June 25th: Gelmersee Hike

 We woke up, had breakfast, and drove back over the Furka pass, and at Gletsch, turned right and drove up the Grimsel pass. It was gorgeous that early in the morning, and we would have stopped for pictures but of course we had bought 9:40am uplift tickets so we were on a time crunch. I probably shouldn’t have worried as we made it to the parking lot  by 9:00am. While the parking lot was quite full it wasn’t overflowing and we didn’t have to resort to driving around to find parking.

Walking to the Gelmerbahn station, we made it so early that the operator gave us 9:20am tickets, giving us time to look at the suspension bridge before boarding the Funicular. At 107% grade, you abstractly know that this is going to be a steep ride, but nothing prepared me for how steep it felt. As the grade steepened, I thought I was going to fall out of the Funicular, making the retention bars around our lap not just perfunctory safety devices but necessary for psychological safety as well. I kept holding on to my backpack which was placed next to my feet just because I felt like it could fall out of the funicular as well.

When we were at the top I was quite relieved that we hadn’t booked the ride down. Gelmersee was at 1850m and therefore higher than Hospental was. It was a testament to the strength of the heat dome that Europe was experiencing that it still felt very warm. Part of it was that the air was completely still! We proceeded to do the hike around the lake. The hike reminded me a lot of the Hetch Hetchy backpacking trip we did back in 2020. Like the trip back then, it was very hot, despite walking near and around a body of water. There were flowers occasionally which were beautiful, but the constant exposure would only be interrupted by places where we actually went right next to the water.

Bowen and Boen were unencumbered by the desire to want to take pictures. Mark and I let them go ahead while we took our leisurely pace. Of course, this meant that they were well ahead of us when we got to all trail intersections. We simply assumed the kids would be OK and that we would eventually catch up to them. What we did not count on was that we got lost! When we look at the Garmin track after the hike, we would see that at one point where the hiking trail was supposed to take us along the rim of the lake, we instead walked onto the now dry lake bed instead! The drought in the alps had finally affected us directly. Either that, or we could post our Garmin track and claimed that we’d learned to walk on water.

We eventually figured this out and bee-lined for the nearest trail. Once there, the trail would lead us (finally!) into shade, and we got a chance to take pictures of streams running into the lake. We only caught the kids at the intersection where we could either walk back to the Gelmerbahn (which we had no intention of taking), or hike back down to Hotel Handegg.

The hike down was interesting enough to be worth the extra walk. While it was steep, it granted us views of the Grimsel road as well as several lakes along the way. The trail then intersected with the road, whereupon we had to cross the road and then follow the signs towards Hotel Handegg. While this section didn’t have the grand views the earlier section had, the trail actually crossed a waterfall which looked really nice. Then as we approached the hotel the trail gave us views onto the open road where we could see the parked car.

Since it was already 1pm, we stopped by the hotel restaurant and checked their lunch menu. Since it was acceptable, we stopped and ordered lunch. While waiting for the food to be delivered I noticed they had an EV charging station! I asked if we could use it and they replied in the affirmative. I grabbed the keys and ran over to the car, drove it over, and plugged it into the charging station. It was slow, but so was service at the hotel, and we weren’t looking for a charge to 100%. We just wanted enough to get over Sustens pass on the way home.

After lunch, we completed the loop back to the suspension bridge before turning around and getting into the car. From there, instead of retracing our drive earlier, we kept going down to Innerkirchen, where we made a quick stop at the supermarket for more food, and then drove up the Sustenspass to give a preview of Sunday’s route. I’d never actually seen the climb from this direction before, and it looked dramatic, though full of tunnels. At the summit we got off and took a walk up to the hospice which I’ve never visited, and took a few pictures of the stream running through the area.

Coming back down the Sustenspass we drove the car back up to Goschenen and through the car tunnel. We then went back to Hospental where Bowen had kept himself entertained all day. Xiaoqin was still far from home and told us to eat dinner without her. Boen was still on an Asian noodle kick and the car needed a charge, so we drove back to the Reuss mall and charged the car while we ate. Mark had noticed that as long as we stayed under an hour (and the charger was fast enough to give us a good charge during that time), the parking garage was actually free!

The Asian noodle place was a fast food for family place, and we had gotten there early enough to be seated right away, get served fast, and then leave all inside an hour. Xiaoqin came back about an hour after we returned (once again) to Hospental, and she ate the instant noodles I had bought in Innerkirchen along with some other food we’d bought the previous night.

