Oberalppass

June 27 Disentis (Oberalppass)Realp

Today is a big day as we have Oberalppass ahead. It is higher than our last pass, but we are hoping that we have gained enough elevation this time that it will not feel as tough. We started out about 11:00 today and set out on the road. One big lesson we have had to learn today is that no grocery stores and hardly any restaurants are open on Sundays. Silly us, we stocked up on food yesterday, but today we are going to have to eat out every meal. This wouldn’t be too bad except we’re in the pricey mountain towns of Switzerland. Our first meal was a Swiss hamburger (with a great bun, corn, and coleslaw looking stuff-it was amazing!) and chicken nuggets. When we stuffed down some food we were ready to go. We only had about 11k to ride until the climbing began. The riding seemed to fly by and in no time we were at the bottom of the pass staring up at the switchbacks. I was a little nervous because of the last pass, but we figured with 9k to go, the pass couldn’t be too bad. We started climbing and found ourselves in good company with other cyclists. When we made it to the top, we definitely stopped to take a picture of the sign. It turns out that the top of Oberalppass is the source of the Rhine River. Who knew? There were several restaurants and a tourist office at the top. We stopped in at the tourist office to look at some maps and then headed down the cold descent into a town called Andermatt. This meant that it was lunch time, and we stopped at a restaurant to split a meal of a ham and cheese sandwich and an absolutely delicious butter herb pork thing. After that, we headed to Realp as a base camp for our next two passes. Our campsite was right next to the river so we took full advantage of the ice bath recovery properties. Dinner time was filled with “snacks” from a nearby town where we also found out that they didn’t even have a grocery store. Breakfast tomorrow is not looking so promising.
~40k
Mo