It started with a meeting. Then a line on a map. Finally a photo. We were supposed to be talking about the weekend's
Superenduro race, but Enrico pulled out the trail map for the area around Madesimo. While we should have been looking at the layout of the stages, working out how we'd cover the event, the little red lines cutting through the high mountains pulled our attention away. "Oh they're the old smuggler's routes, they're too dangerous to ride, look here's a photo." Alessandra backed this up by flashing a photo of a mule track carved into the side of a huge cliff. The plan was probably to put us off, but it was clear there was plenty of room to get a bike or three down the rocky trail. As head of the local tourist office she was trying to get Enrico focused back on his race series that was currently taking over her town and the idiot-English journalist wasn't helping, but by now it was no good. After a few minutes of prodding the map and working out altitudes it was clear we could easily ride it in a day and staying in town another day after the race would be easy enough. Eventually Alessandra offered to shuttle us, probably more in hope of shutting us up and getting us back to the business at hand than enthusiasm about encouraging people to ride their bikes down the Splugen Pass.
As far as trails go, the Splugen Pass is one of the older ones. It is first recorded as being used somewhere around the time that the Romans were busy nailing Jesus to a cross. By the Nineteenth Century it was an artery between Munich and Milan and as many as 2,000 mules per month were braving the high mountains and gorges to transport people, goods and ideas. Locally it is more famous for the bandits who used it regularly - the wild, high mountains made for safe passage across the border, far from the eyes of the authorities. Today it is overshadowed by the tunnel and wide, sweeping roads of the San Bernadino pass, but the original trail still remains and we headed up to retrace the steps of those smugglers...
A big thank you to Alessandra and all the guys at Madebike for their help, without them we'd never have been able to ride this special trail. Of course the smugglers didn't have just one route over the mountains...
www.madebike.it
Since I live in the surroundings I would like to point out some additional info
a) a good map of the region (snipurl.com/24l7zxv)
b) the restaurant... Hotel Vittoria (great cuisine!!) www.passospluga.it/albergovittoria.htm
c) Montalto...hmmm...? Did you mean Monte Spluga?
d) Valle del Cardellino is probably Valle del Cardinello ;-)
Ciao!
Paul
Fantastic article, looks like you had a blast :-)
here you will never forget it. ( its so nice you may not leave)
They had good trail builders back in those days, too bad they didnt have mtb to ride them
That is the Splügen Pass, San Bernardino is in the same region but you don't see it from that pic.
Check out the link to the map I posted in my earlier comment...
Ciao
Paul
would someone have a gps track to this trail?