in·CH+

Riding big wheels in Switzerland Frankly, because bigger is better

I thought about heading to the Lac de Joux on Sunday, but changed my mind knowing that I’d be spending two and a half hours in the car just to visit a frozen lake. It quite often happens like that. There are many cool places to ride in Switzerland, but as soon as I’m looking at the prospect of driving several hours, more often than not I forget about the whole idea and just hop on a local loop. Sunday was no different. After freezing to my bones Saturday, I decided to take a late start in the early afternoon Sunday. On Saturday I passed by the Rondchâtel Climb and noticed that it had been frequently used leaving a snow-covered, rideable fire road. This time, I arrived on my Niner and turned into that climb. The trail was good until the Sesselin du Haut from where I had to follow the tracks of two snowshoers. Quickly, I realized that hiking through the deep snow was easier than to step into the semi-hard tracks left by the two folks who had passed through the area before me. I was hoping to get back onto a rideable trail at Les Coperies, but I didn’t get that luck and now faced an even longer stretch through deep snow to reach La Ragie. It was quite an effort that cost a lot of time. My right shoulder thanked me for having a light singlespeed, though. The small farm of La Ragie is inhabited and the trail to reach it had been cleaned. I was back on the bike and now took the only rideable way out to Les Près d’Orvin. My shoulder thanked me one more time. I jumped into the Spaghetti Trail and carved down the mountain. Ah, now that’s how snow’s supposed to be! A last, short effort up to Evilard and another descent which included a tiny, secret trail took me back into town and straight to a hot cappuccino.

Distance:30.5 km (19.0 miles)
Elevation:1’199 m (3’934 feet)
Time:03:09:40
Speed (avg/max):9.6/48.2 kph (6.0/30.0 mph)
★

Today’s ride was another far below zero cyclocross ride. While it’s lovely to climb at those temperatures they come to haunt you on the descent. For one it gets really uncomfortable to brake over an extended period of time wearing thick gloves and the clothes that have been keeping you warm ultimately capitulate to the cold. Today’s ride was fun going up, even while hiking a long stretch of snowmobile tracks, but the descent against the biting bise almost left me permanently deep-frozen to the bike. I’ll keep today’s post short, I’m still in the process of defrosting.

Distance:37.4km (23.2 miles)
Elevation:1’156m (3’793 feet)
Time:02:46:26
Speed (avg/max):13.5/59.3 kph (8.4/36.8 mph)
★

While January started with some awesome weekends to ride, the second half of January was lousy and offered not a single pleasant day. My bikes were screaming for some dearly needed maintenance and were happy to stay home. February arrived and with it a blast of Siberian air that dropped the mercury below minus ten and more degrees. I got up with the sunrise and looked at a blue sky while zipping my morning cappuccino. Sun? Sun means bike time. The thermometer stood at minus thirteen degrees when I got dressed to head out. 2 pairs of socks, Defeet knickers, thick winter tights by Sugoi and on top of that a regular bib. The upper body got an undershirt, a thick long sleeve running jersey and my white Specialized jacket. The hands were protected with full-finger summer gloves and a thick pair of winter gloves. The head got a thin cap to cover my ears and the helmet. That kept me comfortably warm for the majority of the ride. Only when I turned east facing the wind and dropping downhill, my toes started to feel the freezing temperatures.

I crossed two other bikers today. As I was hiking my way up a narrow trail, they were coming down. They both opted for full-face helmets, probably to stay warm and cozy. What amazed me though, was how hard a time these guys had to keep a straight line. Their full-suspension 26ers were all over the trail, their front wheels constantly sliding left to right and back. My Niner, with 3 inches more wheel, rolls with a lot more stability in such conditions. Today’s snow really asked for a fat tire bike with gears though, not an Air 9 Carbon with a 34x19 transmission. Hence once I was up, I opted to take a shortcut to reach the Hohmatt and then tried my luck to find some good trails back into town. Funny thing about the descent - the steeper it got the more controllable it got. In the end, I was out for close to two hours, covered 22 kilometers and climbed 720 meters. A short day on the bike, but a good one.

