Plan A for today was to take a series of trains and buses across Switzerland to the border town of Nauders, Austria. The next day, we planned a day hike in the Alps through three countries: Austria, Switzerland and Italy, and to visit the tri-country boundary marker. However, the weather forecast for Nauders was for rain today with colder temperatures and severe thunderstorms tomorrow.
The weather forecast south of the Alps was for sunny and warm weather, so we headed to the Italian-speaking Canton of Ticino (tee-chee-no) in Southern Switzerland. We opted for the narrow guage, part cog, route through central Switzerland via Andermatt (1). A connection to the mainline route to the south through Gotthard tunnel involved a short cog-rail connecting train that descended from 4,715 feet in Andermatt to 3,629 feet at Göschenen in just 2 1/3 miles. The nearby auto road included a long series of short switchbacks.
A hotel in Bellinzona, the Catonal Capital, had a room available. While the city has three medieval fortresses (2) you can hike to, a brochure in the hotel lobby beckoned us west to Monte Carasso where a long suspension bridge on a hiking trail was built in 2015.
A helpful bus driver pointed us in the right direction, and we began climbing. We soon encountered two mothers out walking with a boy and girl. They stopped at a small water drinking fountain just before we got there. A metallic clatter drew my attention to the girl lifting the heavy cover off the underground water valve enclosure. She soon turned the water all the way up, sending the water arcing into the air and spraying 25 feet away, which the kids thought was fun to play in (3), (4).
The boy, noticing that I was waiting to fill my bottle, proceeded to take the bottle from me and try to fill it, while the girl kept turning the water up and down to make the filling process more difficult. The mothers noticed we were taking this all in stride, so they allowed the show to continue. The girl turned the water up again to spray us as we walked by to resume our hike.
The steady climb up went by old churches and a gondola station. The trail was well marked and maintained, with many sections lined with stones to limit erosion; some of the stones were formed into rough steps in the steeper sections.
After about 1,800 feet of vertical rise, we turned left/south and hiked down to the "Tibetan" suspension bridge. Built in 2015, the bridge spans 885 feet and is 426 feet above the deep gorge below. Guy wires attached to a parabolic cable anchored to the gorge's sides limit the sway of the bridge in the wind (5). The slats on the bridge floor were the perfect size for a mobile phone to fall through, so I kept a tight grip while taking pictures.
South of the bridge was some more climbing, but we soon began our descent to St. Defense. From here, the trail descends back to the main road, frequently crossing a small sinuous mountain road. Back at the main road, a bus soon came to take us back to town. Total vertical rise about 2,000 feet and about 6.5 miles.
(1) We had an all-access day pass to the Swiss rail system, so we could go wherever we wanted. We chose a town near a border (Italy) to avoid having to buy an expensive Swiss rail ticket tomorrow.
(2) The city is located at a strategic point where the Ticino River valley (the main route north) narrows. Fortifications were all over the town.
(3) The kids had obviously done this before.
(4) While many of the water sources on the trail are fed by mountain springs, this one was apparently connected to the municipal water system.
(5) Or when someone stands in the middle of the bridge and tries to get it swaying, as a teenage boy was doing when we arrived. He was disappointed.
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