A great outing with the Rotary Club Monthey to the Vallée du
Trient and its picturesque villages of Finhaut and Salvan. Finhaut counts a
population of 400 residents with one hotel. In 1900 Finhaut was known as a health
resort, located on the Via Cook, near Chamonix. At that time there were 19
hotels catering to mostly British tourists enjoying the pure mountain air and
the great views of the Mt-Blanc. Today Finhaut benefits from the hydroelectricity
produced by the Emosson dams and with The Nant de Drance project which involves
constructing a pumped storage power station in an underground cavern between
the existing Emosson and Vieux Emosson reservoirs, a pair of lakes situated in
Finhaut. The power station is designed to generate electricity at times of peak
consumption. Water from Vieux Emosson will be channelled through turbine
generators to the Emosson reservoir 300 meters below. At night and at weekends,
when demand for electricity is lower, the water will be pumped back from the
lower to the upper reservoir. Equipped with 900-megawatt turbines, the Nant de
Drance power station is expected to generate around 2,500 GWh of peak
energy a year, equivalent to 1 nuclear power
plant. www.finhaut.ch www.chatelard.net
www.emosson.ch
In Salvan, the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, known as
the father of long distance radio
transmission made his early experiments sending wireless messages. He shared
the 1909 Nobel Prize n Physics in
recognition of his contribution to the development of wireless telegraphy. The
Marconi Foundation in Salvan hosts an exhibit this year commemorating the
tragedy of the Titanic, since many souls were saved thanks to Marconi’s
technology. Also the kitchen Sous-Chef on board .Alexis Bochatay was from Salvan and he was the only citizen of Valais to perish in the
1912 Titanic tragedy. http://www.fondation-marconi.ch
http://www.marecottes.ch