We planned the next days’ rides. My idea was to ride the Oberalp pass the next day all the way down to Donat-Elms, and then take the train back to Andermatt. Then on Saturday we could ride St Gotthard and then take the train back as well. That would give us a half day of riding so we weren’t wasted on Sunday for the hard ride up the Sustens. I looked again for hotels in Meiringen, noting that nobody had AC there. Since the heat wave was still intense, I looked for a higher option. When I’d booked that hotel in Meiringen the thought was that we’d leave the car parked there and take the bus to Rosenlaui. However, the cost to park a car in Meiringen was no lower than the cost to park in Rosenlaui! I noticed that the Hotel Terrace at Nessental was available, had great reviews (especially for the Rosti at the hotel), and was considerably higher at 1000 meters. So I booked that and cancelled the Meiringen hotel instead.

Xiaoqin decided that she could take the bus with Bowen up to the St. Gotthard pass, and then hike back to Hospental the next day, which would be a pretty substantial hike, even if it was mostly downhill.

June 24th: Devil's Bridge Hike and Natschen Hikes

Arturo left so early that I didn’t have time to say goodbye to him. But his plan worked and his ride went well. We ate breakfast and then drove down to what we thought was one of only 2 chargers in Andermatt only to discover that it was occupied and in use. No matter, we’d just drive down to the public parking lot next to the train station and do our hike first.

The parking lot charged 5 Francs for all day parking, so we paid. After we parked we walked towards where I thought the hike would start, but there were no obvious signs. Fortunately, the tourist information center was right there, so we walked in and asked for both directions to the hike and the availability of charging stations for the car.

It turned out that it was more a tourist attraction than a hike, but the tourist information had no trouble telling us how to walk there. There were multiple charging stations inside the huge parking lot underground at the Reuss shopping center/mall right at the edge of town. However, the tourist information employee confusingly told us it was at the Blu Hotel parking lot when it would later turn out that it had nothing to do with the hotel. The penalty was that the parking lot charged money as well, so we’d be paying twice: once for parking, and once for the charger.

Well, we’d already paid for parking at the train station, so we just opted to walk the extra 500m to get to the start of the walk to the Teufelsbrucke. The story behind the devil’s bridge was that bridging the Reuss river was considered so hard that apparently only the devil could do it. In the legend, the devil promised to do it at the cost of the soul of the first to cross the bridge. The villagers agreed to this and then tricked the devil by sending a goat to cross the bridge.

The hiking approach to the bridge first takes you on top of the gallery that the main road would follow. I’d ridden that gallery a few times and always called it the corkscrew tunnel for the way it weaved and turned as it made its way down to Goschenen. Once the hiking trail got to the bridge, it would descend under the main road through a staircase gated by iron doors. Once there you got as good a view of the bridge as anyone who’d driven or taken the train there, and could walk both up and down the bike path as well! Despite having ridden the road many times this was the first time I’d seen the bike path. While it was still unpleasant (you would still share the gallery with cars once in a while), the bike path did a good job of making the ride up from Goschenen to Andermatt reasonable, as opposed to something only a masochist would do. Riding down, of course you’re as fast as car traffic and would never use the bike path!

When we’d gotten our fill, we walked back the way we came to the car, and then drove the car into the Reuss mall to get the car charged. Once we figured it out it wasn’t bad, and we walked back up only to see a performance of Swiss flag hurling or Fahnenschwingen. It was cool and we made a video before walking down to the supermarket/coop to buy lunch.

After lunch, we started our second hike, which was to go from Andermatt to Natschen, the first train station on the Oberalp. It was warm, a bit too much for Boen in combination with the steepness, so he threw a temper tantrum and started hiking down. Xiaoqin and Bowen would join him and have ice cream at the main train station, but Mark and I would do the rest of the hike, which ironically started being shaded as soon as Boen left!

Once at the top, it was just a few minutes wait before the train picked us up and reunited us with everyone else in Andermatt. Ironically, the reason it was such a short wait was because the train was late!

Reunited with everyone, we went back to the car and drove it over to the supermarket to shop for supplies for dinner as well as breakfasts. We then drove back to our AirBnB, had showers, made dinner and ate it.

