Valais Glacier Weekend Seed

Two passes and 287 km, high point 2429 m

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Why this ride

For when one day is too small for the good stuff. Out of Andermatt and back again: 287 km, roughly 5 h 31 in the saddle. On the way it passes Gletsch historic junction and Brig and. The climbs: Furka glacier road and Grimsel reservoirs. It tops out at 2,429 m. Furka Pass and Grimsel Pass are subject to seasonal closure - check it is open before you set off. It is a high-mountain day.

Roadbook

1. Andermatt overnight option sleep · 1444 m

   Andermatt is a mountain village at about fourteen hundred metres, in the Urseren valley, a high, wide, treeless basin where several of the great alpine passes meet. The Gotthard heads south to Ticino, the Furka goes west to the Valais, and the Oberalp leads east to Graubünden, and the village sits at the crossing, like a small hub at the centre of a big wheel. The source of the Reuss river is just above, and the water flows north through the dramatic Schöllenen gorge, where the Teufelsbrücke, the Devil's Bridge, crosses the torrent in a spray of mist.

   The area has been a transit point for centuries. The Schöllenen gorge, once almost impassable, was opened to traffic by a bridge in the thirteenth century, which made the Gotthard route a major link between northern and southern Europe. A legend says that the devil built the first bridge in return for the soul of the first creature to cross, and that the locals tricked him by sending a goat. In 1799, a Russian army under General Suvorov fought its way through the gorge against the French in one of the most extraordinary episodes of the Napoleonic wars, and a monument carved into the rock commemorates it. The Swiss army has used Andermatt as a fortress for generations, with tunnels and bunkers hidden in the hills, and the village still has a military feel.

   More recently, Andermatt has been remade as a luxury resort, with new hotels, apartments and a revived ski area, and the old centre retains its traditional wooden houses. For a rider staying overnight, it is a convenient base for the three passes, with the Tremola, the cobbled old road of the Gotthard, waiting on the Ticino side of the pass. Nights at this height are cold, even in summer, and frost is possible in spring and autumn, so pack warm clothes. The passes are closed in winter, usually from late October to May.

   The village has a few shops and restaurants, but fuel can be limited, so arrive with a reasonable tank, and book accommodation ahead in the high season. Altdorf, on the northern side of the gorge, is the nearest larger town, about twenty-seven kilometres away, with a full range of services.

   Have a bowl of hot soup and a plate of Alpine cheese at the end of the day, and be glad of the thick blankets.

2. Furka glacier road pass · 2429 m

   The Furka is the pass where you can ride up to a glacier and see the beginning of a river, and few roads in Europe offer that. At 2,429 metres it links Realp in Uri with Gletsch and Oberwald in the Valais, and on the Valais side the road passes right beside the Rhône glacier, whose grey ice tongue spills from the high snowfields above the Belvédère hotel. A trickle of milky meltwater at its foot is the source of the Rhône, which will travel through Lake Geneva and across France to the Mediterranean.

   The glacier has been a tourist attraction since the nineteenth century, when visitors came by coach to see it, and the old hotels at Gletsch were built to house them. Photographs from that time show the ice reaching almost to the buildings, and the contrast with the present is stark. Every summer parts of the glacier are covered with white fleece to slow the melting, and an ice grotto is cut into the tongue so that people can walk inside. It is a slightly eerie sight, a mountain trying to hold on.

   The road itself has all the elements: hairpins, open sweepers, long climbs and a descent that tests the brakes. The east side from Realp is steeper and more twisted, winding up the valley past an old steam railway whose volunteers have restored a line abandoned after the construction of a new tunnel. The railway runs trains on summer days, and the sight of white steam against the green hills is a treat.

   The pass is open from about June to October, with the dates depending on the snow, and the wind and cold at the top are real. Mornings are generally clear, with cloud building by the afternoon, and the light on the ice is best before ten.

3. Gletsch historic junction sight · 1759 m

   At Gletsch, the Rhône is still a young stream, trickling from the foot of a glacier that once filled the whole basin. The hamlet sits at about seventeen hundred and sixty metres, in a bleak, beautiful hollow where two of Switzerland's great passes diverge: the Furka heads east toward Andermatt, and the Grimsel runs north to Meiringen, while the Rhône valley falls away to the south-west. A grand old hotel from the nineteenth century stands at the junction, its pale façade looking oddly large against the bare mountains, and for a few months each year it is the only sign of human life for miles.

   The Rhône Glacier, which gives the river its source, has been retreating for more than a century. In the 1800s, it reached down almost to the hamlet, and visitors came in carriages to admire it. Today it ends high above, and large sections are covered with white fleece blankets in summer to slow the melting. An ice grotto cut into the glacier can be visited by a short walk from the Furka road, and lets you stand inside the blue ice, though the tunnel has to be recut each year as the ice moves.

   Film fans will know the place. The Furka Pass was the setting for a car chase in the James Bond film Goldfinger in 1964, with an Aston Martin on the hairpins above the glacier, and the hotel appears in the sequence. Steam railway enthusiasts come too: the Furka Steam Railway, a restored mountain line, runs on summer days between Realp and Oberwald, passing near Gletsch.

   The riding is the reason to come. The Furka, at about 2,430 metres, has a long series of hairpins on both sides, with a good surface and big views. The Grimsel, at about 2,160 metres, has wider bends, huge dams and turquoise reservoirs. Both are open only in summer, usually from June to October, and snow can close them at any time, so check before you set off. At this altitude, temperatures can be close to freezing even in July, with wind and sudden storms, so carry warm gear and keep gloves in the top box.

