Steven's Peak-bagging Journey

August 21, 2025

913m

Lugano, Switzerland

M. San Salvatore might not be a lofty summit in the Swiss Alps but is an important peak for the locals in Lugano region. This peak does boast (barely) over 600 m prominence and is rather a monolith rising above the city. The peak has seen some heavy development for tourism including but not limited to a Funicular railway that runs basically to the summit from the town to the north, a number of museums, restaurants and viewing platforms and a challenging via ferrata route. My original plan was to take the via ferrata route as per Rob Woodall’s trip report but the weather forecast was not looking that promisingly. This is not a P1000m “Ribu” so it could not be the primary objective of the day, so Adam and I only chose to bag it after completing M. Tamaro in the morning. The forecast was already calling for chances of thundershowers. None of us was keen to pay for the expensive train ride so our only choice was the south side trail from the small village of Ciona, which involves about 300 m elevation gain on easy terrain.

Adam had read Josef’s trip report of this route and noted the challenging parking situation. In retrospect we could have driven through the village and parked at the actual trail-head but upon seeing a spot to park our vehicle before entering Ciona I decided to instantly take that spot. This added a few hundred meters of extra walking into the outing but the work load was basically negligible. We also got to see the village this way. The hike itself was no brainer and we actually didn’t encounter much traffic until nearing the summit, where we were joined by the hordes taking the train up. We didn’t see many with the ferrata kits so most of the people up on the summit area must be tourists. The true summit was a ways behind and the best viewing platform was exactly on the very top. This multiple-floor platform was thankfully free of charge so we got to join the hordes for some panoramic views.

This hike had significantly exceeded my expectation. I noticed this peak purely because of the prominence and did absolutely no research beside reading some trip reports on peakbagger.com. Those trip reports do not come with photos so I had little clue that this was actually a very scenic outing. The weather was also holding nicely for us such that we didn’t get a single droplet of rain. After taking in enough of the views we quickly made our way down and started the 4-hour drive northwards into Germany. Adam had found a reasonably cheap hotel for us but that required 1.5-hour detour driving northwards into Germany away from Säntis, the objective on the next day. I wasn’t aware of this massive detour but we had already made the payment so there’s nothing else we could do. The weather finally started to puke but we weren’t camping so couldn’t care that much at this point.