Up to Andermatt

Church in Wassen.

Moderately hard ride 70km ride from Walchwil to Andermatt. All of the ride, except for the last 5km of climbing from Göschenen to Andermatt, was very pleasant. The last 5km is very pretty road, but there can be lots of traffic on the mountain switchbacks and very little shoulder for riding; whereas the cogwheel train between Göschenen to Andermatt along the same stretch is very pleasant.

Ride hightlights:

• ride along the shorelines of 3 pretty lakes: Zuggersee, Lauerzsee, and Vierwaldstättersee
• has option to start or stop the ride at any of several train stations: Zug, Walchwil, Arth-Goldau, Flüelen, Altdorf, and Erstfeld
• relatively flat for first 40km until reaching the village of Amstag
• pleasant climb from Amstag to Wassen
  

This bike route travels parallel to a very popular train route between Zurich and Italy. If you ride the train along this section in order to climb the valley it must do a 'corkscrew' climb via some tunnels near Wassen. If you look out the window near Wassen you'll see the big white church of Wassen three seperate times as the train disappears into one tunnel and comes out at a higher one in the corkscrew.

View Larger Map

Over Sattel round Rigi

View from Hochstuckli of Aegeri Lake

This ride was done June 20th and was 97 km in length.

The special thing about this ride is that I did it with my friend Karl. Our plan was to do about 40kms - from Zug to Aegeri over to Sattel and then back to Zug along the Zugger See shoreline - but when we got to Sattel we decided to go for a longer ride because the weather was so great.

There were two highlights to this ride:

• High road climb through the woods behind Aegeri
• Lakeside road between Lake Lucern and Rigi mountain
  

The high road through the woods behind Aegeri is one of my favorite local roads. There is almost no traffic and has beautiful tree cover. The one drawback is that if you don't have a tripple on your bike it is pretty steep at some points. My friend Karl hadn't done any real climbing this year and he was able to complete the ride and seemed to enjoy it.

The lakeside road along the Lake of Lucern at the foot of the Rigi mountain ( from Brunnen to Weggis) is beautifully scenic, gently rolling, and has several towns along it to stop at for food and drink. I think pretty much anybody visiting Switzerland is bound to be impressed by this road.

View Larger Map

Along the Axenstrasse to Altdorf

Statue of Wilhelm Tell in the village of Altdorf.

This ride was done on May 29th and by Inner-Schweiz standards was flat and easy 40+km ride.

It started in the village of Walchwil on the Zugersee, and finished with a train ride back from the village of Altdorf. The ride went through Arth-Goldau, over to the village of Brunnen on the Lake of Luzern, south along the famous lakeside Axenstrassen road, past the village of Fluelen onto the village of Altdorf. Given I had some sparetime before the train in Altdorf headed back to Walchwil I did about 45 minutes of climbing up toward the Klausen pass.



The Axenstrasse is quite nice to bike south on. Although it is a busy road there is a bike path in most of the south direction, the road is an amazing engineering feat, and the spectacular views of the lake of Luzern more than make up for the sometimes annoying traffic sounds. There are several little villages to stop at along the, each of which is worth a visit. My favorites are Brunnen, Fluelen, and Altdorf.

The ride finished in Altdorf - from where Wilhelm Tell is said to have originated (shot an apple off his son's head using a crossbow). Altdorf is also a starting point for the beautiful climb to the Klausen pass.


View Larger Map

Technique! Technique!!

Old Postcard of Rigi Peak

A couple of days ago was my first real mountain bike ride of the year. I road up a road to the top of the nearby Rigi Mountain and then back down the backside of it along a single trail that starts at the Rigi Staffel. A very fine route, but it made me realized I need some work on technique.

In search of a way to improve my technique I started reading 'Trials' riding; these are the guys that hop up on boulders and other such things with their mountain bikes.

Above: Pro Mountain Biker Asa Salas demonstrates a trackstand

Here's what I've decided to do:

• take my Shimano clipless pedals off my bike for the next little while and replace them with platform pedals with loose toe straps. I am just not confident enough to get out of my clipless pedals at very slow speed on technical sections.
  
