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.
79 km one way from Thusis - plan on about 1 h 27 of riding. On the way it passes Viamala Gorge, Chur and Flims. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 5 km this is Albula Pass Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
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.
Thusis is where the day begins. Next is Viamala Gorge.
Viamala means bad road, and for centuries that was an understatement. The Hinterrhein river has cut a deep, narrow gorge through the limestone and slate between Thusis and Zillis, with walls rising some hundreds of metres in places and the water roaring far below. Until the road builders arrived in the early nineteenth century, travellers going to the Splügen and San Bernardino passes had to cross it by narrow ledges and rickety bridges, and many mule trains were lost here. The name stuck, a warning that became a brand.
Read the complete Viamala Gorge write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Viamala Gorge comes up about 5 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chur.
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.
about 35 km into the recorded legs you reach Chur. Next is Flims.
Flims sits on a terrace above the Rhine, backed by the jagged wall of the Flimserstein and facing a landscape that, once, was catastrophically rearranged. About nine thousand years ago, a vast chunk of mountain collapsed and slid into the valley in one of the largest landslides known in the Alps. The debris dammed the Rhine and left behind a rolling, forested hill landscape, hummocky and strange, now cut by the river into the dramatic Ruinaulta, the Rhine Gorge, often called the Swiss Grand Canyon. Flims is built on the bones of that event.
Read the complete Flims write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Flims, late in the day. Next is Ruinaulta Viewpoint.
Nine and a half thousand years ago, give or take, the side of a mountain fell into the Rhine valley. The Flimserstein rockslide, the largest in the Alps, sent some twelve cubic kilometres of limestone down into the valley, dammed the river into a lake and left behind a field of broken boulders that you now ride across without noticing. When the lake finally burst through, the Vorderrhein cut a deep channel through the debris, and the result is the Ruinaulta, the Rhine Gorge, which the Swiss like to call their Grand Canyon. It is an overstatement, but not a ridiculous one: the white cliffs reach some four hundred metres, topped with pine, and the river runs turquoise at the bottom.
Read the complete Ruinaulta Viewpoint write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Finish at Ruinaulta Viewpoint. That is the ride.
Thusis → Viamala Gorge is 5 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Viamala Gorge → Chur is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chur → Flims is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Flims → Ruinaulta Viewpoint is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.