A few days near Lucerne

I had a small di­lemma. Ride? Or not ride? I ad­mit, in the ab­stract, it seems ob­vi­ous. more­Why ride? I was head­ing to a work­shop in Switzer­land for a few days. I’d be stay­ing in a pretty little town on the quiet shores of Lake Lu­cerne, a gor­geous lake sur­roun­ded by snow-covered moun­tains. The weath­er looked good. Easy an­swer: ride.

Ex­cept. I didn’t have a bike there. Yes… it’s true that I have a bike in Switzer­land, but that bike was over an hour away, by car. And that bike wasn’t geared for the moun­tains around Lu­cerne. I could bring a bike with me on the plane… but I would have to haul it in that huge case to the hotel via train, then boat, then taxi. Ugh. And they’d charge me both ways to haul that thing on the plane. What a pain - for prob­ably just two rides. So, ob­vi­ously: skip it.

Ex­cept. I would be head­ing out on a hard six-day bike tour a week after the work­shop was over. From a train­ing stand­point, the worst pos­sible thing to do dur­ing the week would be to stop rid­ing… I needed to keep some sort of ex­er­cise go­ing. So I had to ride.

Ex­cept. I’d be in a pretty in­tense work­shop for three days, start­ing early every morn­ing and end­ing late every day… fol­lowed, most likely, by a group din­ner, go­ing late in­to each night. Fol­lowed by a few hours on my laptop try­ing to keep with my day job. The work­shop mattered in­tensely… skip­ping out to go for a ride wasn’t an op­tion. Oh, and I’d have jet lag, so sleep was at a premi­um. Even if I man­aged to get a bike there, there was prob­ably no way to find time to get out. I’d bet­ter be re­spons­ible and skip rid­ing for the week.

Ah­h­h­h­h­hh… screw it. Enough lo­gic. Go with my gut. It was gor­geous alpine scenery. Paths to find. Peaks to climb. Ad­ven­tures to seek. There HAD to be some way to ride.

So, I found my­self in a hotel room at the top of a quaint five-star hotel on the shores of Lake Lu­cerne, ex­tract­ing my climb­ing bike from its flight case. Some­how I’d got­ten the bike there… now I had to find some places to ride and some time to ride, without sac­ri­fi­cing work. Game on.

After ar­riv­ing, I went out for a short re­cov­ery ride along the lake shore, just to get my bear­ings, stretch my legs and make sure I’d put the bike to­geth­er the right way. Not worth writ­ing much about a re­cov­ery ride, but gotta say… if you have do re­cov­ery, along the shores of Lake Lu­cerne is hard to beat.

On Monday night, I hunted around on Strava’s heat maps and Ride­withG­PS for a good route. I’d already found plenty, but now that I was in town, I had a bet­ter sense of the loc­al roads and where I might be able to get to.

Pick­ing routes from the net is al­ways a gamble. They might be out of date. They might be on gravel, or have con­struc­tion. They might be moun­tain bike routes… and you can’t tell un­til you get there. Even if the route is per­fect, it’s al­ways a chal­lenge to do - you don’t know what turns or obstacles are com­ing. You’re not sure of the pa­cing. It’s a bad idea to try these when you have to be back from your ride by a cer­tain time.

Oh well.

I chose a route that fol­lowed the lake for about 10 miles as a warm up, then headed up a re­mote pass. I wasn’t sure how much time I’d have to ride up, or if the road was ride­able the whole way, or if it entered private lands. So my goal was to just go as far up as I could, then turn around and head back, with about an hour to spare be­fore work, giv­ing me time to get cleaned up, eat, and get to the work­shop.

Gaetterlipass

Tues­day morn­ing, 5am, after a little in­cid­ent with the hotel clerk in the lobby, I was on my bike, head­ing east to­ward the sun rising over the moun­tains. The lake was quiet. The road was empty.

I cruised through sev­er­al sleep­ing towns, past a bakery that was open­ing, and along empty shore line, fol­low­ing the road as it hugged the lakeside, slowly rising up and down. Fol­low­ing the ar­rows on my GPS, I turned away from the lake through a little town cen­ter.

The road star­ted head­ing up­hill. I wouldn’t see a flat or down­hill spot for an hour or more. The road me­andered out of town and up in­to green pas­tures, where sleepy goats watched me climb slowly by. The road nar­rowed down to about the width of a car. Let’s call it a path at this point. A path with great as­phalt.

Loc­als came zoom­ing down the path in dinky little cars and/or far ma­chinery, prob­ably head­ing to a bakery or work. Every time I’d hear an en­gine buzz­ing in the dis­tance, I’d mo­sey off the path onto the gravel and dirt on the side, try­ing to sim­ul­tan­eously avoid be­ing run over and avoid get­ting shocked by the ubi­quit­ous elec­tric­al fences keep­ing live­stock on the fields. Fun.