• set up my old mountain bike so that I can use it for trials practice


• practice the basic skills as described on this website http://www.trials-online.com/ . The basics are all about mastering balance.


• start with mastering the trackstand. A good description of how to learn it is provided at: http://www.teamestrogen.com/articles/asa_trackstand.asp
  

I feel like a bit of a whimp taking the clipless pedals off the mountain bike, but after a little research I decided that's where I am at in my skill level. I want to practice balance.

Mtn Village Illgau: second times a charm

Left: Lake of Luzern
Center: Rigi Mountain
Right: Lake of Lauerzer

Wednesday May 7th. This ride was 60km - about 2.5 hrs, from Walchwil to the village of Illgau and back. It is the second time doing it this year. The first time was real tough on me; my legs were so wasted I was barely moving near the top of the ride. This time I made it home with some juice still left in the legs.

The ride took me through the village of Schwyz, into the Muotathal (Muota Valley) , up a side road for several kms of steady 8 % climbing to the cliff top village of Illgau, and then exited the backside of the village to snake up a set of steeper little roads to the main Ibergeregg road ( webcam ). From there you can continue up to the pass, but I swung back down to the village of Schwyz and then home to Walchwil. There were three or four other cyclists on the Illgau road, but I was the only one on a roadbike.

Next time I do the ride I think I'll be going up and over the Ibergeregg pass.


View Larger Map

Over the Hill to Aegeri Lake We Go

Village of Oberaegeri

The village of Walchwil, where I live, is located at the bottom of a small mountain (1400m). If you go up the hill to the Zugerberg plateau and down the other side you end up at the Aegerisee (Aegeri Lake for us German language impaired). Total ride was 40km with one hard climb of 350m.

The hill up from Walchwil to the plateau is tough. There are two routes up, the hard climb and the nasty climb. Since I'm just starting out my bike season I only took the hard one.

On the east side of the little lake of Aegeri - which is about 10km long - there are a few small villages:

• Unteraegeri
• Mittenageri
• Oberaegeri
• Morgarten

Morgarten is a famous location because that's where the Austrian's had their asses kicked by the Swiss in 1315. Austria had several 'barons' in Switzerland around that time managing lands and abbies. The swiss peasants versus the Austria knights was a sort of liberation battle for the Swiss. For more information about this ass-kicking see the Battle of Morgarten.


View Larger Map

It's green here and starting to smell like cow

Village of Steinen

Yesterday's ride was 35+km to and around the little village of Steinen. It was short and had some sections of climbing where the grade was 15+%. I have been through the village many times, but have never explored any of the side roads before yesterday. The town itself has a couple of bakeries, a hotel, and places to eat.

I road up and down several of the little roads in the village exploring the streets and town. The major new find for me was a road up to town of Sattel which is moderately steep (10% grade), but very nice and travels alongside a stream that comes down from Sattel to the lake of Laurez.

The theme for today's ride was farmers. The Swiss countryside is beautifully green and sprinkled with farms. Several places along the route farmers had their tractors stopped on the road and were clearing brush and grass. The smell of 'natural fertilizer' was in the air.

For a bit of change here is a google earth image of the ride:

View Detailed Map

First Ride Round the Rigi

Village of Weggis (photo taken from Bürgenstock by Sacha Ban)

Today's ride was an easy 65km ride around the Rigi Mountain. Part of the ride is alongside the scenic 'Vierwaldstättersee', or for us English speakers 'The Lake of The Four Forest Cantons'.

The lake is one of the largest and prettiest lakes in Switzerland. If you don't feel like biking alongside it there are beautiful boat rides to be had up and down the 40km, mountain surrounded, lake.


View Larger Map

There are days I love living in Switzerland

Village of Illgau

There are days I love living in Switzerland. Yesterday was one of those days. It was my third ride of the year, and my first challenging ride. About 1000m of climbing, over 50kms, on a few roads I had never been on.

