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Tour of the Alps 2006
A version containing pictures we took will appear in the Trento bike
pages later. This is the wreck.bike version. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tour of the Alps 2006 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- At noon Sunday, 09 July, I flew with Virgin Atlantic and Swiss Airlines from San Francisco via Heathrow, to arrive Monday afternoon In Zurich. I took a through train from the ZRH airport to Schwyz where my friends, the Dierauers, picked me up for the short ride to their house in Ibach, home of Victor Inox, aka Swiss Army Knife. Edith and Turi Dierauer have been my gracious hosts for many bike tours, as were the senior Dierauers before them. I unpacked my bicycle from my Nashbar soft-bag and assembled it installing the right crank, turning the fork and bars to the front and installing the rear derailleur and chain. Amazingly the Dierauer's house from last year was gone and a new airy and modern house stood in its place needing only final landscaping. After a great dinner I got a good night's rest in preparation of getting on the road the next morning, jet lag and all. Richard Mlynarik, my ride partner, had spent time with his wife in France and would arrive in the morning. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Tuesday, 11 July (Ibach - Goldswil (BE)); 144km, 3200m): Richard arrived as planned and stowed his extra bags in the garage before we got going to Brunnen (435m) on the Vierwaldstettersee (aka Lake of Lucerne) to take the Axenstrasse along the east shore into Canton Uri (William Tell country). The end of the lake is at Flüelen where the Reuss river, that is fed from the Klausen, Susten, and Gotthard passes, enters the lake. http://www.schweizerseiten.ch/info/axenstrasse.htm The Axenstrasse is hewn into the vertical granite walls above the lake, as it alternates between ledges and tunnels in the cliffs, a barrier that was only passable by boat in ancient times. Below the road, the Gotthard railway lies almost entirely in tunnels from Brunnen to Flüelen. Meanwhile, the freeway tunnels deep in the mountain for the entire stretch with no view of the Alps. This road can be appreciated best from a bicycle because that way one can use the original tunnels and narrow road that are more exposed and give a panorama, shown in the web site above, instead of the current road with longer tunnels that leave no view of towering snow capped peaks and the lake. We passed the noted Tellsprung, where Wilhelm is said to have jumped to shore in a raging storm to escape from Austrians who had taken him captive. http://www.picswiss.ch/Historie/g-hip3-7.html http://www.bartleby.com/26/6/ http://www.kulturschweiz2004.ch/geschichte/200jahre.asp In Altdorf, Richard took pictures of me posing in front of the Tell monument where he stands proudly, bigger than life, in bronze, son at his side, with crossbow (Swiss trade mark) over his shoulder in front of a mural of the Alps of canton Uri. We rode up the valley past Erstfeld (472m) the north portal of the huge SBB 57km Gotthard base tunnel that is nearing completion. http://www.tell.ch/schweiz/telldenkmal.htm http://www.neat.ch/pages/e/index.php http://www.neat.ch/pages/e/aktuell/p....php?jahr=2003 The climb toward the Gotthard pass begins abruptly on a stone-arch bridge over the Reuss at the SBB hydropower plant in Amsteg where the valley becomes a steep and narrow gorge. Our road wended its way along the granite walls while the double track SBB, in order to not exceed a 2.7% grade, uses helical tunnels to gain altitude on its way to the original 16km Gotthard Tunnel. As usual, traffic was light, because most of it stayed on the four lane Autobahn that remains mostly out of sight in tunnels and avalanche sheds. To our benefit, in spite of regular vacationer's traffic jams, most drivers choose to wait patiently for traffic to move rather than trying the old highway. In Wassen (916m), where the road to the Susten pass takes off, we settled for a hearty grocery store lunch, it being before noon when stores close. http://www.wassen.ch/ In Wassen, the Susten road starts with a classic tunnel-into-the-wall above the Meienreuss with a nearly uniform 8% grade to the Susten Pass. After the curved bare rock tunnel we crossed a stone arch bridge over a waterfall of the Reuss and entered another tunnel followed by more tunnels to climb into the Meiental above the narrow gorge that had, in earlier days, required arduous climbing over higher ground. The modern Susten Pass was completed in 1946 with a uniform grade that, above Meien village, is visible as a sloping contour line to the summit. The Susten Pass is not well known for its great vistas and many glaciers, probably because it has no ski areas, but I choose to call it the glacier highway of Switzerland. After a 200m long summit tunnel, a large parking lot in front of an all day cafeteria allows tour busses and to cars stop in front of the breathtaking panorama of the Sustenhorn (3503m) and several other glacier covered peaks of nearly equal hight above the Steingletscher that ends 360m below, where the road passes the Steingletscher Hotel. The road runs down the north side of the Gadmental, across from the glacier, passing through rough bare rock tunnels and along spectacular cliffs on its way to Innertkirchen in the Haslital. At Innertkirchen we crossed the Aare river and climbed the Kirchet (pass) of four short traverses between narrow hairpins to rise over the narrow slot, the Aareschlucht, through which the Aare river leaves the Haslital to reach the Brienzersee. http://www.paloaltobicycles.com/alps_photos/s21.html http://www.aareschlucht.ch/englisch.htm Just beyond the Kirchet we turned off onto the road to Rosenlaui where one of the great Swiss glaciers lies behind a similar narrows in granite walls. As we passed the Reichenbachfall at hotel Zwirgi, we listened carefully for the last utterances of Holmes and Moriarty as they went over the falls in Conan Doyle's works. The watering trough at the waterworks came in handy on this warm and sunny day. This is a steep but rewarding climb as it levels off just below the Rosenlaui Glacier with the backdrop of the magnificent Wetterhorn (3701m). We dropped in on Andras and Christina Kehrli, the proprietors of Hotel Rosenlaui, to say hello and down a delicious afternoon dessert before heading up the road to the end of the public road at Schwarzwaldalp. http://www.evo.org/sherlock/europe/r...ach_falls.html http://www.paloaltobicycles.com/alps_photos/s38.html The climb from Schwarzwaldalp (1454m) to the old bus turn-around was steep as always and required a bit of extra effort, but then the rest of the hill with its 12% grade went all right. The restricted road is smoothly paved but is only as wide as the bus that generally does not slow down for bicyclists, something that is stated with a picture of a bicyclist at the beginning of the road. The road climbs scenically through meadows with grazing cows amidst wildflowers on its way to Große Scheidegg (1961m) at the foot of the glacier crowned Wetterhorn. |
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Tour of the Alps 2006
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Tour of the Alps 2006
Sergio Servadio writes:
A version containing pictures we took will appear in the Trento bike pages later. This is the wreck.bike version. Out of curiosity, where did you lodge at Bonneval S/Arc? La Pastourelle, Bonneval Sur Arc (F) ,76.00 Euro as it says in my M/C statement. Nice move of yours to take the (steep) shortcut to Rosiere! I did that once before with Jeanie Barnett. Jobst Brandt |
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Tour of the Alps 2006
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