Hi all,

New to CH, and building up my knowledge of local routes (road & mtb).

First priorty is my commuting routes, as these will be key to recovering my fitness. My route to work is Unterageri -> West Zurich (nearest station: Sahlporte), and I have found a nice hard-packed path from Sihlbrugg -> work, so that bit is easy.

The bit I'm stuck on is the Unterageri -> Sihlbrugg part. Essentially, I want to avoid road-riding where possible. There is a route you can join further down the Zug/Baar road (which I've tried, and it's ok), but I'm looking for something that cuts right 'up and over' from Unterageri, in the Menzingen direction, and down from there. Requirements are: Single track or fire road, with no walker-friendly steps!

I did a run yesterday, and it was totally brutal (the white-out conditions didn't help). But annoyingly I could only make the route work if I used tons of tarmac.

Any suggestions? If you've got a .gpx, that'll be awesome...

I don't know the area at all, but have found mapmyride.com to be absolutely brilliant for planning routes such as you describe, with the ability to auto-route find, modify it, or plot your own. You can then see the elevation changes and gradients and do a 'fly-through' of the route with video showing what it's actually like.

HTH

map.geo.admin.ch - is the online Swiss Topo maps - it should be a good start.

The only route I can see - would be Neuageri - Grundlen - Brame - Bolxli - Menzingen - Stalden - Brattigen - Erlenbach - Sarbach - Neutal - Sennmeid - Sihlbrugg.

It is far from direct - but it pretty much stays clear of tarmac.