Biking Over the Alps

I was reluctant to uproot for a semester in Germany, until our German friend Juergen said, "Come on! We'll take a bike trip across the Alps." Suddenly I was mentally packing my bags, and settling in. That was in April or May. Right away I started getting in shape, and by early August I was putting endless hours in the saddle while whining loudly about the fatigue and tedium of the routine: 30-mile rides before work, intervals on Wednesdays, weekend rides starting at 7 a.m. so I could get in 70 or 80 miles by lunchtime. I started to dread the grind, and all the while I wondered if I would ever have the strength and stamina and requisite blood counts to do it.

My confidence was not bolstered when Juergen told me by e-mail in early August he had a route planned, and that "the second and third day would be kind of hard." He included this route profile that includes a good part of the Day 2 ride, with a couple of passes over 2000 meters (one of them 2500 meters) and grades of 13, 14, even 16 percent:

Then the ride started, and up and over the passes we went, one day at a time. It was the physically hardest thing I've done since I rowed with the crew team in college, but it was also exhilarating, and the scenery was spectacular. For the record, the conditioning paid off. I didn't have to take the walk of shame up any of the passes. Let's cut right to some pictures:

Juergen on Day 1. We started riding under cloudy skies in Kochel, a 70 km train ride south of Munich at the foot of the Alps, and rode to Greis im Sellrain, an Austrian village half way up our first serious climb. We pedaled though driving rain much of the way. I took advantage of a couple of brief stops to wring out my socks. The skies began to clear as we approached Greis, and the weather was clear and sunny the rest of the trip.

Day 2, I think, on the way up to Khultai from Greis im Sellrain. I don't regard myself as a laggard, but Juergen is a stronger rider, and he did most of the pulling.

Here I am on Day 2 grinding up an Austrian road toward a 2500-meter pass called Timmelsjoch.

Are we not men?? We repaired to the bar (every pass seems to have one) where Juergen insisted I eat a heaping pile of eggs, bacon, and french fries, to help focus my carbohydrate-starved mind for what turned out to be quite a dangerous ride down into St. Leonhard, Italy. He realized before I did that I wasn't getting enough to eat: by the time we finished the trip I'd lost close to 10 pounds.

Day 3, atop Jaufenpass, which was the first of two hard climbs that day.

Later that same day, Penserjoch:

Here we are at the top of Penserjoch, which was our second big climb on Day 3. Juergen liked to study the pass profiles on the maps: so many meters up over so many kilometers gives the average grade, and the maps indicated maximum grades at various points. The numbers just scared me. Juergen had told me over dinner the previous night in St. Leonhard that Jaufenpass would be the difficult climb of the day. But when we arrived at the bottom of Penserjoch he decided that Jaufenpass was a cakewalk, compared to what we were in for on Penserjoch. I didn't want to hear it. Jaufenpass had been a strain for me, and the forecasting just didn't help, psychologically. Hard, really hard, super hard: any way you slice it there's only one way over a mountain pass, so no point obsessing about it. Just get on the bike, keep pedaling, and try to think about the ride down the other side. The road visible in the background of the image of me sitting on the bench took us downhill to Bolzano, Italy for more than 30 miles, through a beautiful river valley, with the wind at our backs. It was an hour-long rush of riding euphoria.

On day 4 we rode over two low passes (1200 meters or so) from Bolzano to Molveno, a little town in Trentino. This was the view of from our hotel balcony. Juergen did all the route planning and hotel arranging, taking us through picture book places like this. He was instigator, fixer and translator for the trip, and I owe much to him for the success of it. (Thanks Juergen.)

 

Day 5, stopping at a roadside cafe for cappuccino on our Tour d'Honneur, a leisurely downhill ride on the last day from Molveno to Riva del Garda. The geology was remarkable throughout the trip. These are limestone upthrusts, just south of the Dolomites (slightly metamorphosed limestone) but enough said. Juergen told Michelle I "lectured" him repeatedly about the geology, and that he finally felt obligated to ask me a question to feign interest (Q: how old are the Alps? A: I don't know.) I think he may have been paying me back for the dig I made back in Greis im Sellrain about his enthusiasm for the writings of Michel Foucault. 

Day 5, the end of the road at the plaza in Riva del Garda. (Hey Juergen, those formations in the background on the far side of the lake are called hogbacks. They're limestone formations, which are ancient ocean deposits (how old? I'm not sure) that have been been broken up by foucaults, I mean faults...)