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Johann
to travel
Swiss Alps
Swiss Alps
The Gotthard
Shattered, pierced, splinted ?? or when traffic turns to fate and a mountain under its wheels. Probably the most famous pass in the Alps pays a high price for the shortest route south.
Annette Johann
09/30/2005
Wisps of fog waft over Lake Uri, a light wind gently loosens the mountain peaks in the south from the clouds. Uri Rotstock, Glitschen, Chulm, the first almost three-thousand-meter peaks in the Uri Alps. Central Switzerland is here, this is where Tell shot the apple, and I pull the collar a little closer – this is where the route to the Gotthard, the heart of Switzerland, begins.
The Aprilia Tuono’s ignition key engages in the lock, its electronics respond with a fine hum, putting the pointers and lamps together with the “EFI” injection code ready for use. Translated roughly: Let me go and take me with you to this mountain! Modern, synthetic V2 tones fill the cool morning air, and we roll off to this 3000 meter high stone barrier between northern and southern Europe.
A granite massif that people have wrestled with for thousands of years. Around transitions, trusses or tunnels. Because here is the shortest route over the main Alpine ridge, which the migratory birds choose themselves. The fate of a mountain and a region that supports the lifeblood between north and south. Nowhere are the Alps crossed more often than on the Gotthard. The Romans were probably already on this route.
It’s still relaxed along Lake Uri, the Tuono grumbling in the speed cellar. I crouch behind the wide Streetfighter handlebars and the digital panel, coolers screwed raw on the open, jagged flanks below. Aprilia calls this a hardcore mechanical look. Extremely martial and therefore resembling the mountain, which is becoming increasingly rougher and more rugged and does not even care about beauty.
Johann
The top of the pass in autumn.
Although, strictly speaking, it is still pretty in the valley. Fluelen, the last town on the lake and the first on the pass. Blossoming, alive – just like the name. The old train station forms the central element between the promenade and the town center. The valley station of the Gotthardbahn, so to speak. Here is the start. What Fluelen still offers in a romantic promenade ambience shows a few kilometers further in its actual dimension. Erstfeld, a noisy marshalling yard, mighty and wide like a Recklinghausen ore loading station.
From 1872 to 1882, Swiss miners worked on the first major railway tunnel project in the Alps, which opened the granite up near Goschenen. The risk of piercing an almost 3000 meter high rock of extremely questionable density and stability around 1000 meters below its summit 17 kilometers is considered one of the most daring achievements of the 19th century. The geological expertises fill an entire wall in the Gotthard Museum. The Geneva builder Louis Favre was breaking new ground, the dangers hardly assessable, the time pressure immense. Some of the miners go on strike, the working conditions are inhuman and safety precautions are almost non-existent. 177 miners die in the project. Favre himself collapses dead a few months before the breakthrough and the completion of his work of the century in the tunnel. The first train rolls in 1882. In the first year, she carried over a million people through the mountain.
In contrast, the development of what is currently the most radical two-cylinder engine was probably a minor event. Which the Aprilia now lets trumpet so unabashedly that it is almost indecent. A child from the Southern Alps who, next to the roaring Reuss, probably gets a sense of home. Before the railroad, there was only this way. The mule track, on the rudiments of which the road behind Amsteg climbs up the mountain. People have struggled with it for around 800 years, paving paths and roughly paved paths, developing it from a footpath to a cart path and finally to a street. From 1937 even with plaster.
Info
At 2091 meters, neither record-breaking nor mega-demanding in terms of driving technique, the St. Gotthard is still definitely worth a visit. Because almost nowhere does one get closer to alpine history than on the cobblestones of the old tremola.
Paths and travel time
In addition to the railroad and mule track, the Gotthard offers three different ways to conquer the main Alpine ridge. The easiest and year-round option is the 17-kilometer-long motorway tunnel between Goschenen and Airolo (motorway vignette required). The national road N 2, which works its way up from the Axenstrabe on Lake Lucerne to the mountain and finally crosses the pass in great, wide hairpin bends and bridges, is more exciting. The paved old Tremola street, which can be used from time to time in addition to the N 2, presents pure classic. Branching off in the north shortly before the top of the pass, it offers a daring steep descent to the south by means of 24 hairpin bends to Airolo. Close to the Tremola, the historic mule track, which is partly still paved with Roman paving, crosses the pass. Today marked as a hiking trail and probably one of the oldest alpine traverses ever (detailed maps available in Andermatt and the hospice). The passport and hospice are open from the beginning of May to the end of October. With the first snow the operation is stopped and the N 2 only cleared as far as Hospental or Airolo.
