Biking Day 6

• Length ridden: 73 km
• Ascent: 2,050 meters
• Rating: 7.0 out of 10 - glad to have made the pass, though in pretty poor weather
• Highlights: (just like the previous day) reaching the summit at 2,224 meters
• Lowlight: the suffering on the foot path next to the lake
• Map of the day

As I had written the day before, the road already started ascending in the evening, quite a bit. Alas, the weather did not really improve, so it was in quite a bit of fog that I started riding to Susten Pass.

I left my "parking lot" of a camping (for which I was so thankful of) before 8 am, I rode to the south, then, in the town of Wassen, the pass road started off towards the west.

Normally, my camera keeps clicking on such pass roads, but not here, not this day - there was so much fog, hardly anything to capture. This photo was at the bottom of the pass, the road crossing a gorge with a wild river at the bottom.

On the ride up, I noticed something very definitely Swiss. There were rain canals, quite a lot of these to guide the water down - they were all numbered! "Rain Canal 153525", like this...

Before the summit, I bought some more cheese from a lady and finally, I got to the pass at 2,224 meters at around 1 pm. All I was greeted by was a thick fog, a light drizzle and it was really quite cold. There was even snow on the side of the road - the pass still being closed just a few weeks back. I put on all my warm stuff, so on top of my T-shirt I pulled on another one, then one sweater, on top of which another one and I topped it off with a rain coat and zipped up the extension of my shorts. There were two restaurants, neither of which looked inviting, so I chose the local chapel at the pass to warm up and to have a snack or so.

The Susten Pass turned out to be the highest point of my trip, in fact, this was the last major pass that I would climb.

The downhill was no fun either, it was really cold and I did not carry gloves - which turned out to be mistake - and my hands got really cold, having to hit the brakes constantly, so I had the feeling they would freeze off.

The situation improved when I got back to "civilization", the rain stopped and it was no longer freezing. The scenery got quite nice.

I got to the town of Meiningen, where I filled up my supplies a bit. It was there that I met a young fellow biker from Italy, Gregorio. He told me he was on one of his first rides - we rode together for a while and he was a very strong cyclist. From the town where we met, it was still a few kilometers to Lake Brienz. We took different roads, the one I took was quite adventurous, taking me through a beautiful forest, with a giant waterfall and a chateau.

The lake was very pretty, in fact, I heard that this lake is the production site of a Korean TV series, with the title "Crash Landing on You". Due to this, there is practically no vacancy in the hotels surrounding the site, so many Asian tourists come to marvel at the beauty of the surroundings.

Here I made a pretty big blunder. I followed the road right to the lake and it became narrower and then even narrower. There was even a sign, saying "Turn around! Your GPS was wrong!", but this was more for the car drivers, so I thought. Well, it was also for bikers, as it turned out. I crossed a narrow bridge, after which I could only shove my bike. No issues, so I thought, sure a path to ride will pop up. Wrong. Soon, the narrow path turned into stairs leading steep uphill. As I hate backtracking, I did not turn around, even though it would have been the right decision. I suffered up until the steps ended and now I had the option to go down a steep path, then back up again or push and shove my bike steep uphill to a house, go through its garden and hope not to be yelled at. I opted for the latter - luckily, no one was home or if they were, they did not notice me. Now I was back on a paved road, which of course had to ascend steeply. There seems to be a pattern - with a pass behind me, I get into a real tough patch of road...just like after Kühtai. Oh well.

I got to a campground called Seeruhe Bönigen, with the owner being a genuine elderly Swiss farmer, a bit rough on the edges, but with a nice heart. He pointed to a nice spot beneath a tree, and asked for CHF 25, when he saw I was a bit surprised, he went down to CHF 20, even giving me a Swiss Franc for free to be used in the shower. I called Gregorio to tell him where I was, but he had already found a spot for wild camping. I was happy to have had a warm shower and a place to charge my batteries.

I rode some 73 kilometers, with 2,050 meters of altitude gain.