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.
Out of Mesocco, one way: 104 km, roughly 1 h 37 in the saddle. Splügenpass hairpins is the high point. It tops out at 2,114 m. Splugen Pass is subject to seasonal closure - check it is open before you set off. It is a high-mountain day.
The last of the trees go and the road runs out onto open ground. The summit sits at 2114 m, and what surrounds it is rock, weather and distance — 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.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
For about 26 km this is Grand Tour of Switzerland, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it. Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast.
Mesocco is a valley village of about thirteen hundred people on the southern side of the San Bernardino, in the Misox, the Italian-speaking arm of Graubünden that opens toward Bellinzona and Lake Maggiore. At nearly eight hundred metres it is the last place of any size before the road climbs to the pass, and it is the right place for a breakfast or a late lunch, with a handful of simple restaurants and cafés serving polenta, cheese, local salami and chestnut dishes, and a small stretch of fuel and shops.
Read the complete Mesocco food reset write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mesocco is where the day begins. Next is Splügenpass hairpins, climbing 1324 m.
The Italian side of the Splügen is the one that makes people swear with happiness. From Campodolcino the road climbs the Valle Spluga in a rapid string of tight hairpins, stacked one above another up the valley wall, past waterfalls and a gorge that the old road builders had to blast through. At the top, at about 2,114 metres, you arrive at the border, a modest customs building and the long, cold Lago di Montespluga, held back by a dam and glinting in a bare landscape of grass and stone.
Read the complete Splügenpass hairpins write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out at 2114 m here. The road climbs 1324 m on the way up to it, steadily. Reckon on about 10 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Nothing on this route is higher. At this height the road is a summer one: snow gates can stay shut into June and shut again in October. Next is Thusis return, mostly downhill.
Thusis is a gateway town, and it knows its job well. It sits where the Hinterrhein, the young Rhine, comes out of the gorge of the Viamala and into the wide, orchard-lined valley of the Domleschg, and from here roads and railway lines fan out into the Graubünden mountains: south over the Splügen and San Bernardino passes, east through the Schin gorge toward the Albula and Davos. At about seven hundred metres in altitude, it is a fairly low base for such high terrain, and that makes it a useful place to be at the start of a mountain day.
Read the complete Thusis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fill up here — 57 km left and no pump marked after this. You lose 1394 m on the way down to it, steadily. Next is Back to Chur fuel.
At 593 metres, in a wide bend of the Rhine valley, Chur makes a strong claim to be the oldest town in Switzerland, with traces of settlement going back thousands of years and a Roman presence from the first century BC. It has been the seat of a bishop since late antiquity, and the bishop's court, with its cathedral, sits on a terrace above the old town. Down below, the narrow streets and squares of the Altstadt, with painted houses, fountains and arcades, are a pleasant place to wander after a morning in the saddle.
Read the complete Chur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back to Chur fuel closes the day.
Mesocco food reset → Splügenpass hairpins climbs about 1324 m in 43 km. This is the part worth slowing down for - look through the bends and use the pull-offs.
Splügenpass hairpins → Thusis return gate drops about 1394 m over 35 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.
Thusis return gate → Back to Chur fuel is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.