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training |
The
2nd Pestalozzi-Gasser Tour
Planning Over the Alps twice in three days. On mountain bikes - or rather: with mountain bikes. You'll see why I choose to use "with".... After our first Transalp in 1998 we figured it was worth to do more of the same stuff. It didn't work out in 1999, but things looked good for 2000. Initial ideas for the route where discussed through the winter. I scoured the internet to find first hand accounts. Just reading the maps really isn't enough, as we had found out on the Albrun pass. Our main goal was to find a challenging transalp route with more cyclable sections than last time. On the other hand we wanted to include a bit of adventure, not just thread the well known trails. Initially we wanted to start from Glarus, ride over the Panixer pass to Thusis, then over Forcellina and Septimer to Gravedona and close with a run over San Lucio to Lugano. Enrico found out that a TV crew had done Panixer with Lamas (on the trail of the famous retreat of general xxx), and it looked like it would mean having to carry the bikes for many hours. So we dropped that. François and Enrico brought up the idea of crossing the Greina plain. They even tried out the first stretch from Campo Blenio in March, and it looked fine. We later found out that it was the only rideable part... After Greina pass and the altiplano we would cross the Diesrut pass and ride down to Vrin, cross over to the Vals valley and then reach Thusis via Tomül pass and Glas pass. All in one day.... We had to refine planning for that stage several times before we got to a realistic route. I did the planning for the second stage. It would lead us to Gravedona via Lago di Lei and Angeloga pass. Some searching brought up a first hand account by Andy Heckmair. He includes the pass in his preferred route through the Alps, with a total of about 1 1/2 hours carrying time. That looked reasonable. Please read on to find out the truth ? The last stage would be from
Gravedona to Motto della Tappa, then down to Cavargna and up again to the
San Lucio pass. It looked challenging because of the many altitude
meters (almost 3000) and the heat that could be expected in that region.
Stage One: Campo Blenio -
Thusis
The trip actually began the day before. Enrico, Mami, Lorenzo, Serge and Marc came from the Lausanne region by car, François and Catherine from Lugano. I travelled by train from Zurich. We met in Biasca and set our for Campo Blenio together. After 5 minutes the luggage car had a flat tire...! In Campo Blenio we where expected to dinner by the very kind people of the hotel Genzana. It got later than planned, of course, but we managed to go to bed before midnight. It had been a hot summer day, but the air was cool up there. The moon shone through our room window, and everything felt great. Personally, I didn't sleep too well, but I guess it was the excitement. We had been looking forward to this trip for almost two years. The Genzana hosts prepared
our breakfast in advance, as we wanted to eat around 6 AM, and gave us
the keys to the restaurant.
At Capanna Scaletta we enjoyed soup and had our first extended break. There where about 100 meters elevation to go to the Passo del Greina. After that an amazing altiplano opened before our eyes. It was like being on the moon, a bit, I guess. I had never seen such a wide and long plain in the alpine region. Unfortunately we had run out of film, so I can't show any photos of our own here. We had hoped that the plain itself would be cyclable, but rocks and potholes mad us push the bikes almost all the way across, about 1 hour. A the end of the plain we turned right and carried our bikes up to the Passo del Diesrüt. A little downhill race? No way! Hurting feet and shoulders where our company almost all the way down to beautiful Vrin. A few hundred meters before the village François broke off his saddle and Lorenzo had a flat tire. Hungry and tired we met Catherine at a nice little coffee shop, where we had late lunch. It was 4 PM and we started wondering if we would make it to Thusis before dark. But we really needed to take a break, to fill our stomachs and bottles, and to fix the bikes. I called my cousin Esther to say we might get there a bit later than planned. She and her friend Hull had been so kind to invite us to stay at their house at the end of stage one. Enrico had planned to take a few side roads from Vrin to Ilanz. So we raced down to the bottom of the valley instead of staying up on the mainroad. For a few miles everything went fine, but then we missed an intersection and all of a sudden the trail was going up again, back towards the main road. When we finally determined