Top 20 Lakes around Waltensburg/Vuorz

The Muttsee (formerly Mutten See, Muttensee) is a reservoir on the Muttenalp in the southernmost part of the municipality of Glarus South in the canton of Glarus in Switzerland.

In 1957, the newly founded Kraftwerke Linth-Limmern AG (KLL) began to realize the power plants that had been planned since the beginning of the 1940s by the Nordostschweizerische Kraftwerke (NOK), into which the Muttensee was to be integrated.

Until 1917, the official name was "Mutten See", then the spelling "Muttensee" appeared. From 1963, the spelling "Muttsee" appeared. The Hühnerbühl is now known in dialect as Hüenderbüel.[3] The kidney-shaped mountain lake was about 1000 meters long and 400 to 500 meters wide. On the Muttenalp plateau known as Hühnerbühl, it covered an area of about 42 hectares. The height of the lake surface was given as 2442 m until 1899, and 2448 m from 1900 to 1962. In the southeast, the lake was drained by a stream, which after a few hundred meters, at about 2400 m, disappeared into the Muttsee cave in the karst subsoil of the Muttenalp.[6] A little to the south, from about 2450 m, the Muttenbach collected the snow water from the Latten via various small tributaries.[5] It led this into the Limmernbach via the Mörthal and the Ochsenblanken.

The lake is registered in the cantonal landscape register as a landscape of regional importance.[4] In the karst area of the Muttenalp there are - in addition to the Muttsee cave and the Muttsee hut - various other small lakes, most of them distributed southwest of the Muttsee over the Hüenderbüel. The largest neighbor, the Ober See, lies north of the Muttsee at 2474 m. It is the only lake on the Muttenalp that is connected to the Muttsee via its outflow.

The lake is located at the crossing from Linthal-Tierfehd over the Kistenpass to Brigels. It lies in the 2.95 square kilometer basin of the Muttenalp above the Hüenderbüel. The alp is surrounded by high mountains such as Nüschenstock (2892 m) in the west, Rüchi (2849 m) in the northwest, Hinter Sulzhorn (2737 m) in the northeast, Ruchi (3105 m) in the east and Muttenstock (3088 m) in the southeast. The arena opens to the southwest. It drops steeply over the Muttenwand into the Limmerental and over the Muttenchopf (2482 m) to the Limmerensee.

As part of significant expansion measures for the power plants between 2009 and 2017, the dam built in 1963 was replaced by a concrete dam wall. This has a length of 1054 meters, making it the longest dam wall in Switzerland. The water level reaches a height of 2474 m when fully filled. This makes the Muttsee the highest reservoir in Switzerland, with a capacity of more than 10 million m³. The highest reservoir under the supervision of the federal authorities is the Viderjoch reservoir in the Silvretta Arena, which lies at 2664 m.[1][2] Since 2021, the largest alpine photovoltaic system in Switzerland has been under construction on the dam wall.

The original mountain lake has been integrated into the concept of energy generation through hydropower of the Linth-Limmern power plants since 1968.

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