rivers of Switzerland Rivers of the canton of St. Gallen {{Switzerland-river-stub