Caffeine and Nicotine
Forget your wheaties, your protein shake or your glass of OJ; six cups of coffee and one Monte Cristo Cuban cigar and you’re there. Well, Jim’s there. I’m not quite sure I’d thrive on the same breakfast. Our signature ‘fat kid on a bicycle’ was the first to the top of the Grimsel Pass , and not because I was busy taking photographs the entire time. The Grimsel Pass officially starts in Glestch, but we started our morning climb 10 kilometers and 600 meters below, in Oberwald.
Oberwald is a minute Swiss village. We arrived freezing, hungry, and wondering how on earth two out of three hotels could be closed on a Wednesday night. How do three hotels even survive in this town? Jim was curious as to what the hell the carpenters were thinking when they built the majority of the houses (mismatched logs with a little bit of caulking stuck in between the gaps) and the houses all seems to lean dangerously in towards the road. The stormy evening light it gave the eerie appearance of the town cautiously consuming any visitors. Turning around, I expected to find the houses had crouched together, blocking the road we had just wandered down.
Climbing the Grimsel Pass was the perfect anecdote to the claustrophobic confines of the night before. Fresh air, open Alpine meadows, and the receding Rhone Glacier melting into the beginnings of the River Rhone. The breadth of the alpine landscaped was easily matched by the amount of switchbacks leading up to the top of the pass. I stopped at the first tunnel before Gletsch, “one, two, three. That’s not too many, I can manage three switchbacks.” I got back on the saddle and prepared for the climb, through the blackness of the tunnel and back into the light. O shit. Three switchbacks? That was an underestimate. As the view of the pass opened behind the tunnel, the switchbacks multiplied exponentially. and Jim passed me. “That’s ok, I’ll catch him at the next switchback,” I thought. I started to close in on him as we rounder the corner, “I’ve gotta go before this coffee runs out!!” and he took off, out of the saddle, and hardly breaking a sweat. Guess who looks like the fat kid now.
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