After dinner, Xiaoqin thought it was a good idea to see the sunset from Oberalp pass, and since the car was charged we drove up and saw the only lighthouse on top of an alpine pass in Europe, as well as the beautiful reservoir and did small sections of what would be multi-day hikes. By the time we got back to our AirBnB it was 9:00pm. We debated what to do. Mark said he could stand another hiking day to get more rest in. Xiaoqin wanted to ride Furka and possibly Grimsel pass as well.

I did a bunch of research and it turned out that Triftbrucke was not possible because the cable car was down. ChatGPT suggested Gelmerbahn and the attendant Gelmersee hike. The downward Funicular was booked up in the afternoon, but I checked and the descent was quite doable by hiking, so we just booked just the upwards ticket on the steepest open Funicular in Europe and went to bed.

June 21st: Aosta to Grand St Bernard Hospice

 In the morning, there was more clarity. The pass was set to open on June 22^nd at 12:00pm. However, today was a Sunday! I was more than certain that the road was ready, and that the barrier if any, was solely because somebody had to sign off on the work and that person didn’t work on weekends. I have a lot of confidence in the Italian/European work ethic. At breakfast, Arturo said that a mutual friend of ours, Louis Perrochon, was very negative about the idea. “What’s the difference between tomorrow and today? No cars today!” I declared. We were going to ride, but Xiaoqin and Bowen would probably go hiking and then we’d text them when we got lodging at the Grand StBernard hospice, which was confirmed to be open and taking reservations. While I’d ridden the pass a couple of times before, I’d never stayed at the hospice, nor had I even visited the St Bernard museum, and given the heat expected in the Sion valley I was not in a hurry to experience it.

After an excellent breakfast, we rolled the bikes out of the garage and started riding out towards the mountain. The Garmin route I’d laid out took us on the Eastern edge of the ridgeline, which was ideal for staying shaded on the climb. Not for the last time on this trip was I grateful for the new improved popularity heatmaps routing.

The nice thing about the steep first sections was that we gained altitude rapidly, so the effort was paying off in cooling temperatures. As we climbed we ran into a local cyclist. I checked with if the pass was open and he said it was. Arturo followed up and got a bunch of directions that later turned out to make no sense. It could very well be that our route did extra climbing in order to stay in the shade longer, so he was trying to route us to somewhere with less climbing, but we were already pretty happy with the route!

After about 2 hours of climbing, the road finally descended and dumped us out into the intersection with the state highway. There was a water fountain at the intersection, so we stopped to refill our water bottles. Boen spotted a couple with what looked like a very chill and mellow dog, which turned out to be a St Bernard! He spent a few minutes happily petting the dog.

At this point, we started seeing other cyclists coming up the main road. One of them stopped at the water fountain and we asked her if the Grand St Bernard road was open to cyclists, and she replied in the affirmative, no hedging. “That was a lot more helpful than the last guy we talked to.” Replied Arturo.

The main road was busy and had lots of cars. We were thus very happy when we turned off it just 20 minutes later onto the pass highway as the rest of the motor traffic went through the toll tunnel (which was open, but as always, denied for cyclists).  The traffic didn’t drop to zero, however, since the road was opened to the barrier and was still an attractive destination for hiking. Nevertheless, it was no longer a hellish continuous stream of fast moving traffic, and being at above 1800m, it was as lot cooler!

Xiaoqin and Bowen had parked at one of the parking spots and got some nice pictures of us as we climbed. As we got further up, the views improved and the traffic diminished until we came along row after row of parked cars just before the barrier, which was basically a pole across the road surrounded by plastic lane protectors. There were signs saying “Road Interrupted”, and that pedestrians and cyclists were not to use the road, but this being Italy, nobody actually respected the sign when it was easy to roll your bike under the pole! Hikers and cyclists clearly were on the road.

After taking a few pictures, Arturo, Boen, and I crossed under the barriers and began riding. This final segment was above the treeline so we were in full sun, but it was also so high that it got the pass breeze and the cooling.  We rode in perfect silence, interrupted only occasionally by the sound of an e-bike motor working furiously.

The galleries, which were normally noisy, echoing with the sound of noisy cars and motorcycles, were a place of solace from the sun. I even felt relaxed enough to take a video from inside one of the galleries.

