Cycling Epilogue: Alpine Passes

From Budapest we upgraded to car transport but got back on the bikes for some gruelling alpine passes to test our fitness levels:

Furka and Grimsel Pass (Switzerland)
Andermatt to Meiringen 40km

The swiss town of Andermatt is a hub for cycle freaks with mountain passes lead out to the north, south, east and west. At high altitude Andermatt is not a camping paradise and we decided not to linger. We selected the famous Furka Pass and rode it on Sunday along with a phenomenal number of other cyclists, motorbikes, and sports cars.

This was to be our first real hill climbing test and we were uncertain as to how we would fare on the total 1400m+ climb. On our side was an absence of luggage – we were not quite the cycling equivalent of a sports car but more a truck with the trailer uncoupled.

Departing Andermatt the valley floor rises with an ever increasing gradient to the Furka pass. This first section of the days climb was 890m from the foot of the main incline. Once over the Furka we dropped steeply into a small valley and then climbed up the slightly smaller (410m) Grimsel pass. After saying hello to the resident [caged] marmots we clicked on our chunky dynamos to get a bit of help breaking and coasted about 2,000 vertical meters down to Meringen. Some tunnel sections were hair raising with little or no lighting and plenty of speeding traffic. The last section was hard work with a surprise 91m ascent over an old terminal moraine to the campsite.

Grosse Schedeigg (Switzerland)
Meiringen to Grindelwald 40km

Susan picked this ride off the map, as it was the highlight of the national mountain bike route across Switzerland and arguably the toughest climb. The ride followed quiet country lanes (away from traffic of the previous passes) up, up and up into real Heidi country, the incline was constant and tough and couldn’t be really captured in a single photo, it took 2-3hrs of hard grind to get to the top. A cafe at the saddle of the Grosse Scheidegg marked the peak of our 1,545m climb.

The exhilarating 1,000m descent to Grindelwald was and over in a few minutes. Our wheel rims were hot enough to burn skin we stopped to spray them with water on the way down. The route passed near the Eiger and Jungfrau and the views to the overhanging were amazing. Undoubtedly the best scenic day ride of the trip. The absence of people was balanced by the prevalence of enormous biting flies that swarmed whenever we stopped for breath.

Col de Iseran (France)
Bourg St Maurice - Col de Iseran 40km

In order to end to the trip on a high (literally) we couldn’t resist attempting the Col de Iseran in the French Alps. This is the highest sealed mountain pass in Europe at an altitude of 2,897m and featured in the Tour De France in 2008, (this years race started at the same village we did but took another pass to the north – yellow t-shirts abound everywhere) .


We started at Bourg St Maurice but unfortunately one an electronic sign confirmed our fears that the top section of the pass was closed due to snow (the manual signs previously all said open). We were on our way and this was our last shot at riding so we kept on going in the mist and rain, a good gradient ride this was enjoyable until the nerve racking tunnels (a few were without lights and asphalt). We conquered the lower section (1000m climb) to Val de Isere, which is a flash ski resort in winter but very friendly in mid summer. We were greeted by a mid-summers festival complete with Swiss men in lederhosen playing enormous swiss horns – they sounded amazing.

The snow level was only just above the village and we decided not to climb the barrier to complete the ride - we could envisage ending the trip lost in a blizzard wearing only spandex! We sojourned in the town for the night (and celebrated Di’s birthday). The next morning we set off for the upper section of the pass in bright sunshine – worth the wait.

Mark followed a couple of racing bikes up the hill and made the 1000m climb in 1 hr 19 min, Susan took a more leisurely pace to enjoy the views but still got up in 1 hr 45min. The views from the top were amazing but it was pretty alpine and our hands almost froze off on the ride down with the wind chill!

On the way up we were overtaken by a handful of road cyclists. These guys were amazing and Mark couldn’t believe he was being overtaken while riding at 16km/hr+ up a steep and steady incline. We thought we were fit but some of these guys were absolute machines. Others on their ultra-lite road bikes looked a bit dejected at being overtaken as we clunked past with our motley collection of suspension, bag racks, sneakers etc.