CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 97 km one-way ride from near Silvaplana, about 1 h 37 of riding. The climbs: Albula Pass railway country and Flüelapass high section. It tops out at 2,383 m. Albula Pass and Fluela Pass are subject to seasonal closure - check it is open before you set off. It is a high-mountain day.
Cold comes early up here and stays late. Ride it with something in reserve: the summit is not the end of the work, only the middle of it. The last of the trees go and the road runs out onto open ground. The summit sits at 2383 m, and what surrounds it is rock, weather and distance.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
The Julier is one of the oldest crossings in the Alps, and the summit at 2,284 metres still carries two stumps of stone columns beside the road, thought to be the remains of a Roman shrine. The Romans pushed a road over the pass in the first century, and ever since the route has linked the Oberhalbstein valley with the Engadin, carrying merchants and pilgrims between Chur and the Bergell and the passes south. A small lake sits near the top and a handful of buildings, but there is not much else, and it can be bleak and windy.
Read the complete Julierpass high road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Julierpass high road is where the day begins. Reckon on about 5 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Next is Albula Pass railway country.
The Albula Pass is the road, but the railway is the star. At 2,315 metres the pass links the Engadine with the Albula valley and Chur, and it is shadowed by the Rhaetian Railway's Albula line, which climbs through spiral tunnels, over viaducts and under the mountain in the Albula tunnel. UNESCO put this line and the Bernina line on the World Heritage list in 2008, and on a clear day you can watch the red trains from the road.
Read the complete Albula Pass railway country write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out at 2315 m here. At this height the road is a summer one: snow gates can stay shut into June and shut again in October. Next is Flüelapass high section.
The scenery is stark: bare rock, screes, snow patches and a handful of small, dark lakes, with the Flüela Wisshorn and the Schwarzhorn rising on either side. Davos, the highest town of its size in the Alps, is ten and a half kilometres away, and Zernez about twelve.
Read the complete Flüelapass high section write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
2383 m, and the road stops climbing. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Davos food and weather check, mostly downhill.
Davos sits at about 1,560 metres in a long, high valley in eastern Graubünden, and it claims to be the highest city in Europe, which depends on how you count. It has about eleven thousand people and has been a health resort since the nineteenth century, when the dry mountain air was prescribed for tuberculosis, and a sanatorium culture grew up here. Thomas Mann, who visited his wife during her treatment in 1912, based his novel The Magic Mountain on the experience, and the expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner moved to the valley and spent his last years working in the hills.
Read the complete Davos food and weather check write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Davos food and weather check closes the day. You lose 823 m on the way down to it, steadily.
Julierpass high road → Albula Pass railway country is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Albula Pass railway country → Flüelapass high section is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Flüelapass high section → Davos food and weather check drops about 823 m over 14 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.