I kept climb­ing.. the slope seemed to vary between 5% and 15%. I was try­ing to keep my pace at­tempo, be­low threshold, aim­ing for a steady ride. After a while I quit pay­ing at­ten­tion to power and heart rate and just rode in the morn­ing still.

Thank good­ness I’d brought my climb­ing bike. The bike I keep in Basel would nev­er have got­ten up this hill. I need to up­grade that bike.

After a while, I reached my des­ig­nated turn-around time. I wasn’t done climb­ing yet… plenty more hill to go. I wanted to get to the top of this thing.

I re­cal­cu­lated my turn-around time, fig­ur­ing I would be go­ing down this MUCH faster than I had ori­gin­ally thought. Yay - that gave me more time to keep go­ing up! So I kept climb­ing.

Fi­nally I reached the top of the pass. The view was spec­tac­u­lar. I rode out to a little over­look and soaked it in.. the early morn­ing sun over the gla­ciers in the dis­tance, the pure lake down be­low, sur­roun­ded by peaks and little towns. Gor­geous.

At this point it was soooo tempt­ing to keep go­ing down the oth­er side of the pass, be­cause that’s what you do with passes… But no, I had work to get back to. On the oth­er hand… the path ac­tu­ally kept go­ing up. It turned left onto the saddle at the pass, and kept go­ing up the moun­tain. Hmm. I HAD to see what was there, right? I was pretty sure I could make up the time on the des­cent. And maybe by rid­ing really hard once I was back on the lake front I could get back in time… So… up I went.

The path turned to gravel, then wound through dense trees. I crossed cattle guards and streams. I went through someone’s farm yard, then con­tin­ued up. Fi­nally the path reached an open spot, look­ing out over the lake re­gion. The path ended here at a closed and locked farm gate. I took in the view, glor­i­ously happy that I’d de­cided to bring my bike, climbed this amaz­ing thing, and briefly es­caped the real­ity wait­ing me back at the hotel.

Now, time for down. And time to haul ass back to the real world. I put on my vest to keep me warm as I des­cen­ded through the chill. Minutes later I was back at the top of the pass, then picked up speed once I was on as­phalt.

I banked around a corner and came to a screech­ing halt to avoid crash­ing in­to a pelo­ton of cows that had taken over the road. A farm­er was mov­ing the cows from one pas­ture to an­oth­er, at a pace that was ap­par­ently de­signed the keep the cows as re­laxed as pos­sible…. ly­cra-clad idi­ots in a rush could be damned.

I waited pa­tiently for a break in the herd, then used my Cam­bridge-honed traffic skills to duck and weave through the crowd, hop­ing these com­muters wouldn’t kick me. I dive-bombed the rest of the des­cent. Turns out this is REALLY ex­cit­ing when the road is nar­row, with fences on both sides.

Fi­nally - and far too quickly - I was back down to the lake. I gobbled a gel, got in the drops, and time-trialed back to the hotel. I was able to catch the draft on some cars, and even passed a bus on the flats… I ar­rived back at the hotel just as a couple of my col­leagues were walk­ing through the front door to get break­fast be­fore work. Phew, made it with just barely enough time to clean up and get to the work­shop. A per­fect start to a day.

Dur­ing a few quiet mo­ments in the day, I eye­balled all the cyc­ling route sites, hop­ing to find an­oth­er per­fect route for later in the week. My rough plan was to catch up on des­per­ately-needed sleep on Wed­nes­day morn­ing, do a short re­cov­ery ride, and then head out for an­oth­er ser­i­ous ride on Thursday.

Over the next couple of days, I iden­ti­fied a lot of op­tions. I was really hop­ing to climb Mt. Pi­l­at­us, to the south­w­est of Lu­cerne. It’s a fam­ous peak, with a huge ob­ser­vat­ory at the top. I found a route up, but after a while I de­cided it must be a moun­tain bike path. Moreover, I’d have to drive to the start, which would add about 1.5 hours to the morn­ing … im­possible.

This was really frus­trat­ing. I was with­in 45 minutes of a world-fam­ous peak… much closer than, say, be­ing in the US… and yet, in prac­tice, I just couldn’t go there to scope out the road and per­haps climb the moun­tain.

So, in­stead, I found an­oth­er route, closer to the hotel, that looked like it also had massive po­ten­tial. This one would take me to the top of the Rig ski area - also a pretty ma­jor moun­tain, and well-known in Switzer­land. And, on the ad­ven­ture side of things, I couldn’t tell if the route up was open, was paved, or was a moun­tain bike path. Only one way to find out…

Rigi

Around 4:30am, I tossed my bike in my rent­al car and star­ted driv­ing along the lake shore. I hoped to get reas­on­ably close to the climb, warm up on a flat ap­proach, and then go see what I could find that would get me to the top of Rigi.