★

After Friday’s reconaissance mission to the Métairie du Milieu de Bienne with the cyclocrosser, I knew that we had some very favorable snow conditions to conquer the Chasseral. Saturday morning, I left early armed with digital and video cameras to do just that. Well, I spent one of the most amazing days on the bike riding miles and miles of tracks that snow-shoers had stomped into the snow. A hobby of others serving mine. Without them, this ride would not have been possible and I totally appreciate that.

Distance:55.0km (34.2 miles)
Elevation:1’634m (5’361 feet)
Time:05:13:18
Speed (avg/max):10.5/43.5 kph (6.5/27.0 mph)
★

Our server at the office seems to mirror the business as a whole. It runs pretty darn crappy to say the least. Today, as many times before, one of its vital organs failed. As that single black box is our only hub to the whole universe and beyond, I shut down my now utterly useless desktop client and armed myself with pencil and paper. But there just wasn’t anything to do other than drawing stick figure cartoons. Rather than sit on my butt at the office doing nothing, I could sit somewhere else and enjoy the second half of unlucky Friday the 13th. Might as well make it my lucky day, right? I called it a day, jumped on my Litespeed and speedily pedaled home. Without a pause for grub, I slipped into cold weather gear and told my Focus that we had some work to get done. I climbed out of Biel on my usual route with the silly idea to hop up and over the Chasseral. With all the snow up there, chances were nil that I’d actually get there, but that should stop no one to try. I rode to Cortébert on the road, first in thick fog, then under an occasional sun. The climb up to the Milieu de la Montagne (the middle of the mountain) was on wet roads under a now cloudy sky. I took it easy. Pushing hard was not today’s goal. It was all about getting a few miles in and enjoy an early start into the weekend. As I reached Les Goguelisses Dessous, the road started to turn white and beyond the Goguelisses it completely vanished. Luckily for me, a snowcat had paved a path to the Petite Douanne and the Métairie du Milieu de Bienne. I shifted into small gear and stayed on it. The snowcat driver must have had a wee bit too much fun in the snow. He neither stuck to the road nor did he take the shortest way. Right before the Métairie he further tested the uphill capabilities of his snowcat and steered it up the steepest pitch. I duly followed, now pushing the cross bike. At the Métairie I was greeted by the restaurant’s dog. He seemed as excited as myself to be in snow wonder-world. I jumped from snowcat tracks onto cross-country ski run and headed east. The skate skiing path was nicely groomed and hard enough to be ridden on my 35C tires. I wouldn’t recommend being up there on a bike on a sunny weekend day, but on this Friday afternoon I only greeted two cross-country skiers. I made it to the Place Centrale and could only find a foot wide path heading downhill. Mountain bike? Null problemo. Cross bike? Ooh la la, mucho problemo! Patience and low speed got me and the bike through in one piece. More patience was needed to pass by the small ski resort of Les Près d’Orvin. Moms, dads, kids and cars all blocked the road and impeded a quick fly-by. The subsequent downhill into Orvin offered a bit more speed but zero adrenaline. Too much up and downhill traffic. As I shot down into town the sun now sat low and blinded the view. It had nicely cleared up. Our office server can die every Friday!

Distance:52.5km (32.6 miles)
Elevation:1’477m (4’845 feet)
Time:03:13:52
Speed (avg/max):16.3/65.5 kph (10.1/40.7 mph)
★

Living at about 440 meters above sea level everything outside is currently green and brown. A few snow flakes managed to travel all the way to us, but they pretty much melted on impact. It rained a lot the past few days. Trails are wet and muddy up to an altitude of about 900 meters. Rain down here though meant loads of snow higher up and I was itching to check it out. I easily climbed to Evilard where the ground was only barely covered with snow. I rode through the Jorat then took the Charriere Trail to reach Les Près d’Orvin. Here, I had to push the bike for the first time. I was back in the saddle once I hopped on the road and for the lower section of the climb that followed through the Bois des Ràpes. Midway into that climb, I had to shoulder the bike and find my way to the top hiking through more than knee-deep snow. What’s usually a rather speedy climb on the singlespeed turned into a hike at a pace of about 3.4 kph on average.

