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 St Anton am Arlberg, one way: 250 km, roughly 4 h 15 in the saddle. Silvretta High Alpine Road is the high point. It tops out at 2,032 m. Arlberg Pass and Bielerhohe are subject to seasonal closure - check it is open before you set off. It crosses from Austria into Switzerland - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. The passes are the reason to go.
The last of the trees go and the road runs out onto open ground. The summit sits at 2032 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 71 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.
Anton, where the road begins its climb. It is one of the oldest crossing points in the Eastern Alps, used since the Middle Ages by traders and pilgrims, and the name itself is thought to come from the dwarf pines, the Arlen, that grow on the slopes. A hospice was built on the pass in the fourteenth century to help travellers survive the winter, and the cult of St. Christopher that grew up there is still remembered in the name of the village below.
Read the complete Arlberg return option write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Arlberg return option is where the day begins. Reckon on about 9 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Next is Silvretta High Alpine Road, climbing 239 m.
Bielerhöhe is the high point of the Silvretta High Alpine Road, a toll road built in the 1950s to link the Montafon valley in Vorarlberg with the Paznaun valley in Tyrol, and the top at about 2,032 metres sits at the edge of the Silvretta reservoir. The lake, a long, deep blue sheet held back by a dam, is surrounded by bare peaks and small glaciers, and the highest of them, Piz Buin at 3,312 metres, rises to the south beyond the water.
Read the complete Silvretta High Alpine Road write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out at 2032 m here. 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 Montafon overnight base, mostly downhill.
Schruns sits at about 650 metres in the Montafon, a long valley in Vorarlberg, Austria's westernmost state, where the river Ill runs south between the Rätikon and the Silvretta ranges. It is a small town of under four thousand people, with a pointed church tower, wooden chalets and a feel of quiet prosperity, and its sister village Tschagguns lies just across the river. In winter the area is busy with skiers, and in summer with hikers and cyclists, but outside the high seasons it is peaceful, and a good place to sleep after a long day in the saddle.
Read the complete Montafon overnight base write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 179 km into the recorded legs you reach Montafon overnight base. You lose 1382 m on the way down to it, steadily. Next is Back to Sargans, mostly downhill.
Sargans is a small town doing something unexpectedly big. It sits on a low saddle in the Rhine valley where the river, instead of flowing on west toward Lake Constance as it now does, once could just as easily have turned toward the Walensee and Zurich. The ridge between the two directions is barely a rise in the ground, which is why geographers like to point at Sargans and say the whole river's fate depended on a patch of gravel. Today the Rhine runs north, and the town's modest castle on its rocky knoll watches over the valley and the Liechtenstein hills across the water.
Read the complete Sargans fuel gate write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back to Sargans closes the day.
Arlberg return option → Silvretta High Alpine Road is 70 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Silvretta High Alpine Road → Montafon overnight base drops about 1382 m over 109 km. Brakes and eyes forward; the views are behind the corners, not in them.
Montafon overnight base → Back to Sargans is 71 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.