Stay
Almost without exception all places on the pass offer overnight accommodation. Andermatt multiple times. For example the hotel “Zum Sternen”, overnight stay in a double room with breakfast from 60 francs per person, phone 0041 / (0) 41/8871130. With a shower on the floor and basic equipment, but with an alpine feel of the century, you spend the night in the old Gotthard hospice on the pass summit. Overnight stay in a double room with breakfast from 55 francs (group accommodation possible). Telephone 0041 / (0) 91/8691235.
Worth seeing
You should definitely plan a break at the top of the pass, where the old hospice complexes not only house hotels and restaurants but also two museums. The Gotthard National Museum vividly documents the history of Switzerland, the pass and the dramas of the tunnel projects, while the fortress museum, deep in the bunkers of the hollowed-out Gotthard massif, reveals a glimpse into the defensive scenario of the last centuries. The legendary Devil’s Bridge, which crosses the Schollenen Gorge just below the N 2 just before Andermatt, is not immediately apparent. A few meters above, it crosses the first tunnel in Alpine history with an inconspicuous 60-meter rock cutout: the Urner Loch. On the other hand, »La Claustra«, an underground seminar hotel integrated in the Gotthard caves and former fortifications, is deliberately hidden. Designed by the artist and philosopher Jean Odermatt – as the spiritual center of the mountain. More at www.claustra.ch.
literature
Top literature can be found in the Gotthard Museum: the museum publication “Am Hohenweg der Geschichte” deals with the past in detail, while the excellent illustrated book “Gotthard – The Obstacle Connects”, published in 2003 by Werdverlag, is devoted to the current situation and recent history. ISBN 3-85932-451-9.
information
Andermatt Tourist Office, Gotthardstrasse 2, phone 0041 / (0) 41/8871454, www.andermatt.ch.
Swiss Alps (2)
Johann
Apt inscription: “The old way to the new time”.
In the increasingly narrower and steeper valley, the individual traverses that arose from the former path are moving closer and closer together, the traffic arteries are winding and pumping rail and road vehicles to the pass. Railways, autobahns and national roads that are interwoven into a unique transport concept by means of bridges, stilts and galleries. Balancing a house on a cliff near Inschi, roaring 50 meters below like Skylla and Charybdis along the iron and highway. Above in front of the garden gate the N 2. Living where others are racing. The living conditions in the living room are similar to those on runway seven at Rhein-Main-Airport, the murmur of the Reuss has long been drowned out.
A train disappears in the granite near Wassen, but emerges a little later a little higher in the mountain. The train can only cope with the hard incline using several spiral tunnels. Until she dives into the mountain a few kilometers further in Goschenen in an elegant pair run with the Autobahn. The tunnel begins.
Large traffic lights announce the north portal on the A 2. Its two-lane tube was only blown free around a hundred years after the railway line, 1970 to 1980. The entrance has been strictly monitored since the truck accident on October 24, 2001, when two burning tire and textile trucks caused an inferno. Eleven people were killed in the accident and half of the transit through the Alps came to a standstill. Together with the tunnel disaster on Mont Blanc in 1999, the vulnerability of even the most modern alpine traverses became painfully clear. Nevertheless, digging continues. The Gotthard Base Tunnel is already under construction deep down at the foot of the mountain, in which the express trains no longer even have to slow down when they sweep from Zurich to Milan. Switzerland has planned eight billion francs for this. It should be ready in 2014. The next dimension.
Alp Transit Gotthard AG
The future: work on the Gotthard base tunnel.
Meanwhile, with the Aprilia, I stay on the N 2, which from Goschenen works its way up to the pass together with a cogwheel train. The noise has subsided, the rocks are steeper, the hairpin bends and avalanche galleries more adventurous. A small gravel road branches off, the Tuono gets its first off-road kick. Here was the eye of the needle. The critical point of the first centuries. The Schollenen Gorge. Insurmountable. We roll carefully along the rock face, then the path turns abruptly to the right and leads to a picturesque stone arch: the Devil’s Bridge. A couple of brave people from Uri walled it – or its predecessor – over the gorge 800 years ago, clearing the way to the pass.
Stop! Not quite yet. A pesky ledge caused headaches for another 500 years. A windy suspension bridge helped until 1707. Only when it had devoured half the forest of the Ursental did a builder from Ticino dared the hitherto unthinkable and bored his way through the granite 60 meters. The very first tunnel project in the Alps, the “Urner Loch”. Today an inconspicuous little tunnel, the name almost disrespectfully banal in typical Swiss pragmatism – but here they invented it, the Swiss, these world champions in the eternal battle with the mountain.
The motorcycle
Modern naked bikes, which combine an upright seating position with the chassis and performance data of thoroughbred sports motorcycles, storm the hit lists of the registration statistics. Ingenious as a joker in everyday life – but suitable for traveling? In the case of the Aprilia RSV 1000 Tuono, the judgment is not easy, as the legacy of its radical sports mother RSV mille is always present on the passes tour. The stiff chassis offers crystal-clear feedback, but acknowledges coarser road sections with unabashed hindquarters. In bumpy, slow corners, the 190 rear tire also costs a few points of sovereignty, as it takes every suggestion to stand up. Fluid serpentine turns demand a committed pilot who braces the handlebars and pegs. If everything goes smoothly in terms of road construction and the Tuono 70, 80 things, on the other hand, it shows itself to be a talented movement.
