Despite the rain last night, the morning brought us beautiful sunshine, giving us motivation to ride the Albulapass. It was a shortish ride today, so we got going only at 9:00am, and began by riding to the Vogl at the bottom of the Albulapass to buy bananas.
Riding up the Albula pass from the La Punt side has less climbing (less than 700m) but in exchange the initial switchbacks are at 12% grade. We gained elevation rapidly and the day was warm. We stopped at the trailhead which would have taken us to Madulain for water and snacks and a skiier with summer skis (essentially inline skates with long board) passed us. She must have been an Olympic caliber skier as she rapidly distanced us.
Boen worked really hard and soon we were at Alp Alesch where there was some sort of summer camp program for teenagers. Boen stopped to play with the goats while we waited for Bowen. It being warm, we refilled our water bottles after Bowen joined us and we kept going up the hill. The slope became more gradual once the road finished its series of corners, and the vistas opened up. Grand, wild, and desolate, Albulapass is one of the prettiest passes in the alps. Kids on mountain bikes went up the hill with vim as we waited for Bowen at one of the more photogenic spots. Once he joined us we went quite a bit faster and were soon at the summit where we took photos at the Albula Hospiz.
The descent on this side of Albula is equally stunning, with distant views at the top and then twisty turns and corners as you coast through the famed "Glacier Express" train route which at the summit uses a tunnel so as a cyclist you wouldn't even know there was a train through the mountain at all!
We stopped at a waterfall to hike to it, walking a little bit pass a barn. Even though the forecast was for thunderstorms in the afternoon, we could take our time as it was still early and we had time and the sky still looked completely blue. My real destination, however, was Palpunogasee, a pretty alpine lake that I'd always wanted to hike around but never found the time to do so. As previously mentioned, on a climb it's a hard sell to take time to do an extra hike knowing you have more climbing to do, and the last time I descended in this direction Bowen was cold and didn't want to walk.
The circumnavigation of the lake was as scenic as I had hoped for and we took our time. When we finished, we rolled down to Bergun and Hotel Piz Ela which we had booked the evening before, having found that all the other hotels were full or outrageously expensive. The hotel's reception was empty, but a visit to the restaurant at the back found the owner who was receptive to letting us check in early, park the bikes, and leave our luggage in the room!
Lunch was at the Vogl down the street supplemented by ice cream and chocolate at the bakery across the street. After that, we pondered what to do. I looked at Alltrails and decided that the Railroad Adventure Hike from Preda to Bergun was doable in the time we had left. We walked to the train station in Bergun where the train was uncharacteristically 15 minutes late, and took the train one stop up to Preda, which in other places would have been a nice alpine village with lodging but despite the railroad company's attempt to grow a village there never developed.
Getting off the train station, we found the well signed tail with no problems, and it was indeed an exciting hike, taking 2 hours to do what the train did in 15 minutes. The trail follows the train tracks, but from below and above, and you get remarkable vistas that show off classic pictures of the Glacier Express railroad. Since there's only one track, the frequency of trainspotting on this track is twice the frequency that you expect, since you get one train in each direction per hour. It's even more than that because you see the same train multiple times as the track twists and turns at well below 6% grades in order for the train to make the climb without resorting to a cog railway setup. We saw more than one photographer standing in place waiting to get their perfect shot of the train as it negotiated those corners.
At this point, we were starting to get clouds around us. These escalated to an occasional raindrop here and there, nudging us to quicken our pace, which was not a problem as the hike was mostly downhill. This hike was definitely a highlight of our stay in Bergun and I was glad that we'd finally had a chance to stop there. The hike was also punctuated with signs providing a history of the railway construction as well as interesting facts about the area.
Finally, the trail dumped us out onto the main road which we could take into town. We would find out later that we'd missed the final section of the trail, but no matter. At this point rain became a light drizzle. As we walked into town thunder was heard and it was no longer a drizzle. We dashed to our hotel as we spotted lightning flashes and walked through the hotel door just as the thunderstorm came down! We had made use of every dry minute of the day!
We took showers, did laundry, and had dinner at the hotel restaurant, venturing out only for our after dinner walk. The day had cooled down a lot because of the rain and it was even a little chilly but Bergun was beautiful, justifying our spending the extra time here.
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