I was hoping to find groomed cross-country ski runs at the top. To my disappointment there were none, so I hiked several miles west until I crossed path with a snowcat who was putting down a cross-country ski run. I used it to reach the Place Centrale quicker but kept walking. I would have caused too much damage trying to ride it. It’s a cross-country ski run and not a bike trail after all. The descent into Les Près d’Orvin went trough deep snow, was fun, treacherous and not without several crashes. Each of them was a result of the front wheel diving deeply into the snow. Other than losing my Vincero water bottle those crashes had soft landings. To get home, I turned into the Spaghetti Trail, which always seems rather easy in the snow. I rode all the rocky sections; actually benefitting from the snow holding the bike in a steady trajectory. I’m looking forward to more such excursions and hope for lower temperatures and firmer snow surfaces.

Distance:34.8km (21.6 miles)
Elevation:1’214m (3’983 feet)
Time:03:45:17
Speed (avg/max):9.3/57.0 kph (5.8/35.4 mph)
★

This week I ordered a new microSDHC with the huge capacity of 32GB for my ReplayXD1080 action cam. If I think back at my first home PC, a Gateway desktop PC running Windows 95 on a dinky 6GB hard-drive, it’s pretty amazing to see the progress that has been made. This tiny Kingston microSD fits on top of a fingernail and is less than a millimeter thick. Pretty soon a cellphone will be no bigger than that, implantable into one’s cheek and voice-controlled. Sorry, back to the cam. The new microSD needed to be formatted. The cam did the job and I additionally edited the config file to match the settings I had on the old card. I thought the cam was all good to go. I mounted it to my helmet and activated it during today’s ride whenever I wanted a recording. Back home I hooked it up to my MacBook and big surprise. Instead of finding video files, the card’s media folder was filled with close to 800 JPGs. Rats! Instead of dropping the photos into trash, I figured I might as well handpick a few dozen and make a photo album out of it. Et voilà!

Song: - Spirit
Distance:44.5km (27.7 miles)
Elevation:2’076m (6’811 feet)
Time:02:24:24
Speed (avg/max):18.5/64.0 kph (11.5/39.8 mph)
★

Well, not losing many words about today’s ride other than it’s been another several hours of spectacular cyclocrossing. Truly blessed to live in such a wonderful country, have enough disposable income to afford two new bikes in one year, a wife that lets me buy them and ultimately have good legs to go climb some of the finest trails. Thanks!

Distance:78.6km (48.8 miles)
Elevation:2’747m (9’012 feet)
Time:04:13:21
Speed (avg/max):18.6/67.7 kph (11.6/42.0 mph)
★

The sun was already poking through the hazy sky when I left for a cyclocross ride to the Chasseral. I spent the first half of the ride under blue skies, rode mostly dry gravel roads and passed some frosty spots on the shaded slopes that don’t get much if any sun this time of the year. The last pitch to the Chasseral antenna was as icy as last weekend and provided no conditions to beat my Strava segment record. Once at the top of the mountain the weather was changing. Clouds were rolling in from west creating a spectacualar scenery. Instead of dropping down to Nods, I spontaneously decided to add a loop around lake Biel. I needed to stop by my mom’s and the lake loop added some more miles to get there. I stayed on the mountain ridge and rode towards the Chaumont above Neuchâtel. At the Grand Chaumont I turned left to reach Enges, continued to Lignières then descended into La Neuveville. Now, I tried to follow the lakeshore as closely as possible to get around the southern side of the lake. I haven’t done this in years and was surprised to see a lot of changes, especially a lot of luxury homes for the wealthy few that have popped up in areas that used to be nothing more than small pastures or orchards.