   The hotel serves meals, and a cup of coffee on its terrace, with the glacier in sight, is a fine reward.

4. Grimsel reservoirs pass · 2164 m

   The Grimsel looks like a landscape that nature made, but most of what you see was made by engineers. The three big lakes around the pass, the Grimselsee, the Räterichsbodensee and the Oberaarsee, hold water that spins turbines in power stations deep inside the mountain, and the dams that hold them in place were built from the 1920s onward by men working at altitude through harsh winters. The Spitallamm, a curved wall of concrete, closes the Grimselsee, and the road runs along its crest.

   The hospice beside the dam gets its name from the old shelter that stood here, a place where travellers were fed and housed on the long crossing between the Haslital and the Goms. The earlier hospice was drowned when the lake was raised, and a new building went up on the shore. That sense of overlapping layers, medieval trade route, nineteenth-century carriage road and twentieth-century power scheme, is what makes the place interesting.

   The rock itself is the star. The granite that forms the Grimsel is smooth and pale, polished by glaciers that once filled the valley, and in places the slabs are so clean they look like paving. Visitors can see the glacial polish on the roadside, and below the pass, in the Haslital, waterfalls and gorges cut through the same stone. The Handeck fall drops a good forty metres or so into a mist-filled gorge, and there is a gondola nearby that climbs to the Gelmersee for those who want to walk.

   On a bike the ride is a delight, with big, open bends, fast approaches and views of water and rock. The weather is changeable and the temperature low, so layer up. Fuel is not available at the pass itself; Innertkirchen and Meiringen on the north, and Oberwald or Brig on the south, are the dependable places. The road is open in summer and early autumn only, and a clear, calm day in September is hard to beat.

5. Brig food and fuel food · 691 m

   Brig is a town that has always lived off other people's journeys. It sits in the upper Rhône valley in the Valais, at the northern foot of the Simplon, and for centuries merchants hauling goods over the pass to Italy needed somewhere to rest, change animals and pay their bills. One of them, a seventeenth-century trader named Kaspar Jodok von Stockalper, grew so rich on salt, mining and transport that he built the palace that still dominates the town, with three towers topped by gilded domes. It is among the grandest private houses in the Alps, and a short walk from the station.

   The setting is sunny and dry. The Valais sits in the rain shadow of high mountains, and Brig basks under a sky that is often clear when the north side of the Alps is under cloud. Vineyards climb the valley slopes further down, and apricots are a local pride. The town is a pleasant mixture of old lanes and modern shops, with the Simplon road, the railway and the roads to Goms and Zermatt all meeting here.

   For riders it is the practical hinge of the Valais. Fuel is plentiful, with Brig, Naters across the river, and Visp not far down the valley together giving the area real size. Restaurants serve raclette, the melted cheese scraped over potatoes, and dried meat from the mountains; for a quick lunch, the bakeries and cafes around the main square do just fine. The traffic can be dense, particularly in summer when holiday traffic funnels toward the passes, so patience helps.

   From here a rider can go almost anywhere: up the Furka and Grimsel to the north-east, over the Simplon to Italy, or down the valley toward Lake Geneva. The Simplon road, which Napoleon had built in the early nineteenth century to move troops, is one of the great engineering achievements of its time, and it climbs from the edge of town in a long series of sweeping bends. It is a good place to be at the start of a mountain day.

6. Back to Andermatt finish · 1444 m

   Andermatt sits at 1,444 metres in the Urseren valley, a high, wide, treeless hollow in the heart of the Swiss Alps, and it has been a crossroads for centuries. Three great passes meet here: the Gotthard, which runs south to Italy and Ticino at 2,106 metres, the Furka, which climbs west over 2,429 metres toward the Valais, and the Oberalp, which leads east at 2,044 metres into Graubünden. For a motorcyclist it is a kind of Mecca, since the three roads are among the most famous in the Alps, and the town fills with bikes on any fine summer weekend.

   The history is dramatic. North of the town, the Schöllenen gorge is a narrow, steep cut in the granite, and the Devil's Bridge, which crosses the roaring Reuss river, has been a symbol of the Gotthard route since the thirteenth century, when a first bridge opened the pass to trade. In 1799 a Russian army under General Suvorov fought its way through the gorge against the French, an episode remembered with a huge monument carved into the rock. The Swiss army also used the area as a fortress, with tunnels and artillery positions hidden in the mountains. Today, a base tunnel of 57 kilometres runs beneath the Gotthard for trains, the longest railway tunnel in the world, and most traffic passes below the mountain.

   The old Gotthard road, the Tremola, is the part many riders remember: a cobbled road of tight hairpins zigzagging up the south side from Airolo, closed to heavy traffic and thrilling in dry weather. The passes are closed by snow in winter, usually from late autumn until around June, so check before you go. In summer, traffic and weather can change quickly, with fog on the passes and thunderstorms in the afternoon. A Swiss motorway vignette is needed for the motorways.

   Andermatt itself is a modest village with a few hotels, cafes and shops, recently expanded by a large resort development and linked to a ski area. It has a fuel station, though prices are higher than in the lowlands. Try the Älplermagronen, a dish of macaroni, potatoes, cheese and onions with apple sauce, or a hearty rösti after a long day of hairpins. Early mornings are best, before the crowds, when the light on the peaks is golden and the air smells of cut grass.

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