On Friday I got off work a little after noon and we drove through the 17 km (10ish mile) Gotthard tunnel to the canton of Ticino in the Italian region of Switzerland. We arrived in Lugano and walked around a little bit. Lugano was beautiful – it's a city right on a lake with hills rising right out of the water. But it is not the most exciting town and we had reserved rooms elsewhere and left after only a few hours.
We then navigated a narrow, curvy road up to Miglieglia. The straight portions were about 10 car lengths long and I was a little nervous. When rounding one left-hand curve heading up hill, I was minding my business, driving on my own side of the road, safely, and I met a Jeep that came whipping around the curve well over the line. He promptly made his tires squeal but didn't appear to want to return fully to his lane; still, everything turned out OK.
After arriving in the town of Miglieglia, we immediately saw the lift that we planned to ride up to Monte Lema where we would stay in a hotel with the same name as the mountain. We parked the car and found that the lift closed at 5:30 for the evening. It was 7:30. We were late. We were a little disappointed, but fortunately we have been practicing our hiking and we unexpectedly hiked up about 2000 feet to our hotel. As we reached the top, we saw the high Alps rise like the sun above the ridge. Wow. We were shown our "dormatory" style room and found that we had the 10 beds to ourselves. We then took a brief walk into Italy and went to bed early.
On Saturday morning we trekked up and down along the top of the ridge to Monte Tamaro. In the morning it was clear to the west and we could see to the snow-covered high Alps in central Switzerland. In the east it was a little hazier, but we were still impressed with the hilly Ticino.
About half way to Monte Tamaro we saw our first hikers. As we approached we saw more and more because there was a lift much closer to Monte Tamaro than the one we wanted to take. By the time we summitted, there were many others. Am I selfish if I walk about 6 miles, see about 8 people all morning, then have to share the peak with 15 others? Nonetheless, the view was awesome. At 1962 m, we towered above Locarno and Lake Maggiore (193 m). We hiked back to Monte Lema, making it a game to catch everyone in front of us. We caught everyone we saw, except for two groups of two, one of whom we would have passed if they didn't take the other trail three minutes from Monte Lema. That's right, I'm still bitter.
This time, we caught the lift down. Back in the car, on the road to the freeway, I was beginning to miss the road we took up to Miglieglia. Now the road was about a lane-and-a-half wide and it was even curvier! – in one section there were about 8 hairpins in a row. Fortunately, the other drivers were more well-behaved than on the way up; still I was terrified. The only incident we had was when I faced off with a bus like two rams fighting for a ewe. I changed my mind and decided that the ewe wasn't even that attractive. I pulled into a driveway so the bus could take his conquest on the one-lane section of road and saved my horns for one with shinier wool and smoother hooves.
Ticino was much different than the higher mountians we've climbed already, but we still enjoyed the different scenery. Possibly, more importantly, the new marker adds breadth to our map. The weekend seemed a little less eventful than the previous ones, maybe because as I look back, this is the first weekend in June we haven't been gone on both Saturday and Sunday. It is good to take a little break today.
"What remains on that list of yours?" you ask. SPOILER ALERT. Among our plans is to meander near the Matterhorn and take a jaunt or two in the Jungfrau region. Stay tuned...
1 comment:
Mmmmm... Matterhorn.
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