After a sig­ni­fic­ant drive, I had a bit of a fiasco with park­ing. The Swiss are anal-re­tent­ive about where you can put your car, par­tic­u­larly in towns that are the bases of ski areas… so I wor­ried at one point that I wouldn’t be able to get a ride in at all, but fi­nally, by 6am, I’d stashed the car and was on my bike. Same routine: flat roads, quaint towns, idyll­ic lakes.

As I pedaled, I could see the Rigi peaks in the dis­tance.

Mmmm. Looked high. Good train­ing for Alpine rides:

  1. Look up at peak.
  2. Say out loud, “I’m go­ing up THAT???”
  3. Shrug, keep rid­ing.
  4. A few minutes later, re­peat.

I turned off the main road, cruised through a farm yard, and got onto a little farm road. As ex­pec­ted, it got steep and nar­row.

Up. Pas­tures. Little farm houses. A big sign cel­eb­rated the birth of Lu­cas, about a week ago. Cows. More pas­tures. Up. Real­ized I was push­ing pretty hard.. backed off a bit. Up, round a corner. HOLY COW THAT’S STEEP. Owo­wo­wow. Ok, got past that.. but still steep. Hair­pins. Cattle guards.

Signs that looked like they said I shouldn’t be on this road. For­tu­nately, I couldn’t read them. In­to the forest. More up.

Fi­nally I got to the point where it looked on the map like the road might be­come a moun­tain bike path. The as­phalt turned to gravel, but was still ride­able, so I kept go­ing. It flattened out a bit… wow, nice. But it was just fool­ing… up it went again.

Pretty soon I crossed the train tracks of a moun­tain train. In ad­di­tion to the two stand­ard tracks, there’s a 3rd rail of cog­wheel gears, used by the trains to keep from slip­ping as the go up and down the moun­tain. This must have been one of the trains that brings ski­ers up to the peaks. I passed a train sta­tion, then fol­lowed the gravel path as it took me in­to an empty little town on the side of the moun­tain.. prob­ably some­thing pop­u­lated largely dur­ing va­ca­tion sea­sons. Paths went all over, but most seemed to dead-end in farms, or be­come ac­tu­al hik­ing paths. I fol­lowed my GPS sketch.

The gravel turned to ce­ment. It felt like I was rid­ing on a side­walk. A steep side­walk. Biz­zarre.

By this time, I was start­ing to get really wor­ried about the time. I was afraid there was no way I’d make it back in time, par­tic­u­larly with the drive I would have to do to get back to the hotel. I should have turned around. But… I wasn’t to the top yet. Some­where out there in front of me, above me, was the peak. I wasn’t even sure I could find a road that could get me there… but I had to find out. So I kept rid­ing.

The road got in­sanely steep again for a bit, and the wind picked up. 28%, in­to a head­wind. Bal­ance was in­ter­est­ing… too far for­ward, and I had no trac­tion. Too far back­wards, and my front wheel would rise up, threat­en­ing to flip me back­wards. The wind made this really ex­cit­ing. Nev­er done any­thing quite like that on a road bike. Lin­coln Gap, Schm­lin­coln Gap.

I kept fol­low­ing the side­walk path thing up the moun­tain.. through farm yard, past hik­ing trails, in­to little sec­tions of forest… and fi­nally it opened up. I could see the top of the ski area ahead, com­plete with res­taur­ants, a train sta­tion, cell phone towers, and a gon­dola. A few minutes and an­oth­er steep sec­tion later, I was there.

Halle­freak­in­glu­jah! I’d found a way up through the maze of trails, and I’d ac­tu­ally got­ten to the sum­mit!

I took a quick pic­ture from the top, then dove back down the trail. This time, I didn’t go too fast … the ce­ment was du­bi­ous, the wind was blustery, and it was so steep I was wor­ried about roast­ing my brakes.

Fi­nally I got be­low the tree line and to slightly less steep pitches, so I cranked up the speed. I might still be able to make it back in time. But no, on the way down, what happened but…

COW PELO­TON. Sigh.

That took forever.. but I got through that, and then I screamed my way down the moun­tain. I love love love those down­hills, even when…, no scratch that… es­pe­cially when they’re steep, nar­row, and twisty. Awe­somely fun.

Fi­nally down to the flats, time tri­al back to the car, hop in and drive like a ma­ni­ac back to the hotel…. only to get stuck be­hind a slow tour bus for the last 30 minutes of the drive… I was late to the work­shop, but that turned out to be ok this par­tic­u­lar time.

An­oth­er per­fect - or al­most per­fect - start to a day.

Really glad I took my bike.