We stopped a couple of times, once to refill our water bottles and once to eat. This was by far the biggest single climb on the trip—even though Cime de la Bonnette was taller, Aosta was much lower in elevation than Jausiers, so the climb ended up being longer. When we crested the last rise and saw the barrier, we celebrated and saw the summit lake. Mark had ridden all the way to the hospice but we called him back so we could have lunch at the lake. The lake restaurant was very busy, but the lake itself had several picnic benches, and the waitress told us that we could take our trays out to the picnic benches if we didn’t want to wait for a table, so that’s what we did.

The food was satisfying, and the view magnificent. We ate our lunch relatively quickly and then noticed there was a hotel on the Italianside. “The Italian side is usually cheaper than the Swiss side,” remarked Arturo,” Maybe we should get a quote from them!” Mark pointed out that there was another barrier between this Italian hotel and where the car parking lot was, but it wasn’t too far a walk for the roller baggage.

When we got a quote from the hotel, however, it wasn’t cheaper than the hospice internet pricing, so we demurred, pushed our bikes around the Swiss border barrier, and went to the Swiss hospice. It turned out they had 2 different types of rooms, and once we saw both, we picked the modern rooms which had internet, and similar pricing. Xiaoqin and Bowen drove over, but since the rooms weren’t ready yet, we had time to visit the St Bernard museum. Xiaoqin would grab a quick snack, get out her bike, and ride both sides of the pass, exploring both the closed side and the side she had driven up from the tunnel.

The St Bernard museum had actual live St Bernard dogs we could meet with, take photos of, as well as displays of the history of the dogs. Sad to say, they are no longer used as rescue dogs for which they were originally bred and trained for, because the new style of alpine rescue depends heavily on helicopters and St Bernards are simply too big to fit in helicopters!

After the museum visit, the rooms were ready. When we were all showered and rested, Arturo and I walked back to the Italian side past the barriers and shot more pictures. It’s hard to overstate how accomplished we felt—we had accomplished everything I had planned to do as part of the tour, despite unexpected road closures, train line outages, and had just gotten to ride one of the tallest passes of the trip unencumbered by motorized traffic.

Dinner was decent, if unimaginative because we simply took the half pension option and all ordered pretty much the same thing. The after dinner walk consisted of walking back to the pass along the hiking trail rather than the road, and enjoying the peace we found there, as well as discovering all the hiking trails that were available. Xiaoqin and Bowen would get to hike those trails tomorrow while the cyclists braved the heat to make it to Brig.

June 18th: Saint-Etienne-de-Tinee to Isola 2000

 Waking up in time for the breakfast to be served, we were relieved to discover that breakfast wasn’t entirely devoted to kids. At the very least, their coffee machines worked. The adult guardians of the kids at the field trips would fill giant pitchers of juice from the juice machines, but it was clear they weren’t going to feed their kids coffee.

Over breakfast, we could hear the adults saying to the kids, “Are we ready to have a good time?” The kids would cheer. “So, today, here’s the plan, and we’re going to go hiking!” At which point the kids would go silent. Clearly, they were not fans of hiking!

Departing St Etienne, we headed back up to the main road and climbed a little hill before the road descended furiously towards Isola. Looking on my right side, I could see the bike path, but with light traffic in the morning the road is always faster than the bike path, and what traffic there was behaved well.

Reaching Isola, we stopped to take off our jackets and then started the climb. There was an LED display, but we ignored that. Arturo would text later saying, “The sign at the bottom said there was construction until 12:00pm and the road was blocked until then.” I’ve learned from experience that these closures are more often than not soft—much of the time, there are workarounds or bypasses for cyclists, and the rational thing is to always climb the pass until somebody actually stops you.

The climb goes up steeply, winding its way around a series of waterfalls which were probably engineered if not artificially routed in such a way so that the river wouldn’t flood the road. I enjoyed the coolness of the shaded climb. Sure enough, we saw cars driving up and minutes later saw the same car driving back down. One of the drivers even stopped to make sure we knew that the road was closed. With unshakeable faith, we kept riding until the construction zone. From there, we were asked to stop and wait. The construction worker we talked to didn’t know when we would be allowed through. Well, I wasn’t going to descend and come back up again, so we chose to wait, eating a little bit and drinking. Mark and Arturo rode up. Arturo went to talk to the construction worker assigned to block the road. A police car came up. “He sounded irritated when I told him I was with you guys.”

Sure enough, our wait didn’t even last 20 minutes when the construction workers waved us through, telling Arturo that they were on a smoke break. The work ethic of the European worker had saved us once more! Xiaoqin and Bowen didn’t make this round, but we told them via text message that whenever they were ready, they should just camp out and queue at the blockage for the next smoke break.

