Return to the Klausen Pass - with added roughstuff this time
This ride came about through a chance combination of two things: a spontaneous trip to Switzerland for a work event, and having randomly rediscovered an amazing photo which I took three years ago when I last rode over the Klausen Pass - but which hadn’t made the cut for the blog post I wrote about it at the time.
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Normally, if I had the chance to ride just one Swiss mountain pass, the Klausen would be well down my list, below the Grimsel or the Albula, for instance. But the thing which had caught my attention in that photo (below) was the gravel track running into the middle distance on the left. It seems to be going straight into the wall of the huge cirque, and I was intrigued to find out where it really goes, so I looked it up on the map.
It turns out to be part of the Swiss MTB Trail 415 - a gravel track leading to the Fisetenpass, off to the left of the cirque in the photo, where a hiking trail crosses into the next valley to the south. From the route description it sounded like a really fun and not too taxing ride, so I parked it as an idea for a future trip; not so far in the future, as it turned out, because just two days later I got persuaded to join that event in Zurich … so of course I arranged to take my bike along too ...
It was a Friday, which meant a nostalgic trip to the market beside Lake Zurich at Bürkliplatz and an open-air breakfast with produce from our favourite bakery stall, as Caroline and I habitually used to do on Fridays when we lived in Zurich. We absolutely couldn't miss out on this, even though it did mean a somewhat late start to the cycling! (Caroline, by the way, didn't join this ride but went hiking instead.)
It was just after 11:00 by the time I finally got off the train and on my bike at Schwanden, Canton Glarus - I'd decided to start riding some 10km short of the foot of the actual pass road at Linthal - I felt that both the bike and I could benefit from a bit of a warm-up along the relatively flat valley before starting to climb in earnest. I'd had a few snags putting the bike together after travel (headset, brake, gear adjustment) and I wanted to make sure it was all tickety-boo. As for my own condition ... I did the maths as I rode along ... starting just above 500m altitude and going to a pass at 2036m meant some 1500m of elevation gain. I used to find myself starting to suffer with the altitude at about 2400m, and that was when we were living at around 500m; subtract that 500m (as we now live close to sea level) and I would very likely be struggling before I got to the top! I used to reckon I could climb at 600m/hour, but doubted it would be more than 400 now, call it 4 hours; factor in going slower on the gravel section, and enough time for a lunch stop, and I thought I'd be at the top by 16:00 or so. Sunset was around 19:20, so I was already thinking about shortening my route down the other side, to avoid running out of daylight. At least I didn't have to worry about the weather! Not a cloud in the sky, enough breeze to provide a bit of cooling without hindering, and nothing adverse in the forecast.
Before reaching Linthal, I stopped to fill my water bottles. A great thing about cycling in Switzerland is the free public drinking-water fountains in just about every village, although there are fewer once you get right up in mountains, so I was keen to start with full bottles, despite the extra weight.
After a minor tweak to the rear gear cable at the drinking water stop, I declared the bike to be running perfectly, and off we went up the pass. I seemed to be running OK too, which was quite a surprise, considering that I don't get any training for hills these days, living on the flatlands! I passed a couple of slower cyclists; a couple of faster cyclists passed me; at some point an e-bike hummed past. There was very little motor traffic - being a weekday in late September - about half of which consisted of classic Porsche 911s, which must have been participating in an event of some sort. I enjoyed the increasing views over the valley as I climbed higher through the hairpin bends, happy with my rate of progress which I was tracking with my watch altimeter. Almost exactly 2 hours after starting, I reached the top of the initial climb at 1300m altitude where the road flattens off into the wide valley of Urnerboden, flanked by the gleaming white cliffs of the Glarner Alpen under a dazzling blue sky. (They'd been hidden in cloud last time I came this way!)
At Urnerboden, my route deviated from the pass road onto a gravel track running along the river bank, leading to a lovely spot for my picnic lunch of focaccia roll, lamb salami and Gruyère cheese from the Bürkliplatz market. I sat on a flat rock in the sunshine listening to the burbling of the river and generally feeling great!
Soon I was ready to move on again (although I could happily have sat there in the sun all afternoon!). I had two options here, either to return to the road and continue to where the official MTB trail 415 turned off, or to cross the river and take a trail I could see on the map which cut the corner and joined the 415 higher up. The unofficial route looked more fun, but there was a barrier across the trail not far beyond where I'd had my picnic, and when I saw a hiker coming back whom I'd seen going in the other direction earlier, I stopped her to ask if it was possible to get through. "Well, yes, you can get through, but where do you want to go after that?" "I want to cross the bridge and go up that hill on other side." "Hmm, there's a trail, but I wouldn't do it with a bicycle!' ... sound advice which I maybe should have heeded ...
