Gorges du Dailley, Canyon in Saint-Maurice District, Switzerland

Gorges du Dailley is a canyon in the Valais region where the Salanfe River has carved steep rock walls and narrow passages. Visitors walk through the gorge on installed pathways and stairs.

A first trail was cut in June 1895 on the initiative of Jean-Pierre Revaz of Salvan, during the early growth of tourism. The late-19th-century installations decayed, and the 1944 access road to Van d'en Bas destroyed part of them, closing the gorge. Volunteers of the Association des amis des Granges et du Bioley rebuilt the 1895 trail between 1991 and 1995, then added the lower section between 2000 and 2011, funding the work themselves.

The name Dailley comes from the regional patois word for pine, "Dâlye". The path built in 1895 was praised by the writer Émile Javelle (1848-1883), who described the succession of falls and the spray-filled gorge. Photographs by Louis Jullien from the 1890s and Maurice Courvoisier from 1924 record the first installations.

The loop starts at Les Granges, above Salvan, at the former Pension Gay-Balmaz (built 1899), and covers 4.5 km with 410 m of ascent. A 1.5 km forest nature trail leads to a pavilion and a bridge over the Salanfe; the gorge itself is almost all stairs and wooden and metal walkways, 600 steps for 186 m of climb. Exit at Van d'en Bas and return over the Col de la Matze.

The water intake of the Pissevache hydroelectric scheme sits at the bottom of the gorge, just below the bridge over the Salanfe. Walkers reach it via the path from Les Granges toward Tête-des-Crêtes and the glacial potholes carved by meltwater under the last glacier.