June 19th: Disentis to Lenzerheide

Boen discovered this morning that he liked soft-boiled eggs, and ate a couple! After packing and departing, we started with the usual fast descent down the Oberalp pass towards Ilanz. Along the way, we were overtaken by two fast cyclists on newstyle bike packing setups. Jumping into their draft, Boen immediately responded and we drafted them easily all the way to Ilanz, where we stopped at the town center to eat and wait for Arturo, who wasn’t used to high speed pacelines. The town had put in a new exit from the main highway, which was new to me. Arturo praised his new sunglasses, which had a tint that made tunnel traversals much more visible and comfortable at speed.

From Ilanz, there’s a climb over to Versam. When you first encounter the climb you might think that the climb on the official bike route is egregious, but if you look down at the main road from the heights you realize that the bike route is no penalty over the main road and the scenery is far superior, with rock canyons and gorges along the way to keep you interested. 

As we approached Chur from Bonaduz I was about to enter the main road when another cyclist stopped me and told me to follow him. When he showed me the actual bike path entrance I realized that I’d always missed it in the past because it was a sharp turn and a steep (but short) climb before descending into the Chur valley. The views were much prettier than the main road I’d always used and bucolic and peaceful in ways mixing with traffic never was. 

The weather was warming up and we’d all started sweating. There was a false stop at a parking lot with a huge Coop sign out front, but when we entered the parking lot we realized this wasn’t a supermarket but a Coop truck distribution depot with no retail outlet in sight! We chugged along the bike route for a bit before I found a café with shaded seats outside. 

We parked our bikes outside and walked into a nicely air conditioned café where we ordered drinks, snacks and ice cream. The place was run by an Englishman with impeccable English and amazing service. Not only did he provide us with food and advice, he also filled our water bottles with much needed ice before sending us on our way. While waiting, we booked the Hotel Post in Lenzerheide. The hotel would inform us that their restaurant was closed but there were other open restaurants within walking distance. The hotel had a swimming pool as well which was attractive. 

After our break, we rode up to the base of the Lenzerheide and then began the climb. I’d always climbed the Lenzerheide from Chur fresh in the morning when it was cool. Doing it in the hot afternoon after a couple of hard days and with tired legs from the Ilaz/Versam diversion was a different experience. Not only was the heat and tired legs slowing us down, the continuous stream of traffic both from tourist traffic and construction trucks incredibly tough. At one construction zone the signs said: “no bikes” followed by a detour sign off the construction zone into a village path. This provided much relief from the traffic but the diversion was steep --- I estimated it at about 15% grade. At one point we stopped to rest and discovered that we couldn’t get started again. 

When we revisited the main highway I felt broken. Arturo had gone on ahead, but at a water fountain I stopped, filled our water bottles, and stuck out my thumb. If you’re going to stick your thumb out in the mountains it helps to have a tandem and a 9 year old with you. It didn’t take long for a mother with kids to stop. “Can you take our panniers to our hotel?” “Sure, but what are you going to do with the bike?” “We’ll ride it!” I sent her an e-mail with a picture of our booking.com confirmation and details, stuck our panniers in her trunk, and waved goodbye to her. 

Without a load we did much better, but of course, when you’ve burnt all your matches you’re still pretty toasted. The smart thing to do would have been to ask for help much earlier than we did. Nevertheless, we caught up to Arturo just a few minutes before our trail angel sent me an e-mail saying our luggage had been delivered. The rest of the climb still wasn’t easy --- we were using up our Gatorade salt tablets at an astonishing pace, but we knew the ride was doable now. The traffic also eased up because it was getting late enough in the day that the construction crews were starting to go off shift! 

Arriving at the hotel, we’d gotten the keys and instructions to the garage and finished waxing the chain  just as Arturo showed up. We parked our bikes in the nicely enclosed garage and then proceeded to use the swimming pool. The hotel manager told us that the sauna was closed but the swimming pool was open. We were not 15 minutes in the swimming pool before she came by to tell us that she’d opened the sauna for us. We laughed, because after that sweltering afternoon there was no chance that we would want the sauna. 

We debated where to go for dinner. The hotel manager told us that the hotel was providing a free taxi service for us to go anywhere we wanted to, but Arturo advocated for walking instead because there was risk of rain. We walked to one of the two places that looked desirable and ate a healthy dinner, with Boen trying schnitzel and deciding he liked it enough to make it his staple for the rest of the trip. 

After dinner, we walked down to the Lenzerheide lake. There was a playground with no zipline but Boen enjoyed the balance challenges. It was a bit late for us to walk around the lake and the temperature had dropped quite a bit. The forecast was for rain the next day but only 1mm of rain over the Albulapass so I was confident we could go for it. 

I noted that during the 2014 tour we’d ridden from Filisur up Albulapass over to Il Fuorn near ofenpass in one day but the experience over Lenzerheide had shaken me --- I had never thought of Lenzerheide as being steep so now I questioned my memory of Albula being an easy pass as well!