Good rides for me combine exploring. Yesterday I visited an alpine village - Illgau - that is about 30kms from here that I had never been to. That is part of what I love about Switzerland; the great opportunities for exploring by bike. Illgau is a little town at about 850m, on a cliffside up in a quiet valley.

Here's my ride (you'll see a big straight line where I turned off my GPS at one point - oops).

View Larger Map

Reflections on early season fitness

My wife and I did pretty much the same ride as I did earlier in the week; about 35 kms and 400 m climbing.

As we were biking down in the 'flatlands' I was looking up at the mountains we were biking last summer and reflecting on my present fitness level.

It is interesting to think the fitness level will be back up there again at some point this summer. I am wondering how long it'll be before I post a 70 km and 2000 m of climbing ride.

First Ride of 2008

This was my first bike ride this year. About 35 kms and 400m of climbing.


View Larger Map

Moving this blog to blog.swissbiking.com

This blog is moving to:

http://bikeswitzerland.blogspot.com/

I'm looking forward to a good summer of biking. I've set aside a good chunk of time for some bike touring around the alps. I expect one of my friends to be coming over from Canada to join me for at least one of the trips.

~Tony

Surfing the web for biking stories of Switzerland

It is raining today here Zugerland so I spent a while surfing the web and listening to podcasts.

Two of my favorite sports podcasts are (great for loading up my MP3 player):

• www.ironmantalk.com - two very friendly New Zealanders talk about 'all things Ironman'
• www.competitorradio.com - lots of interviews of famous triathletes and cyclists

My favorite site that I visited today was done by a guy who has been coming to the alps for bike touring since about 1959:

• Jobst Brant's bike tours http://www.trentobike.org/Countries/Europe/Tour_Reports/Tour_of_the_Alps/ - read about him riding some of the hardest passes with his wooden rimmed bike wheels

Created two prototype t-shirts

Gabrielle and I designed www.swissbiking.com t-shirts and had two prototypes made up. Here is a couple of pictures of Gabrielle wearing one of them.

front




back

Embedding biking maps on a wiki

View Larger Map
Yesterday was spent working on the new Swiss Biking Wiki and with my new GPS equipped bike computer.

I spent sometime learning how to embed various kinds of maps on the wiki like the one above. The results of some of my experiments can be seen on the GoogleMaps page on the bike switzerland wiki.

I got my first lessons for how to do it by looking at the Motion Based website. It is the website service I plan to use for uploading, and analyzing GPS data from my bike rides.

Garmin Edge 350 cycling computer arrived

Today my new cycling computer arrived. It is a beautiful looking gizmo, Garmin Edge350, that will record entire trips with GPS data, elevation, heart rate, speed and cadence. I've wanted a litte toy like this for while.

So far I am pleased with the out-of-box experience. I installed the software on my computer and plugged in the device. It started charging itself right away from the USB cable and my computer was able to connect to it. I played with the screens on the device a bit, set it for metric, and watched for it to find the GPS satellite. The device has a good quality feel to it. I would say everything went well and so far it has exceeded my expectations.

I will hook it up today and tomorrow I will take my bike out for a spin. So stay tuned for some blog entries backed with lots of data. The thing is small enough I will be taking it running with me too.

ciao
Tony

Lauching of a blog and wiki for Swiss Biking

This blog replaces the old blog at http://amowers.blogspot.com/ . Hopefully the name change is self-explanatory.

A companion wiki http://swissbiking.pbwiki.com/ has been created. The new site for the wikipedia of Swiss biking? Perhaps not, but a person can dream.

The exploration themes for this year, in order of priority, will be:

• Alpine Passes
• Major Rivers
• National Bike Routes

Along with the new blog and wiki we have some new equipment:

• road-bike: Rocky Mountain Solo50st
• GPS bike computer: Garmin Edge 350 with GPS, Heart Rate Monitor, and Cadence Sensor

We have a whole year of biking ahead of us. I'm curious to see how it turns out.

cheers
Tony