Lunch at the Roof of the Alps: Diavolezza and the Bernina’s High-Altitude Drama

The cable car teeth the mountains like a clockwork elevator, pulling you out of the valley and into air that tastes thinner and colder. As the tram clatters past crags and scrapes a horizon of serrated summits, the world below shrinks to patchwork meadows, frozen lakes and red-roofed Engadine villages. When the doors open at Diavolezza’s upper station—2,978 meters above sea level—the first breath is sharp, the view immediate: a cathedral of rock and ice, with the Morteratsch Glacier unfurling toward the far valleys and Piz Bernina standing stern and indifferent at the center.