Bike Tour in Switzerland - July 2005

One day when we were riding together, Rene (almost halfheartedly, I think) mentioned heading to the mountains to do a week of riding. I'm not too sure if he thought I'd do it or not, but the more I thought about it, the better the idea got. He's done these sorts of tours before, but it would be my first.

Here we are in the train to the edge of Germany. From here, we would ride through a bit of Austria, and take a train into Switzerland.

As you can tell by the picture, the whole trip still seems to be a good idea.

By the time the whole thing was done, we covered over 60 miles a day and climbed almost 15,000 vertical meters over the span of 6 days.

The first day was relatively flat with little scenery. Here, the sign is telling to get off of our bikes due to the steep decline. Of course, we rode down.

...still seems like a good idea to do this thing...


This is the valley where we stayed for the first night. The food was great preparation for the next day...our first real climb. Originally, we planned to only climb one pass this day, but we ended up doing two passes.

...still seems like a good idea and lots of fun...

Here I am after the first pass, Klausen. This was about a 1500 meter climb for us. The scenery was great, and the weather was perfect. I'm not much of a climber, and Rene had plenty of extra breaks waiting for me.

On one hand I'm having a blast, on the other, I'm beginning to ask myself what I'm doing in Switzerland climbing mountains.

P.S. We're carrying all of our food, clothes, and water with us on our backpacks.


Wow! What a view. We're on our way to the second (unplanned) pass of the day: Sustenenpass.

We had a short break before the real climbing to the pass. I was beginning to feel a bit pooped...

We're now beginning the ascent. The sun was blazing hot, and instead of many switchbacks, we had one long climb up the mountain. Both of us got burned on the left sides of our bodies. I ate three powerbars and almost 2 liters of water on this climb to try to not bonk.

We finally made it to the top. There was a cool hostel at the top of the pass where we spent the night. The area was very cool with a small glacier. The snow was a nice break from the blazing heat.

Here's a look at the climb from the top. You can see the long, gradual climb pretty good in this pic.

The picture at the top. I was pooped. We did two passes on our first day of climbing and covered almost 3500 vertical meters. Sorry for the vulgarity of my fingers...I was not amused that Rene wasn't more tired than he was.

The scenery was unbelievable...but I was exhausted.
The hostel on the left was at the top of the pass where we holed up for the evening. Great location. I think I ate two entrees for dinner!

After a long downhill of about 45 minutes and slamming on the brakes, we headed up the next pass of the day: Grimselpass. Here I am with a few other biker folks we met along the way. After the long ride up, we stopped at the hotel (pictured) for a cup of joe before the descent.

This is the more known view from Grimselpass. Our descent was the left serpentine. At the bottom of the hill, two other mountain passes converge in the small town in valley. From the valley, the only way to go is up!

As with the other passes, here I am with the sign proving that I made it.

We stayed the night in the valley before we climbed Nufenen pass - the highest paved mountain pass in Switzerland. It snowed a bit on the downhill and was very cold. As luck would have it, as I stopped on the downhill to warm my fingers a bit (cold + downhill = very cold), there was a construction worker nearby who had a fire going...very convenient. Otherwise, I think my fingers would have fallen off.

At the top of San Gottardo - on the 'italian speaking' part of Switzerland.
San Gottardo was the best pass of the trip. It wasn't as steep or high as the others, but the road was very old and was mostly cobblestone. The serpentines were extremely tight, as you can see below. The view was amazing.

Even better, there is now an autobahn that goes to the top. So, after slaving for an hour to climb the mountain, we get to the top, sweating, to see a bunch of tourists. The look that they gave us was priceless...like who would want to ride up a mountain on a bicycle?

There was a hostel at the top of the mountain where we spent the night. We had a couple of liters of wine to celebrate our favorite pass and the last major pass of the trip.

Our last pass, Oberalppass, was only a 600 vertical meter climb (the others were between 1000 and 1600 vertical meter climbs). The best part about this pass was the downhill: The downhill was a very lazy 1-2% decline for what seemed like hours. We felt like kings those two hours.

After it started climbing a bit again and as we were trying to reach Lichtenstein, it started getting really stormy and windy. We didn't quite make it to Lichtenstein on our bikes - we took a train for the last 30km and spent the night in a hostel near the capital of Vaduz.

The final morning of the trip, we had to ride about 30 km to the train station to get our train back home. We were greeted with wind and rain. We barely made our connection and were cold, wet, and hungry.

Here is Rene - at our break in Munich - at a biergarten with a hearty lunch. Despite a bit of bad weather at the end and a really bad case of saddle sores, it was an amazing trip that I'll never forget.

Before we were home, we were already talking about our trip for the next year!