Susten Pass

The supersized Swiss climb

- MATTHEW LOVERIDGE

Did you know that until just a few years ago, much of Switzerland’s major infrastructure – bridges, tunnels, roads and so forth – was packed with explosives, ready to be detonated when invasion threatened? The practice was a hangover from the Cold War, a time when irritable superpowers menaced one another with complete annihilation. How times change.

There’s a tortured analogy in here somewhere about a road’s hidden dangers, or perhaps something about blowing up when it all gets to be too much on a tough climb, but like every major tourist route in Switzerland, the Susten Pass is beguilingly perfect and largely free of jeopardy – legions of cars and motorbikes notwithstanding.

Supposedly the TNT has now been removed, but in any case, the Swiss are the one nationality I’d trust to leave bombs everywhere safely. No matter how extreme the scenery, riding here always gives you the feeling you’re in good hands. You are going to do battle with the supersized landscape, not the infrastructure, which is unrelentingly perfect at all times.

The western front

The heir to a 17th-century mule track, the modern-day Susten Pass road was built from 1938 to 1945, and inaugurated in 1946. It links the towns of Innertkirchen in the Bernese Oberland on the western side to Wassen in the canton of Uri on the eastern side. This is the western approach, which tops out at 2,224m above sea level.