Below the summit on the Valais side the Grimsel changes character completely. The road leaves the polished granite and drops in a run of tight hairpins toward Gletsch, a tiny cluster of buildings at 1,757 metres where three roads meet: the Grimsel you have just come down, the Furka climbing east, and the long valley of the Rhone heading away south-west. Andermatt and Airolo are each roughly twenty kilometres from here as the crow flies, but the crow does not have to do the Furka.
For a rider this is the more playful side. The descent is short, steep and very twisty, with views opening out across the Goms and, if the light is right, the pale tongue of the Rhone glacier coming into sight as you reach the valley floor. The glacier has retreated a very long way over the last century and a half; the old hotel at Gletsch was built when the ice came down almost to its doorstep, and in summer the surrounding slopes are now covered with tarpaulins to slow the melt of the ice cave tourists walk into. It is a strange thing to see, and a sober one.
Gletsch itself is a place of hotels from the grand age of Alpine travel, when coaches ran between railheads over the passes. Some stand empty, one or two are open in season, and the little steam railway that works the Furka line from nearby Oberwald is a reminder of how the area used to be reached. Cheese and cold meats and strong coffee are what you will find, not fine dining, and that suits a rider with the Furka still ahead.
Fuel is the thing to plan. There are no big towns at this junction, so top up before the Grimsel or in Andermatt on the far side of the Furka, and treat the small villages down the Goms as a fallback rather than a promise. All three passes here close for winter, usually from late October until around June, and snow can still fall at any time in summer on the heights. Take your time on the downhill: the bends are blind in places and cyclists crawl up the other way in numbers.