our position, it was too late to get back to the small road. Well, the few kilometers from Vrin to Lumbrein took us 45 instead of 10 minutes.... The main road wasn't so terribly main either, hardly any traffic. In Lumbrein François was hit by a surge of power and accelerated like some race biker on the final sprint. His chain jumped, and there goes François, a short sit-in in the middle of the road. Fortunately no car was following close, and Enrico barely managed to avoid him - so the incident caused little damage to man and bike. In Ilanz we rode through the pretty town centre and paused to the music of a one man band. We tried some dancing on the bikes, and a kind restaurant owner took this group picture. At the exit of the village François had another flat. We met Catherine again in Castrish at 7 PM. I wanted to ride on, 'cause it was getting late, but all the others insisted on a break. We decided to call Hull and ask him to pick us up in Bonaduz, about 20 km before Thusis. This would save us an hour and allow us to have dinner at a reasonable time. After Castrish it was time to revamp the race I had lost to Lorenzo 2 years ago. There was along uphill ahead. But this time it was no race. Although Lorenzo has a natural athletic talent, nothing can replace intensive training. And he just didn't have enough of that. The small road through Versam provides some impressive views into the Rhine valley (or rather gorge, at that point). In Bonaduz Hull expected us with his trailer, and drove us up to Präz, which was a few km and many altitude meters off our route. It was 9 PM. Enrico, Lorenzo and I stayed at Hull and Esther's place, while the rest had rooms in the nearby hotel. Our hosts treated us like kings with a great pasta dinner and good wine. Esther even did some laundry for us. Stage 2: Thusis - Gravedona Thusis (600 m) - Innerferrera
(1500 m) - Lago di Lei (1930 m) - Passo Angeloga (2380 m) - Rifugio Chiavenna
- Fraciscio - Chiavenna
This was going to be the
piece de resistence. We didn't know, of course. Esthi and Hull served us
a wonderful breakfast. We finally managed to start around 7:30, half hour
behind schedule. The downhill from Präz to Thusis was refreshing.
It took us all the way to Andeer to catch the sun. There we had coffee
and a short break. Marc chose to ride his own pace. Slower, but without
breaks. We caught up with him after Innerferrera. At noon we reached the
dam. There was a nice little restaurant and we had an extensive break.
This was the the place where we left Catherine and Mami "behind", they
had to drive back to Rofla and then over Splügen pass to Fraciscio.
We turned, walked (bikes on our sore shoulders) all the way to the stupid sign and took the other road. Motorbike? May be further on the nice road would begin. After almost an hour we saw what could be the beginning of a decent trail. Well, it was all Fata Morgana. The guy just lied to us, and we walked all the way to the Capanna Chiavenna. To be really true, we did ride, but not more than the last 200 meters. The other two had arrived there an hour and half before!!! However, François admitted that the trail was rather scary. And I tell you, if it was scary for him, it may just have been too much for us. Once there, it began raining again. Actually, it looked like a storm ready to break out, with some thunder already grumbling in the background. We ordered coffee, ready to accept any kind of liquid that a mountain cabin 90 minutes away from the next parking lot could offer. But man, we got one heck of a delicious espresso, in the finest Italian tradition! Even after Capanna Chiavenna, the trail was far away from being bikeable in any form. If the local guy we had met really used his trial bike up here, he must have been at least European champion, and been riding very slow. It took us over an hour on our feet to reach Fraciscio. Rain was coming and going. I finally discovered a good technique for carrying the bike on my shoulders. I know now, for next year... Catherine was waiting in Fraciscio. It was 8 PM. We had some local cold food, really good. We started realizing that Gravedona was possibly not reachable by bike any more. Serge was in bad shape with his knee from the long downhill walk. Some volunteers decided to ride the car to the hotel. Then Francesco would drive back and meet the rest of us on the road. Lorenzo, Marc and I quickly mounted front and rear lights. It was 9 PM now, and getting dark quickly. Rain was pouring strong. The road was steep, as it had to get from 1500 m down to about 300 in less than 15 kilometers. The brakes hardly worked on our wet rims. Lorenzo opened the way. I barely saw is tail light. But sometimes a lightning would whiten his