June 16th: Hotel Rosenlaui to Hotel Handegg

 At breakfast, a curious hotel employee asked as where we were going, and I gave him the first few days of our itinerary. His response: “Are you sure? I heard that Grimsel pass is closed!” I quickly did a web search that revealed that while Grimsel pass was open, Furka pass between the (now defunct) Hotel Belvedere and Hotel Tiefenbach was closed due to snow, as was the Stelvio and Nufenen. Andreas confirmed that information. I decided that the worst case scenario was to ride down the Furka from the Gletsch intersection and catch a train to Andermatt from Oberwald. The train goes through the tunnel and hence was immune to any snow induced closures. 

At checkout I asked Kristine if there was a way to send our luggage down to Meiringen’s train station for us to pick up so we didn’t have to climb Grosse Scheidegg with a load. Her response was that while sending luggage to the hotel was always possible, there’s no one at the train station to receive luggage, so there was no way to do so. 

Boen was still enthusiastic about the climb, so we loaded the panniers onto the bike and started up the pass. Despite the rest, past the Schwarzwald bus stop we quickly hit the 15% grade and ground to a halt. I remembered that the rest of the climb wasn’t that bad, so once we walked past the 100m section of steepness we made the rest of the way up the mountain with stops every 200-300m of vertical gain. At the summit we raised our hands in victory and rode down the mountain with minimal stops, confident that between the cold weather and the reduced load the tandem represented (as opposed to the triplet) we didn’t need to let the brakes cool. 

Riding down the road from Grindelwald we were actually stuck behind a slow car. Once out of town, however, the traffic sped up after a construction traffic light and we smoothly made it to the Zweilutschinen train station for a WC stop before proceeding towards Interlaken. In Interlaken, we paused at the classic photo with the Jungfrau behind us at the central meadow before meeting up with Arturo at the Coop across the street from the train station, where the grocery store was closed for Sunday but the hot food service was still open. 

Arturo had had a stressful time getting from Zurich to Interlaken. There was a new rule now that intercity (IC) trains in Switzerland now requires reservations for you to bring a bike onboard. What used to be a hassle free process is now a disaster as the reservations are cheap and people will reserve multiple bike spots on multiple trains and use only one. "David was convinced that I wasn't going to make it!" he declared.

Leaving Interlaken we headed over to Iseltwald and the bike path along the south end of the lake with its demanding climbs, descents, and dirt traverses that nevertheless is better than coping with the northern path and its endless tourist traffic. We stopped at the Giessbachfalle overlooking its namesake hotel for a hike behind the waterfall and the photo. After that, there’s a fast descent down into Meiringen valley (interrupted by a post bus stopped at a station) where we got grand views of the various waterfalls lining the valley in ways that make Yosemite look like a drought-stricken photo. 

After climbing Kirchet pass and descending its 4 sweeping hairpins past the Aare Schultz, we stopped at the Grimsel/Sustens intersection where to our surprise the Vogl was open on a Sunday! We bought and ate a quick lunch and bought some chocolate to share. There, we debated whether to book a hotel room at Handegg. Arturo was still fresh so advocated that I just make a reservation, committing us to climbing to 1400m. After I made the reservation I went back into the Vogl on the memory of the 2014 tour  where we managed to mail our sleeping bags to ourselves from an automated post office station. It turned out that the automated station had been replaced by the human cashier at the supermarket, who was happy to help us box and mail our sleeping bags to ourselves at the hotel for 8.5 CHF, getting rid of what would have been dead weight for the rest of the trip. 

With that, Boen and I flogged ourselves up the Grimsel pass climb, with is steady 8% grade a far cry from the uneven grades of the Grosse Scheidegg road. Nevertheless, by the time we got to Guttanen, we were pretty tired. “If we haven’t made the reservation at Handegg we could have stayed here at Hotel Baren,” I declared from the bus stop at Guttanen. Nevertheless, we were committed and kept riding until we saw the stream and water fountain just below the hotel. From there it was a 5 minute sprint and we were at Handegg, where curiously enough the receptionist was missing from her station. Despite calling no one responded, but when she finally showed up she was apologetic and got us our room and opened the garage up for us right away. 

We were fairly early, and so had time to stretch, plank, and do laundry before heading over to their pool and hot tub to use the facilities. This was the first time I’d been in Handegg in the absence of poor weather, and we were impressed by the view and hot tub. It was a tough climb from Guttanen but the view made me not regret the extra work that day. 

Dinner was the half-pension fixed menu arranged for us by the receptionist who was making up for her absence. It was delicious. We took a brief after dinner walk and after that I went to bed without melatonin.