Summary
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Trail in numbers
- Distance: 30 km
- Total climb: 1938 m (of which 1000 by cablecar)
- High point: 2486 m
- Ridable: 80%
- Duration: 4 – 6 hours
Highlights
- Vorab Glacier is a 2 km long glacier situated in the Glarus Alps in the cantons of Glarus and Graubünden lying between 2600 and 3000 meters of altitude.
- Bikepark Flims Laax. If you feel up for it, you can descend through the fast flowlines of the bike park to add some extra thrill to your adventure.
Useful info
- When to go: from July to September. This is a high altitude trail, you are likely to find snow at the feet of Vorab glacier even in mid summer. You can basically check if the cablecar is open (not for skiing…) to have a good idea of the rideability of this trail.
- Food and Water: the cablecar will take you to a mountain hut in Crap Sogn Gion. This is usually open in the summer and you can find easy (but expensive, as everything in Switzerland) access to food and water. After this, you will not find any other open huts until you are back in Laax.
- Starting point: Crap Sogn Gion cablecar station, Laax, Switzerland.
Table of contents:
Photostory
It is the first weekend of July and on friday, just after work, I load my bike on my car and hit the road – destination Flims, which is the town just before Laax , where we will be camping. Maria has organized everything and she is travelling by train from Basel so that we meet directly at the camping. I can drive all the way to the campsite parking, whilst Maria has to hop on a few trains and a bus carrying her bike and rucksack for the weekend, but somehow she beats me and gets there before. It is pitch dark, well after 11:00 pm, so we deploy our Hubba Hubba tent in silence and get some sleep before hitting the slopes. The plan is to cycle both days, saturday high in the Alpine tracks and sunday in the hilly forest of Flims.
The day is beautiful. The sky is clear and it is definitely warm enough to go up high in the mountains, so we decide to catch the gondola and cheat for the first 1200 meters that bring us to Crap Sogn Gion at 2200 meters.
From here we can already spot the Vorab glacier, still covered in snow.
The gravel road is in very good conditions, but fatigue kicks in before at these heights.
The road takes us to Crap Masegn at 2470 meters. From here we want to head towards the feet of the Vorab glacier where we want to take another gravel road to begin our descent down to the valley, but in order to get there we need to cut through a hiking track that goes up and down on a very rocky gnarly terrain.
The views are amazing, but the track is hardly ridable and we have to push our bikes most of the time. Consequently, what I had planned to be a 30 minutes shortcut becomes a 2 hours struggle.
Finally we get to the gravel roads, at the highest point of our tour. We are very close to the glacier and it is full of snow, and there are many snow passages and ice-cold water streams to cross which make our riding definitely interesting.
We also take some time to relax in the sun.
Eventually the snow disappears and we follow the very, very fast gravel road that unwinds in the mountain and takes us to another valley, possibly called Grauberg, which is a huge canyon with vertical rocky walls that I am sure attracts lots of climbers.
In the meantime Maria has her first fall (probably a hard brake on the slippery terrain), but she happily recovers from it and we keep going.
We begin our descent towards Laax town, and shortly after we bump into bike park tracks! I can’t resist and I take the first one, full of drops and fast corners. As soon as I realize this could be too much for Maria, who is only at her second ride on a mountain bike, I decide not to tell her that it was a “red” bike park track (she would have freaked out) and keep going until finding the first exit from the piste and back to the gravel road. However, Maria has a second crash before that happens! Fortunately also in this case nothing serious happens, but we decide to call it a day and go back to our camp via the gravel road.
Amazing riding in Laax, it definitely lived up to its name also as far as mountain biking is concerned!
Maps and Stats
Max elevation: 2486 m
Total climbing: 1938 m