http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LM2jEe-Zp8
Checking in part way in – but before my navigational snafu
Life can get you down sometimes. No one is immune to feeling run down, worn out, or just a bit crap in general. Maybe illness has got the better of you, or perhaps work is all consuming and not allowing you to enjoy a happy work:life ratio. There are always solutions to this though – and some are more easily attained than others. A good nights sleep does wonders. Time with friends has an amazing restorative effect. Most people reading this will enjoy the change of pace that exercise can bring. The flip of the switch as post exercise endorphins flood in.
I found my restorative solution today. In truth, it is probably a combination of things. Firstly, I know that music can greatly enhance my mood. Having picked up a hire car, the joy of flicking from one radio station to another (a must in the Alps, as reception continually wanes), chasing the Euro Beat was a great mood enhancer after my Black Forest Ultra Marathon DNF shambles.
Spending a day riding around Klosters and Davos was good. But the routes just never really came together. I’m a sucker for a long loop. Out and backs do my head in a bit. Every metre of agony is just to turn around and freewheel. You don’t cover new ground. At best, at least you can find something that you may have dropped earlier. So a long climb up to a pass that realistically had too much snow was then reversed. I’d pushed and post holed, but the altimetre said I would have another 300m of vertical doing the same. No thanks. Climbing above Klosters was not too different. I came up against too much rock, those trails would be hike-a-bike misery.
And so I drove to Scuol, over the Fluela Pass. This alone, in a turbo hire car, was a good release.
Scuol is something else though. I think we all have places where we find a sense of calm, somewhere we feel at ease. A place that you can rebuild and rejuvenate. Scuol works for me, as do places like Schlinks Pass, The Surrey Hills, parts of Sydney Harbour, Jerusalem Bay… but Scuol offers the best big mountain Mountain Bike opportunities.
After heavy caffeination, I headed up towards S-Charl, and the Pass de Costainas. To me, this is a classic climb for the area. You start on roads that aren’t too steep, about 12% or so through open pine forest. Then you fly along dirt roads next to a torrent of a river, which changes it’s appearance annually with heavy rock fall. Avoiding the Val Minger (well you would, wouldn’t you). S-Charl is located up here, and you’re now on farm trails. Cows are everywhere, the stream is flowing, and the valley opens up and starts to plateau again. You’re pretty close to the treeline. Through one more farm, you smash through the last bit of forested singletrack and blast into the open, with just another kilometre of open meadow singletrack to the top. 22Km of climbing, for about 1200m gain. Nothing ugly, just quality.
The plan was to bomb to Fuldera, and climb to the Val Mora. Done, easy (as far as another 800m of climbing goes anyway). But here, I wanted to hook right, climb, and end up at the Passo Gallo, then descend to the Fuorcla del Gal. Somewhere over the top my mental Googlemap broke down and I ended up euro-bombing to Buffalora. Whoops. Faced with either a road climb or road descent, I took the obvious option. This is square in the Svizzera National Park. No riding the singletrack. What adds to the pain of this is how visible a lot of it is from the road. But I have a rule of not poaching trails when travelling. It’s rude, and just stuffs things up for locals.
The road wore on, and I had the pre-hunger flat shakes pretty badly. A Backerei in Zernez was my saviour, and now I was back on the National Park Bike Marathon route. No big climbs, just rolling terrain down the valley back to Scuol. And what a route. You go through plenty of typische towns: painted buildings, cobbled roads, old forts and towers… then back onto some singletrack or a short berg. The last descent, chopping through a Trotti bike tour, was golden.
And so it’s good to ride a mountain bike again. I wasn’t sure I could actually ride one very long or far after the past few weeks. But 108km has never felt so good.