A few weeks ago, I completed a bikepacking route in Switzerland: The Hope 1000. It’s an interesting country to visit and I believe my method of travel provided a unique perspective. I’m an American who has occasionally traveled to Europe (Italy, UK, France) in the past and generally enjoys it.
Rural Switzerland: Lawn Mowers who Don’t Eat Cows
The route primarily traverses the foothills of the Alps through smaller towns. The first thing to strike me was how neat and precise forest management is in comparison to the US. Treelines are as crisp as a paper fold, and caches of firewood exist everywhere. I counted 4 pieces of litter in 14 days across these trails. Most of the forest is owned and managed by the federal government. In so much of the flatter countryside, there are roads everywhere. By this I mean there seem to be roads between every field and micro-town, allowing walkers and cyclists a level of route granularity that’s bafflingly inefficient.
After a certain level of elevation, my close-at-hand scenery became exclusively Dairy farms. Switzerland has a complex direct-payment subsidy program that rewards these tiny outfits with around 75% of their income (based on elevation, acreage, land management, and eco practices). It’s a hugely influential system, naturally resented by leftist city dwellers. The machinery and effort these farmers put in, though, to maintain these landscapes is significant. I have seen people mowing meadows at grades and elevations you simply wouldn’t believe unless you see them for yourself. Cows essentially won’t eat grasses of a certain age/toughness, and the alpine herbs that make some of their diet unique require all of this effort.
Unfortunately for me, this meant that I had significant dietary challenges for much of the route. Beef is my favorite protein – the Eastern Swiss essentially don’t eat it because their income is tied to the cows staying alive. There’s no side dish at any restaurant that’s not a potato. The main dish is pork schnitzel. Maybe chicken nuggets if you’re lucky? Even the grocery stores are the size of a small American apartment and almost exclusively stock pork and dairy as calorie sources. I expected great things from the Swiss potato chip company given their reverence for the tuber, and can only tell you that it was truly amazing how unpalatable almost every single one of their products were.
Most of us know first or secondhand that summer in Europe is mostly all of them being on vacation all the time. The rural Swiss are at another level. Restaurant? Closed. Hotel? Closed. A restaurant-hotel marked as open Google Maps? Definitely closed. The Swiss expect you to call and see if they’re there, I guess, but that wasn’t realistic for my mode of travel.
There are massive advantages to Switzerland as a location here though, and why I selected it for the trip. Clean running water is unbelievably ubiquitous. In the dead of summer, a 2-bottle margin was sufficient for almost every distance. The train travel app and infra systems are mostly great.
Some of the highlights of my trip were provided by an obscure social network ( warmshowers.org ) populated by cycling tourers. These are people who intimately understand what you’re going through and know you’ll want a shower first, then probably food, and then probably laundry. The hosts that allowed me to stay with them were excellent: A super-leftist Unix/Network admin whose eclectically decorated house full of punk rubber ducks and a soviet-era state-produced folding cycle produced the best cup of coffee I had in Switzerland. A kind family of 4 in a suburb of Lucerne, who’d (pre-kids) spent almost two years traveling the world by bicycle and (with kids) were planning to withdraw them from school to spend a year pedaling to Morocco. They fed me curry, for which I was supremely grateful, given my diet for the rest of the trip.
My greatest single regret was underestimating my rate of travel when organizing Warmshowers hosts. It meant that 2/4 I had organized had planned for me to arrive at a later date, and so were unable to host. My focus on the physical achievement aspect of the journey meant I missed out on more chances of personal connection that won’t get back.
Bikepacking
It’s exactly what it sounds like. I’m a huge enthusiast of this method of travel stateside. It combines the best aspects of hiking, camping, and cycling together. My excursions into the deep, isolated portions of America with friends where we can carry comforts like beer and folding chairs to our sites for the night are some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
But as a solo, multi-week trek in a foreign country, I think it has some serious drawbacks. Bikepacking has a bit of a competitive and race-driven spirit. Routes have suggested times and metrics. They’re meant to be challenging distances between two points, not the most direct. When you’re exerting yourself at this level and then camping with minimal changes of clothes, you aren’t fit to sit down inside near people (much less at an enjoyable tourism activity like a wine tasting). The line between bikepacking and homelessness isn’t very clear – perhaps it’s just the quality of machine you’re riding or the power level behind a credit card.
My ad-hoc meetings with Swiss people were excellent across the board. They’re of course naturally reserved in comparison to Americans, but I expected that. As a general cyclist, you’re background noise. But I was noticed and engaged with at a few distinct points where my heavy mountain bike was clearly not where it “should” be.
- A beautiful, delicate Roadie on the famous climb to Grindewald, who effortlessly passed me on the way up. I expressed jealousy of her Huge Cassette (entendre not intended) and she waited to congratulate me and briefly chat when I arrived.
- A mechanical engineer, Hans, who was exceedingly proud of his work for the likes of Nestle’s Nespresso division and Lego. He opened our conversation on the hand-over-hand climbing trail with a very polite “you’re a fucking idiot” => “It is quite unusual to see a bicycle here”. We spoke of raising children without dependence on television and how to handle retirement.