The 125-PS-V2, which is surprisingly sluggish in the lower speed range for a twin, plops into a hole at 5000 rpm, but then storms towards the top of the performance in an almost martial manner, behaves ambiguously. Not necessarily ideal on narrow pass roads, but off the beaten track with a high level of adventure. There is little to complain about with a full tank of 215 kilos and ergonomics: the relaxed seating position behind the wide handlebars ensures easy handling and a perfect overview in turns, the firm upholstery supports the good feeling for the motorcycle, but is just as uncomfortable on long stages as the sporty high-mounted ones Footrests. The luggage transport deserves unreserved praise. Packing rolls and softbags can also be attached to the clearly cut rear using luggage hooks without a carrier. No longer a matter of course with modern designer bodies and high-lying exhaust systems.
The bottom line is a polarizing motorcycle that even divided the two-man production team: Photo driver Monika Schulz consistently rejected it as a touring motorcycle, while author and photographer Annette Johann enjoyed every meter of it.
The new tunnel
The mountain does not come to rest. Despite two existing tubes for the railway and the motorway, the third project is being built, the Gotthard Base Tunnel. Swiss experts had been pondering this almost galactic project since 1962 – a tunnel around 2000 meters below the summit that could bring vehicles from Zurich to Italy almost at ground level. The reason: the steadily increasing volume of traffic made more and more sustainable measures in Alpine transit appear necessary. 30 years later the time had come. Parliament passed the new Alpentraversale NEAT in 1992, and the first drill started in 1999. For a 57.7-kilometer-long, twin-tube railway tunnel that is to transport passenger trains with speeds of up to 250 km / h and freight trains weighing 4,000 tons. 200 to 250 daily. In combination with two other tunnels, the journey time from Zurich to Milan will be reduced by one hour from the current 3.40 hours and the transport capacity of Swiss Alpine transit will even be doubled. Completion 2014, planned costs eight billion Swiss francs – for the longest tunnel in the world. Huge drill heads mill their way from Erstfeld to Faido. A huge geological undertaking at a depth of two kilometers. Different rock densities, the threat of firedamp and heat of up to 45 degrees always create new costs and problems.
A mega project for a small country with 7.4 million inhabitants, but who are clearly behind it. After a violent protest initiative from the direction of the car lobby, “Avanti”, which, in addition to strengthening the motorway network, also called for the construction of a motor vehicle tube, the Swiss were called to a referendum again in 2003. Clear result: 68 percent spoke out in favor of railways and against cars in the base tunnel. Not a single canton jumped off the rack. The confederates are united by the justified fear of getting caught in the transit bikes.
The tour tip
At the time of going to press it was unfortunately not yet clear how many snow-free motorcycle days in autumn in the Alps would be. In the positive case, a long weekend in central Switzerland would be our tip. Because around the historic St. Gotthard, a Bermuda quadrangle attracts top-class passes that Alpine fans can devour for days. The spectacular Furka-Grimsel-Susten circuit branches off directly in Andermatt. Three completely different, but all of them great high mountain roads between 2165 and 2431 meters of altitude are combined in a 150 kilometer long, almost unearthly circuit. Tip: At the Grimsel Pass, take the traffic light-regulated, six-kilometer cul-de-sac to Oberaarstausee with you. The view of the Oberaar Glacier is stunning. Coffee break or overnight stay is possible in the nice Grimsel Hotel on the top of the pass. If you have more time and are traveling from Munich, South Tyrol or Austria, you can still include the Engadine. Since the Stelvio Pass (2767 m), which is only free of snow for a few summer months, is probably already closed, the Ofen Pass (2149 m) offers an alternative for crossing to the west. In the Engadin, three passes are open for the further journey: Fluela (2383 m, open all year round), Albula (2313 m) and Julier (2288 m). Our favorite is the Albula, the smallest and most distinctive of the trio. It offers the most daring route, exciting views plus a rustic summit hut. There are quarters on the ascent and descent of the pass as well as in the valleys to the north and south of it. From here the Gotthard can be conquered either from the north or the south. The north route leads west of Chur through the Vorderrhein gorge and over the Oberalppass (2044 m) to Andermatt, while the south route follows the Hinterrhein to San Bernardino (2065 m), where it can be reached either by tunnel or pass road (with hospice) into Ticino and goes to the Gotthard junction near Bellinzona. If the passports are still free, you can start. Information from the automobile clubs or at www.donnerwettter.de
Have fun!
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