Cross on the Swiss Mountaintop Summit of Dent d’Hérens to Be Reinstalled

According to the newspaper Le Nouvelliste, this decision was taken after an agreement between the three joint owners of the summit.

The possibility of legal action against the authors of the misdeed was also mentioned by guide Harry Lauber who was behind the cross’ erection. “Nothing has been decided, but it is not a priority,” explained the president of one of the towns involved, who thinks that “a complaint would not be of much help.”

The three towns accepted to erect a cross on the summit of the 13,684-foot high Dent d’Hérens in 2013, for the 150th anniversary of the first ascension of the mountain.

The metal cross was found broken on the rocks 1,500 feet down on August 2. It had been cut down at the base and then thrown over the precipice. Which, to quote the Swiss press, “created emotion among the mountaineers and offended the local communities”. In the Valais, almost all the summits have crosses.

As Le Nouvelliste recalled, “the case of the Dent d’Hérens is not a first in Switzerland.” Between October 2009 and the spring of 2010, a mountain guide vandalized three crosses erected on the summits of the Freiburg Prealps. He was convicted of violation of freedom of belief and cult and condemned in 2012 to a suspended 90-day sentence and a fine of 500 Swiss francs (€440 / $520).