To cut a long story short, I found myself committed to a good hour of hike-a-bike up a steep, rough trail during which I gained only 200m of altitude whilst worrying at every step about putting my back out manhandling the bike up the slope, and/or losing my footing if my cleats slipped on a rock (as they tend to do). There was nobody else on the trail to help me if I injured myself.
My salvation on this trail - unexpectedly - was my Arkel Bug pannier, which converts to a backpack. I was able to put it on my back for this part of the ascent, which in turn made the bike itself much lighter, better balanced and easier to lift and push up the steep slope and over the obstructions. I had originally intended to bring a saddlebag rather than a pannier; then changed my mind and left it at home, in favour of panniers which were more convenient on the train trip; then when I set off today I initially regretted not having balanced the bike with two panniers instead of cramming everything into one. So my "mistake" in bringing just the one pannier turned out to be the best option after all!
Anyway, all the effort was worth it for the amazing views down through the trees over Urnerboden and across to the Glarner Alpen; completely different to the view one normally gets from the road at valley level.
Luckily I made it unscathed to the point where the trail rejoined the 415, which was a nice wide Land Rover track and perfectly good to ride on (photo at the top of this article). Soon I was making merry progress uphill, the super-low gears and 42mm 650B tubeless tyres on my bike ideally suited to the terrain. A section of 25% gradient near the top had me walking for a short while; I think I could have managed any 2 of the altitude, the gradient and the surface, but not all 3!
The hike-a-bike excursion had put me an hour behind my earlier estimate: I reached the Fisetenpass - 2036m, the highest point of my route - at almost exactly 17:00.
By now the sun was dipping quite low beyond the Klausen Pass to the west, which I still had to cross and get down the other side before nightfall; if desperate, I could have aborted the ride and returned down the way I came to Linthal, but my work colleagues were all expecting to see photo evidence of me at the Klausen summit! So I had to get a move on, but I couldn't exactly blast down the track, because this section had some equally steep downhill gradients and had recently been resurfaced with a soft grade of gravel, which made it quite difficult to maintain control. I succeeded in staying upright - but, ironically, the very next day I skidded off and grazed my arm quite badly on a much lower and easier trail!
This next half hour of descent finally brought me to the big cirque which had sparked off the whole project! It was in deep shade by this late time of the day, and accessed through a rather scary dark tunnel (good thing I have decent lights!), which explains why I couldn't see the continuation of the trail in that original photo.
A check of the altimeter on rejoining the pass road at Vorder Chlus showed that, after the descent from Fisetenpass, I now had the best part of 300m altitude to regain to reach the Klausen Pass summit; which even on my optimistic 600m/hour climb rate would take me half an hour, by which time it would be 18:00 and barely an hour until sunset. Any thoughts of another roughstuff detour on the descent long forgotten - Swiss MTB Trail 416 still beckons for another occasion! - I bravely tackled the road ascent, feeling in remarkably good shape with not so much a "second wind" but a third or even fourth by this stage of the day! And I did it in almost exactly the aspirational half-hour!
I only stopped long enough for the obligatory "summit selfie" and to pull on a softshell jacket against the chill of the evening; then I was off down the westward descent towards Altdorf, the upper part of the slope still bathed in beautiful golden evening sunshine.
Did I mention that my bike was working perfectly? Lies, all lies! I did the entire 1500m descent suffering from acute "brake anxiety". I had intended to fit new disc brake pads before I next tackled any serious mountains - you barely need brakes in Brandenburg, it's so flat! - but didn't have time due to the short notice for this trip. I'd convinced myself that the brakes were working "well enough" - as indeed proved to be the case (which is why I'm still here to tell the tale!), but they were definitely below their optimum performance, and I was constantly on the alert for any sign of them fading, in case I had to stop before it was too late!
After a final stop to replenish my drinking water at Spiringen, about 2/3 of the way down (the location of the fountain is helpfully identified on the Komoot mapping), I pulled into Altdorf station simultaneously with a train, and was able to avoid a long wait for the next one thanks to a new feature of the Swiss Railways app, which allows you to skip buying a ticket, log your journey by location tracking, and pay retrospectively. Isn't technology great when it works?! And the sunset from the train was fabulous, too. Perfect end to the day!
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