Distance:84.4km (52.4 miles)
Elevation:2’286m (7’500 feet)
Time:04:01:16
Speed (avg/max):21.0/75.7 kph (13.0/47.0 mph)
★

First thing on my todo list this morning was a visit to the post office to send some goodies to the friendly Ebayers who bid and won. Three items, two buyers, both won and paid yesterday so now it was my turn to deliver. A front and rear Ultegra 6700 derailleur go to Italy, a set of Ultegra Dual Control levers travel all the way to Folsom, California.

After that was out of the way, I left home to escape the thick fog that will now often block the sun from us lowlanders. I rolled out of Biel on the Mares taking one of my regular escape routes. Within only a week, the trees have dropped a lot of their leaves. Combine those with the high humidity on the ground and you find some challenging trail conditions. The trail down into Frinvillier was already borderline on skinny cross tires, though it provided a first trail-side test of the new TRP CX8.4 brakes. And man, do they stop. The rear wheel was skidding all the way downhill and I had to be watchful not to pull the front one too hard else it blocked as well. Back to one finger braking and I’m sure glad about that.

In Rondchâtel, I started to gain altitude on the fire-road I’ve previously done a lot on the Niner. The cyclo-crosser definitely climbs faster, or at least it feels that way. Strava will tell. On the Sesselin du Haut crossover a lone lumberman blocked the way handling some heavy machinery pulling trees out of the forest. He sat high up on a vehicle with huge wheels facing away from the direction I had come from. With no rear-view mirror I had to keep my distance and wait. No way I was going to walk up to a machine swirling huge trees through the air. I waited a few minutes until the guy turned around and saw me. He stopped what he was doing and waved me through. I passed with a thumb up.

I crossed some nice pastures to Les Coperies, continued to La Ragie, then hiked a good way to Jobert. Once there it was all fast gravel to the Métairie de Morat. The Petit Chasseral was climbed at an easy pace out of the saddle. I shot down to La Neuve with over 60 kph then approached the last painful climb to the Chasseral antenna. I launched into the climb fast, then wondered why two hikers coming down were walking left and right of the pavement. I soon found out. As I was motoring up “en danseuse” my rear wheel suddenly lost all traction. This black pavement wasn’t wet, it was frozen. I steered to the left to ride at the edge of the road and had to drop my weight into the saddle. I made it.

Just like last weekend lots of folks were up there enjoying the sun and the splendid view of the Alps. A few travelled on a mountain bike, another few were in hiking shoes, but the majority had reached the peak in a car. Slaloming around people is probably the most accident-prone activity of the whole ride. Today, no pins were knocked over! Following last week’s traces, I descended down the road to Nods passing a couple of cars and bikes along the way. In Nods I enjoyed the last few rays of sun, then dove deep into heavy fog. Diesse and Lamboing were barely visible. I steered towards the Twannberg, gravel-grinded to Gaicht and raced down to Tüscherz on badly damaged pavement. Super way to get back into Biel quickly, but a total wheel killer if you make the slightest mistake.

Wheels I didn’t kill, but the minute I turned into the Rebenweg my rear tire lost all air in a sudden “pfffffff”. I stopped as fast as I could, rotated the wheel to find a 3-inch long nail. Someone must have nailed it into the road because it went through my tire head first. I pulled it out, then changed tubes. I wasn’t all that far from Biel, but fixing a flat wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do. Maybe my insurance company knows that. Just last week they sent me a flier about road-side assistance for bicycles. Yes, you read that right - there’s such a thing as road-side assistance for bicyclists. The example they gave in the colorful brochure was an older couple riding their e-bikes. The husband crashes, bends his front wheel and is now stranded in the middle of nowhere with a not man-portable e-bike. Assisted mobility through electric dead weight and if it’s dead you call road-side assistance. Won’t be long and your bike dealer will be your insurance agent as well. I’ll stick to fixing flats, even if I swear doing it.

Distance:60.4km (37.5 miles)
Elevation:2’474m (8’117 feet)
Time:03:20:54
Speed (avg/max):18.1/73.9 kph (11.2/45.9 mph)
★

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