2760m Holy shit. I'd be lying if I said it was fun. 48 switchbacks up on the east side and 38 down. Not only was it tight, narrow and steep, but also packed. Tons of bicyclists, many times 2 wide, just to make sure to be a nuisance, but also tons of motorcycles and the occasional Winnebago (really, you have to go up there in a frigging camper?). Dangerous in the sense that it's easy to drop the bike on the inside turn (co habitant at the hotel here did just that, and his wife bent/broke her shoulder), but only true lunatics would be going fast enough to actually risk flying off (there were one or two). That's going up. The west side is much more open and you can get up a good head of steam. I chose cruising mode on the way down. But it's cool, very cool. You're way up there, it's barren, it's out there, of course there's still snow at the end of June. Had to be done.
Another funky footnote is that in Prad am Stilfserjoch, a little town on the way to the pass is a very off the wall artist at the side of the road, selling, hmm, kind of shaman stones and talking your ear off if you give him a half a chance. He goes by the prosaic name of "He who speaks with the whispering wind", aka. Lorenz Kunter.
Today was gorgeous. I started out from Imst, Austria running up the Oetztal and over the Timmelsjoch. At 2509m the other high pass in the eastern Alps. Timmelsjoch is nice. Wide open bends, good road surface, awesome views. Very popular with crowds of fast two and four wheelers. Tons of bikes, of course, but also large contingents of Porsches (from 356 to 991), Lotuses, older sports cars, and the the occasional tourist in a Ford holding everyone up. That whole thing about riding the passes in solitary bliss is seriously history. This pass is only open four months a year. For some reason they get ridiculous amounts of snow. When they started clearing this year on April 30th, they had 10m! of snow on the road surface. Nuts. There was still plenty left now, but having hit the Dolomites in mid May, I wasn't as impressed as some other visitors.
I wound up staying in northern Lombardy - in Sondalo. Tomorrows weather is dicy and I didn't want to be in the mountains with lousy weather, so I went south. Didn't make it that far, but I'm under 1000m and I wanted to stop in time to watch Germany beat the US in soccer. :) Turns out the Italians lost all interest, but I did find a cafe with a big screen and beer so I got to watch. Absolutely no clue where I'm going tomorrow. Once again, nice view out the hotel window.
Yesterday was kind of weird. Wasn't completely into hitting the road. Weather forecast looked crappy, I had just gotten back from Finland/Berlin, no time to chill. Traffic on the Autobahn kind of sucked and then the weather turned to shit halfway down the A7. Cold rain that feels like hail at 90 mph is just a real downer. Luckily the Fernpass wasn't totally soaked, even so it wasn't nearly as welcoming as the first time around. Things turned around in Imst though, where I did find my happy place and got into eing in a new place yet again. The rain had stopped and it actually was was fairly warm. Imst is an alpine tourist town, but during the week it's (still) nice and empty. My hotelier told me that they were totally booked over the weekend, but as far as I could tell, Tue night there were maybe 10 people in the (big) hotel. I totally fell in love with the Rosengarten Gorge and if the weather forecast had been better, I likely would have stayed for the morning and hiked it. Maybe on the way back.
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