The Furka is the pass where you can ride up to a glacier and see the beginning of a river, and few roads in Europe offer that. At 2,429 metres it links Realp in Uri with Gletsch and Oberwald in the Valais, and on the Valais side the road passes right beside the Rhône glacier, whose grey ice tongue spills from the high snowfields above the Belvédère hotel. A trickle of milky meltwater at its foot is the source of the Rhône, which will travel through Lake Geneva and across France to the Mediterranean.
The glacier has been a tourist attraction since the nineteenth century, when visitors came by coach to see it, and the old hotels at Gletsch were built to house them. Photographs from that time show the ice reaching almost to the buildings, and the contrast with the present is stark. Every summer parts of the glacier are covered with white fleece to slow the melting, and an ice grotto is cut into the tongue so that people can walk inside. It is a slightly eerie sight, a mountain trying to hold on.
The road itself has all the elements: hairpins, open sweepers, long climbs and a descent that tests the brakes. The east side from Realp is steeper and more twisted, winding up the valley past an old steam railway whose volunteers have restored a line abandoned after the construction of a new tunnel. The railway runs trains on summer days, and the sight of white steam against the green hills is a treat.
The pass is open from about June to October, with the dates depending on the snow, and the wind and cold at the top are real. Mornings are generally clear, with cloud building by the afternoon, and the light on the ice is best before ten.