A fantastic ride surrounded by snow covered Alps for the entire route.
Starting near the beautiful perched village of Gruyère, this great loop climbs into the German speaking part of Switzerland on a nice, medium difficulty climb. Still plenty of snow at the top of Jaunpass, but it was HOT today – I wore shorts and never needed the “emergency” leggings in the back-pack.
Jaunpass was scheduled in the 2009 Tour de Romandie (late April) but the stage was shortened due to snow on the pass. I was half way there with a balaclava and mountain bike and luckily heard the cancellation on the radio in a gas station – or I would have been alone, freezing at the top.
After descending Jaunpass, the route returns to the French part of Switzerland via the easy-ish Saanenmoserpass. After this it’s generally downhill.
The furious headwind slowed me down – and it occurred to me that the reason I felt so good on Jaunpass ….. was a strong tailwind.
This route is beautiful throughout – mountains everywhere. And taking the occasional long-cut to avoid main roads – by following the signed Swiss national cycling routes – helps minimize traffic.
My 5th metric century of the year – my GPS said 99.3 kms at the end – so I rode around in circles for a few minutes 😉 .
Eric and I did a similar loop in the opposite direction last year. Details here.
8 Comments
grrr the GPS says 99.2kms on the map above …. I SWEAR it said 100.1kms before I dared dismount
100+ kms it is! Anyone making a fuss about it should go ride the loop themselves first before being a pita.
The 3 red kms towards Jaunpass make up for the “Brazil colored” start. I’m happy we went the other way last year.
Nice ride. I did this route (or very similar) last summer. The landscape is brilliant, and the climbs are not that tough. Good pain for view ratios.
Thomas, that is very well and accurately put:
“good (low) pain for view ratio”
Cheers Eric. 100 it is. Ha, I like the Brazilian reference. Yep, with a tailwind I did well early on. I did take a great early detour route (National Cycling route 9) up past Charmey, which was superb (car-free) – and a bit nastier than the published profile. But I avoided some known, more scenic, steeper detours approaching the end as I didn’t eat/drink enough (minor bonk). But fun.
Nice ride 🙂
I remember being advised by fellow cyclo tourers in late May 2008 to avoid the Juanpass because of adverse conditions/snow!
Great picture of a wood pile too 😉
Bravo pour les (presque) 2000m de dénivelé !
(et le tas de bois ;-))
como simepre los lugares espectaculares
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