back like a photo flash. It was an intensive ride. Shortly before Chiavenna the rain stopped. This small town is the cradle of the Pestalozzi family. That's where our history began in the 13th century. I had never been there before. We rode by Palazzo Pestalozzi to the Piazza Rodolfo Pestalozzi. Lorenzo knew the way from a forme visit. It was 10 PM and we decided to have dinner there, in a typical Crotto, since we thought the others might be glad not having to wait for us. But when we called François, he insisted on us all having dinner together at the hotel in Gravedona. Well, Gravedona in this case meant Bugiallo. Lorenzo had only been able to find a few rooms in this little village high above lake Como, because it was high season and the lake resorts where all booked out. François picked us up at the Crotto in Chiavenna around 10:30 PM. By the time we where all at the table it was well past 11. From Lorenzo's description we had thought it was some sort of a farm with a few beds. We imagined an old lady, unhappy to to feed 8 people in the middle of the night. The more surprised we were to find a finely equipped restaurant with still quite a few people at the other tables. The rooms where all new, and the view over lake Como was breathtaking. We had spaghetti as usual, framed by a good salad and specialty desserts and accompanied by a fine Barolo. Stage 3: Gravedona - Lugano Gravedona - Menaggio - Val Rezzo - Passo San Lucio - Bogno - Roveredo (Lugano) This time we were done, somehow. Compared to the last tour we had managed to start early on two days in spite of late nights and long routes. The original plan was to ride from Gravedona to Motto della Tappa (an 1800 m uphill), then down to Cavargna and another 1000 m uphill over San Lucio to Lugano. But for this we would have had to get up at 6 again, and no one felt like doing that. So we settled for the short version, which still included a 1300 m uphill from Menaggio to San Lucio. We started out around 9:30 AM and raced down the narrow road to Gravedona, a lovely little town, where we stopped for a short visit to the historic center. The ride along lake Como to Menaggio was very pretty from a landscape point of view. On the downside there was heavy traffic and a few long tunnels. In Menaggio we stopped for lunch. Lorenzo quit there. He needed to be in Lausanne Monday morning early and had to do some work before. Catherine brought him to the Lugano train station. We left Menaggio at 12:30, ready for a steep uphill in the heat of the day. Temperature was around 30 °C, the sky was blue and the sun... burning. Enrico proved to be in amazingly good shape. He and I reached Val Rezzo well before the others. Especially Marc really suffered from the heat. In Val Rezzo we had a break. That was the end of the paved road. The slope, which had already been between 15% and 20% was now constantly over 20%. The trail was in rather bad shape, probably from the many dirt bikers who seem to use it as a motocross race track. Even more than the actual climbing, it was difficult to keep the balance over the rocks and potholes. Enrico took a few pictures at the beginning and once again paid by being left behind while he had to stow away the camera. Sometimes we just seemed to forget him. Sorry Enrico, and thank you very much for all your great photographs! Most had to push the bike part or all of the way. For myself, I had at a lot of fun sprinting up those last 450 altitude meters, I guess I reaped the fruits of my spring training sessions. Also, I loved the warm weather. Passo San Lucio rewarded us with a great view into both Switzerland and Italy. After a few photographs and a beer, we pointed our nose downward. This was one heck of a downhill race! The dirt road was in much better shape on the Swiss side, because there was a gate preventing unauthorized motor vehicles to use it. Serge proved that if he wasn't the strongest climber, he sure could ride his bike down the hill faster than all of us. I had quite a few adrenaline surges trying to stick to his rear wheel! We reached the Gasser home in Roveredo at 6:30 PM. The sun was setting on the terrace facing east. We opened the champagne and expressed our thankfulness for a safe trip. After some visits popped up we had a fine dinner on the terrace. Enrico, Serge and Marc drove back to their homes that same night. For me it was too late to catch a train. The following morning I rode the 10 km down to Lugano and caught the 10 o'clock Intercity to Zurich. Once again, we had received the gift of a safe trip, great weather and lots of fun. Personally, I'd like to thank God for all the things that are beyond the scope of our influence. Inquiries to gottardo%pestalozzi.net |