No road comes anywhere near. This is a landscape of ice, rock and sky, the first Alpine area to be listed as a World Heritage site, and the riding is all around it rather than through it.
What makes this region special for a rider is that you can circle it on some of the finest pass roads in Europe. From Innertkirchen the Grimsel climbs past granite slabs and dammed lakes to 2,164 metres. On the Valais side you drop to Gletsch and can take the Furka towards Andermatt, where the old Rhône glacier hotel stands by the hairpins. Further east, the Susten links the Bernese Oberland to Uri through tunnels and galleries, and the Nufenen runs south into Ticino. These roads are generally in excellent condition, with well-engineered hairpins, but they are busy in summer and closed from late autumn to late spring. Morning is the time to be on them, before the camper vans and tour buses.
The Aletsch glacier is the longest in the Alps, a smooth river of ice more than twenty kilometres long, striped with dark moraines. It has been shrinking fast, and the change over just a few decades is visible to anyone who compares old postcards. From the cable car stations above Fiesch, Bettmeralp and Riederalp you can look down on its great curve. On the north side, the famous trio of Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau looms over Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, and the railway to the Jungfraujoch climbs right through the Eiger.
The surrounding valleys are a mix of old wooden villages, steep meadows, waterfalls and larch forests. In autumn the larches turn gold, and the air in the high valleys has that clean smell of snow and stone. Above the Aletsch, the Aletsch forest holds some very old Arolla pines.
Practically, fuel is easy in the main valleys: Fiesch, Naters and Brig on the south side, Meiringen and Innertkirchen on the north. Switzerland requires a motorway vignette for motorway use, and the speed limits are strictly enforced, so leave your enthusiasm for the bends rather than the straights.