Tom Brett

Lago di Tom: who knew that I had my very own mountain lake?

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The beauty of having season tickets for the Swiss rail network is that you can replan trips on the fly if necessary, in a way you couldn't (or wouldn't) if you had bought a ticket for a specific route.
Caroline and I had - for once - managed to plan a synchronised day of hiking (hers) and biking (his) and had got up early to catch a train at 06.03. Here we are on the S24 to Zug. (The thing hanging from the handlebar, in case you were wondering, is a helmet bag.)

No sooner had we settled down to our packed breakfasts than the train public address system crackled into life with an announcement that the line ahead was closed due to a fire and no trains were going through until further notice. Hastily we gulped down our coffees and packed away our things ready to get off at the next stop - which happened to be Zurich main station - where at least we would have a good selection of alternative destinations to replan our day out.
A few minutes with the timetable app (whatever did we do before smartphones?!) confirmed that it would be feasible to run our proposed route in reverse - so instead of our original routing via Zug (where the fire was) and Erstfeld to Airolo, we instead boarded a train from Zurich to Chur, for onward connection to Disentis-Muster.
The good news was that our arrival time (just after 9) was almost identical to our original planned time in Airolo. The bad news for me was that I'd have to start by cycling up the Lukmanier Pass - almost 1000m ascent - which I'd been looking forward to whizzing effortlessly down at the conclusion of the ride. The bad news for Caroline was over an hour's wait for the next bus going up the pass - her hike was to start at the top; but we'd worked out that this still left her enough time to complete her route.
My mission objective for the day was to dip my toes/wheels in the waters of Lago di Tom - given a whole lake named after me, it would've been rude not to, wouldn't it?!

Before I got that far, though, there was a lot of work to be done, starting with that cruise up the Lukmanier Pass. I'd rashly predicted to Caroline that I'd probably arrive simultaneously with her bus, which gave me an hour and a half. Luckily the gradients are quite gentle (compared to some I've done!) - nothing over 10% - and the bike felt light in comparison to the full touring load I was carrying yesterday. I actually did arrive simultaneously with the bus - not at the pass itself, but at the dam at the opposite end of the reservoir - I'd achieved the altitude, if not quite all the distance!
Here's the view from the north end of the reservoir. If you look carefully, you can see a wavy white trail ascending beyond the end of the lake, just left of centre. This is the track to the Passo dell'Uomo, which we would be going up later.

First I had to get to the other end of the reservoir. The bicycle path - as I knew from my previous trip over the Lukmanier Pass - is actually on the roof of the road gallery which skirts the lake shore. This time, they appeared to be rebuilding that roof and the whole place was a building site, which I attempted to avoid by following the signed diversion of the *hiking* path, but then found myself in the middle of anyway. Luckily it was Sunday when "they do no work at all", so I was able to get through without either being turned back by the workmen, or squashed by an excavator!
Soon I was negotiating the track around the southern end of the lake and I caught up with Caroline just before the turn-off up to Passo dell'Uomo, so we stopped to have our "lunch part 1" sandwiches together.
The track leading to Passo dell'Uomo follows the appropriately-named Val Termine: very steep, surfaced with large, irregularly-shaped stones resembling a dry river bed - completely unrideable, by me at any rate, and hard work even to manhandle the bike up at all. I had been forewarned about this by reading other cyclists' online stories, so at least I knew what to expect. Caroline was much faster than me, as she didn't have a bike to drag along, and so she went ahead at her own speed; I didn't see her again until much later. Here's what the track looked like - this is the exact opposite view to the previous photo, which was taken from that dam in the distance.

In mitigation: there were bilberries!

After the top of the pass, by way of a complete contrast, the path started to descend through a broad, gently sloping valley - Val Piora - with an easily rideable track crossed by shallow fords which were great fun to splash the bike through.

Caroline was so far ahead that I didn't catch her before our routes diverged, with the hiking trail following the river down Val Piora to the right, while I swung left up another short climb to join the official "Gottardo Bike" mountain bike trail which follows a higher level route overlooking the valley, merging again with the hiking route lower down. That's the "W"-like shape in the red trace at bottom centre of the map below. Strava lost my pre-prepared route details at this point, and - unusually for Switzerland - there was no mobile data coverage for me to re-load it, but luckily the route "on the ground" was pretty obvious.

Here's the view looking back along the trail towards Passo dell'Uomo where we came through:

Up to this point the trails had been fairly quiet and we had met only a handful of other hikers and mountain-bikers. This changed dramatically from Capanna Cadagno, where the hiking and biking trails merge, onwards. I get the impression that a lot of, shall we say, more casual day trippers get the funicular up to Piora and then take a gentle, more or less level, stroll to the Capanna and back. I had no idea how far Caroline had got by this time, so it was a pleasant surprise when I recognised her ahead on the trail; turned out she hadn't yet had her "lunch part 2" either, so we sat down to picnic together on a hillock with a view over the little lake Lago Cadagno, beyond which we could see the narrow trail ascending higher up the mountain to my destination, Lago di Tom. We were lucky to have met at the right time, as Caroline's hiking route diverged again at the exact point where we stopped!
The rest of my afternoon was taken up with pushing my bike up the hiking trail to Lago di Tom - thankfully shorter and easier than the Val Termine climb, though still much too steep and loose-surfaced for me to ride; paddling in the very pretty little lake which shares my name, and enlisting passers-by and/or the Nikon self-timer to take some photos; and then winding my way down the looooong and very enjoyable descent to Airolo to catch the train home, catching up with Caroline one more time just as she was reaching the Piora funicular station to make her own descent.
Here's the view looking down on Lago di Tom from the trail, approaching from Cadagno.

The white sandy beaches and blue water evoke some exotic sea shore!

Here's a "selfie by proxy":

The initial descent to the larger, "reservoirised" Lago Ritom was on a scarily steep, sharply hairpinned farm track reinforced with arrays of concrete studs with grooves in between, which made me happy not to be riding on tyres any thinner than my 1.75" Panaracers!

And what of our rail journey home? We took a train which didn't go through Zug - although I gathered from news reports that the fire had been put out in the morning and rail services resumed; we might even have been ok sticking to our plan A. In retrospect, though, I now think the route was better this way round anyway!

Type:

Ride

Workout_type:

default

Date:

2017-08-20T07:13:28Z

Avg Pace:

6:34/km

Elevation:

1944.8

Distance:

46804.9

Moving time:

18439

Activity id:

1143138629