The construction block was minor, a short 300m stretch that looked like it was already finished pavement with nary a gravel pebble in sight! The nice thing about this was that after we crossed and they re-closed the construction zone behind us, we now had the road to ourselves with really light traffic. Occasionally there’d be a car that had parked somewhere for hiking or some other activity but those were nicely spread out. With the road being so quiet, we even saw an elk on the way to Isola 2000. Once we cleared the tree line, the sun once again beat down on us, but we saw the EX30 drive past us on the way to the apartment we had rented.

As we approached the ski resort, the signs of commercial life started hitting us over the head. I remembered that in 2011 when I came down the opposite way, all the advertising for Isola 2000 convinced me to stay away from it! Mark had already reached the apartment and got in touch with the owner. “They’re nowhere ready to let us check-in, but we can go get lunch at the supermarket before coming back to check in. They’re letting us park our bikes outside while they get the apartment ready.” We got out of our cycling shoes and walked over to the supermarket. It was a tiny market and about to close. We grabbed whatever sandwiches were available and then went ate outside the supermarket.

The day was still too early to check-in when we were done, so we decided to go for a hike. At 2000m, the weather was cool, and we walked out towards the ski lift. On the way there, we saw the restaurant Le Gavouts. Arturo walked in and asked if they served dinner and when they replied in the affirmative, made a reservation for 7pm.

We then walked up the mountain, following the signs for Col de la Lombarde and came upon a huge picnic after encountering a huge herd of cows wandering about. When asked what this was about, they replied that they’d been walking the cows over from the Italian border for the past 3 days. There were probably inns or villages in between, as I did not see any camping gear that they were carrying, though apparently, they had a number of support vehicles that could conceivably carry tents. This was the end of their journey and they were celebrating.

Further up the trail, we came across a hotel with the UAE minivan parked outside it. We would later confirm that we’d found the Isola 2000 base camp where Tadej Pocagar would do his altitude training after finishing the Tour de Suisse, which was happening right now. Walking further up, we found signs to various other hiking features in the area, which were quite extensive. Boen got fed up of hiking and decided to walk back down on their own while we walked up until we could see further and spot the pass. We found an alternative way back to the village and told Boen to head down to where the UAE van was.

The sky had darkened and it was about to start raining but we still couldn’t find Boen. He’d missed the UAE van and walked all the way back to where the cow party was. Xiaoqin and I eventually found him, but it started raining in earnest. Fortunately, we spotted a woman get into her car just then and start driving down the road. We stuck out our thumbs and she stopped, unlocked her doors and gave us a ride back to the hotel, where Mark had managed to get the bikes into the bike shelter. We quickly moved all our luggage inside while Arturo and Bowen ran into the apartment building all wet. We always made the comment that Boen is always lucky, and this is one illustration of it. By getting lost he’d gotten a car ride and avoided the rain!

The place was quite cozy for 4 people, but it was well equipped. We had to pay for sheets, but the place came with coffee. We knew we had to shop for breakfast the next morning, but we first took showers and waited for the rain to abate before Arturo and I headed to the supermarket to buy breakfast. The supermarket was clearly not prepared for an onslaught of 6 people shopping for breakfast because we grabbed all the bread they had left! Arturo would tell us later that they baked the bread onsite.

We got back to the apartment and started charging the car, noting that it needed enough charge to get not just to Cuneo the next day, but all the way to Ivrea where the train connection from Cuneo would take the cyclists. We also had to account for the regenerative braking from the top of Col de la Lombarde, since an EV with a full battery would give less braking since the battery would be too full to absorb energy from the descent! Clearly, driving an EV brought all sorts of addition thought processes you needed, but between the 6 of us we have 8 or so computer science degrees, so it was well within our capabilities.

The storm had almost completely dried up by the time it was time to make our dinner reservations, so we abandoned emergency plans to buy dinner as well and just walked over to the restaurant, which turned out to be quite good, so much so that Mark and I both ordered additional dishes.

The downside of the rain was that our stuff wasn’t going to dry overnight, but it would at least grant us a cool morning climb the next day. We looked at various options in Ivrea to verify that there was plenty of lodging availability but deliberately did not book any lodging. We wanted to be on the train and be assured that we would make it all the way to Ivrea before committing ourselves to anything.