Built 1883, a hotel since 1964
A post house on the Maloja road
The building went up as a relay station for the horse post between Chiavenna and St. Moritz. Horses were changed here, mail was sorted upstairs, and in winter the sledges left from the cellar door.
Horses, then sledges, then the bus
From 1883 the summer post ran in coaches carrying five passengers and the mail. From November to April it ran on sledges, kept in the long cellar under what is now the dining room, with a wide door straight out onto the slope.
The motor post bus first came over the Maloja in 1922 but couldn't manage deep snow, so the sledges carried on each winter for decades more. In February 1961 the last one left the cellar, the season the canton started clearing the road every day.
In 1963 the postmaster's family sold up. A year later the house opened with fourteen rooms; the attic was fitted out in 1988 and every bathroom was rebuilt in 2019.
The mast on the ridge
In 1931 the federal weather service asked the postmaster to keep a snow and temperature record, and a wooden mast went up on the roof. Readings were taken by hand at seven, one and nine for sixty-two years.
Since 1993 the instruments report by wire every ten minutes. You'll find the handwritten books on a shelf in the lounge; their coldest night is minus 34.2 degrees, on 10 February 1956.
Where the name comes from
Trail, for the cross-country line to Val Fex that leaves from the front steps. Sensor, for the mast.
Those were the two things every guest asked about at the desk, so the owners put them on the sign.
Play at Trail & Sensor happens in one cellar room and nowhere else. The Sensor Room takes no bets online, keeps no player accounts and moves no money through this website.