June 23rd: Brig to Hospental

 We woke up early enough to visit the breakfast area when it opened at 7:30am. The food was unremarkable but we knew we had a long day to get to Hospental, so we ate up, packed, loaded up the car, and started riding at 8:16am. It was already warm, but we luckily got to Fiesch after about 90 minutes of steep climbing at 1000m up, which had a gas station with an attached convenience store where we could get ice cream. It was already clear that we were in a cycling area, as even then we started seeing groups of cyclists going up or coming down the road.

From Fiesch the rest of the climb up to Oberwald was no longer scary, and the temperatures moderated a bit as long as we were in the shade. Unfortunately, once we got to Coms that shade almost completely went away. In Oberwald, we stopped at a bike shop to buy more cycling food, and then took a turn to buy groceries before having lunch at the fountain right across the street from the bike shop.

From there, the serious climb starts, going between 6-8% grades until the 15-18% grades at the (now permanently closed) Hotel Belvedere. Fortunately, however, the first section was at least partially shaded, even in the afternoon, so while the rider was hard (mostly because we were riding on tired legs), it wasn’t insane. While this was my first time climbing Furka from this direction (as opposed to coming from Grimsel pass), I was very familiar with the area. Mark, on the other hand, later said that as he climbed and saw the twin climbs ahead of him (Grimsel on the left, and Furka on the right), he somehow got it into his head that he would have to climb both. To be honest, however, he was so much stronger than myself and Boen that he had no issue distancing us. We would end up riding with Arturo for most of the climb.

As we approached the intersection with Gletsch, our shade went away, but the views also dramatically improved. I was impressed by how hot it remained, despite Gletsch being at already 1700m. We would not cool down until after we got past the Hotel Belvedere. I looked for a water fountain past Gletsch but never saw it because construction hid it from my view. Regardless, we ended up having plenty of water so it never became an issue.

At the summit, we found Mark waiting for us, and waiting for Arturo didn’t take long. We took our time with pass photos before we went onto the next view point and then starting the descent. Furka at this point is largely a single lane road and in the middle of the day there was still plenty of traffic, so we minimized stopping for photos and just descended for speed whenever we were not blocked by motor traffic. I’d forgotten how much fun the descent was, since I hadn’t done it since 2016 or so. The road while not perfectly smooth had plenty of sweet corners.

Of course, at the bottom in Realp we once again faced a headwind. But on a descent, we were entirely capable of keeping pace with Mark, so we got down to the bottom, hunkered down, and just drafted Mark all the way to Hospental. Once there, however, we discovered that Google maps had no idea where our rental house was! We eventually just parked the bike while I walked back and forth reading house numbers until I discovered that the house was far from where Google thought it was, and much further down the hill near the center of town than Google had shown.

By the time I found the house, Arturo had caught up to Mark and we all rolled down the cobblestone to the house, opened it up, and parked the bikes in the garage. Xiaoqin and Bowen texted us to say that they had bought lift tickets in Fiesch and would therefore get to the hotel much closer to 6pm.

We got settled in, and then went out to dinner at the one place down the street after an attempt to take Uber to Andermatt completely failed. The place was actually quite good, and while we were there we round another group of British cyclists who’d come over for dinner as well. Turned out that they were on a series of fixed bases where they would do day rides with a van. One of them was a former school teacher and looked suspiciously at Boen, saying, “Why aren’t you in school?” The rest of his group teased him mercilessly when we told him that California schools had already let out for almost a month.

When Bowen and Xiaoqin arrived, we showed them where to park the car and sent them to the same restaurant down the street while the rest of us unloaded and took showers. Arturo tried to figure what to do tomorrow. I told him that the last pass in the area that was new to him was Nufenen, the highest pass with both sides within the Swiss border. “Louis told me I should see the devil’s bridge as well!” His plan was to ride down to Andermatt and Goschenen, stopping by the devil’s bridge and then take the train from Goschenen to Airolo to start Nufenen. Once over Nufenen into Oberwald he could easily catch a train back to Geneva with plenty of time to spare. Because Brig was a major hub, there were frequent trains and none of them required bike reservations. The devil’s bridge sounded like a good idea for a rest day hike as well, and we needed to know how to charge the car anyway, since the car’s charge map showed very few chargers available in Andermatt.