St Moritz
Cyclists who set off from St. Moritz, in Switzerland’s Engadin, start in the town where, by tradition, winter tourism began with a hotelier’s bet. In 1864 Johannes Badrutt invited his English summer guests to come back for the winter, promising to cover their costs if they didn’t enjoy it. The same year the town opened Switzerland’s first tourist office, and in 1878 the Kulm hotel switched on the country’s first electric light. St. Moritz went on to host the Winter Olympics twice, in 1928 and 1948. Every March the Engadin Skimarathon, first run in 1969, crosses the frozen lakes above the town on its 42 km from Maloja to S-chanf.
This ride follows those lakes from St. Moritz to the Maloja Pass, which cycling guides call perhaps the only Alpine pass you can reach with almost no climbing. It passes Sils, where Friedrich Nietzsche spent his summers in the 1880s and drafted parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It then runs the length of Lake Sils, the largest in the Engadin, to Maloja, where the painter Giovanni Segantini lived from 1894 and is buried. In the afternoons the Maloja wind blows up from the Val Bregaglia, often trailing a snake-like band of cloud. At the pass the Engadin simply ends: the ride finishes just over the top, where the road drops in tight hairpins towards Italy. The Giro d’Italia crossed the pass in 2009.
Region: Graubünden
City: Sankt Moritz
Distance: 14.86 km
Elevation Gain: 97 m
Elevation Loss: 99 m
Difficulty: 65 (Easy)
FIETS Index: 0.13 FIETS
Avg Grade: 4.87 %
Max cat climb: 5
Min elevation: 1788 m
Max elevation: 1816 m
Ride Category: Flat