- A shirtless backpacker cresting a summit behind me after a gut-wrenching climb right after waking up was clearly very hardcore. I had downed a pounder beer at 9:30 AM for calories and hydration (swiss farmers often leave fridges/cabinets/cold-water receptacles full of things to purchase via the honor system with cash/twint) and he was just walking with simply a paper map and a small pack on a shorter but similarly challenging route. There’s always a bigger man on the mountain. Right after this we both chucked down the same ridiculously technical footpath, but me with an empty-stomach buzz.
I don’t think I represented the level of American extroversion and chattiness people expected. This was partially by design because I find our volume level internationally to be profoundly irritating, but also because I felt like shit.
The Physical Challenge.
I took a total of 14 days to complete the route, with 12 being “par”. Per day, I averaged:
- 72 kilometers
- 2050 meters of elevation gain
- 5,000 calories of energy expenditure
A marathon runner will generally use around 2,600 calories forf a race. Given, they do it only over 5 hours ; ) whereas my progress was stretched across 7 hours of dedicated pedaling.
Going up was as brutal as you would expect. With camping being the theme of the day, I became acutely aware of the amount of energy I had in my Garmin, cell phone, and everything else. The back 3/4 of the trip was “raw dogged” sans music to save battery after I ran dry early on, and I took fewer pictures to save even more. Historically I’ve pooh-poohed the use of dynamos for bike touring, but I’ll be integrating one into whatever my next build is. I was hoping for deep introspection, inspiration, and contemplation. Instead, my mind looped around worthless songs and sentences over and over again, a black hole of blankness only interrupted by decision making to manage water and calories.
Downhill was surprisingly intense too. I pushed my bogged-down hardtail to its limits down hiking trails with stone steps. Managing traction across dew-soaked meadows, loose gravel, concrete, and the aforementioned cow shit was a challenge. Some of the fast carving down alpine roads were once-in-a-lifetime experiences. My brand-new tires are probably 75% consumed, and I burnt out a set of pads and my rear rotors a third of the way through the trip – my only major mechanical issue that required a scrambled train ride to a metro with a bike shop that would actually be open.
I had a fairly even split of luck over the two weeks. The first 3 days were cursed by rain. In combination with an unceasing supply of moist cow shit, my drivetrain and hygiene suffered. The final 2 days were affected by an intense GI infection which is putting it very politely. It persisted for another 2 days of travel home via train and plane.
I ended up losing around 15 pounds. When I reached the endpoint Freddy Mercury statue in Montreaux, I took a picture before walking to the corner of a park and breaking down discreetly for a few moments. I’ve never experienced so much intense and near-continuous suffering for this long. I’m still processing it, days later. I don’t think I’ll do something at this level again.
I finally took a real bath in Lake Geneva for the first time in a week, shivering in the cool water as hundreds of tourists passed by and the sun began to set. It felt good.
For those interested in the scenery, a selection of images. Not a photographer, they don’t do it justice, etc. etc.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Sounds like an awesome trip. Bikepacking has always fascinated me, but I've never been brave enough to embark on a "real" expedition like this one.
I'm a bit surprised that power was such an issue. What kind of power bank did you use? For (American style) backpacking using a power bank to charge devices, then charging that when you have a stop with wall power, is a somewhat common strategy. At 30W even a 15 minute charge while using the bathroom at random chalet or ski-lift should make an appreciable difference. A reasonably compact travel charger should be able to do 60W now, though you might be limited in light weight banks that can handle that kind of power.
I know that drinking directly from alpine melt is very common, but I always used a Sawyer Mini when drinking from streams in Switzerland. I once drank from a stream thinking we were well above cow level, ran into a Chamois 100 meters up stream. I assume they can pick up E. coli or giardia from all the cows. Aquamira might be lighter weight and more compact if you are space limited. For serious GI problems I recommend bring Pepto Bismol when traveling in continental Europe. It's surprisingly hard to get in parts of the continent. Not medical advice, but, it seems more effective when combined with imodium (which is available) than either alone. Again, combine at your own risk, the directions probably tell you not to do that. IMO though, better than having a blowout on the plane.
I guess you were bathing in a touristy part of Montreaux? There used to be a beach oh the other side of Lac Léman in Versoix that I quite liked. It had a roped off swim area and a floating platform. So it's not that weird to swim in the lake, just location dependent.
I was surprised about power being an issue and it was a bit of a self inflicted wound. I had a 10k mAh bank which is a lot. My phone's battery is old, and I came away deeply unimpressed with the Edge 840s battery life. I did use Ebike charging ports at restaurants sometimes. The euro concept of lunch was damaging to pace and time though. The German side was a 1.5 hour ordeal, the French side more.
I drank exclusively from faucets and filtered from streams only once. I think my infection could have come from a couple of different places. I normally have a strong stomach, I must have made a dumb mistake.
And yeah, I was right near what felt like the main strip. No beach but concrete steps into the water. Convenient to change into my unused bathing suit id carried with me.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link