Saflischpass

Alpine round on the other side of Fiesch from the Aletsch, with a descent of more than 1,800 meters of elevation gain to Brig. It starts from a free parking lot between Fiesch and Lax. Exactly opposite the parking lot the road to Ernen starts. The section up to the village is quite busy (all relative to where you are), after the village the calm is almost absolute. The road flattens out and you enter the valley leading toward Binnen. Very nice is the crossing over the old road, now closed to traffic, which avoids going through the tunnel. Just before you reach Binnen you turn right toward Heiligkreuz, and slowly you realize how high you still have to go.

At Heiligkreuz you take a dirt road, and from here to the pass there is only one direction: uphill!

The road is well traveled, has a good gradient, and passes several alpine pastures on a completely grassy slope. At an altitude of about 2300 meters you leave the road to take the path up to the pass. It is steep at first and you have to push for about 10 minutes, after that you pedal almost all the way up to the pass. And now: watch out for the view! At the pass the view opens up to Rosa and the surrounding glaciers.

The descent is very long and very varied. At first easy on grassy slopes, then you get to a dirt road that leads to the next trail, very nice and very flowy to Rosswald. THE final part is great, follows an irrigation stream, more or less level, very narrow and with exposed sections, but perfectly smooth. You cross the small town and take trail 36. The reason for the number lies in the serpentines there: 36 in fact. They are all wide, some with banks to be throttled, as this is one of the descents bikers use when taking the Rosswald cable car, today September 20, 2013 already closed.

It goes under the Simplon road, and from here I improvised, ending first in the middle of the meadows because they were paving the road and then in the little villages above Brig. Since I had time to catch the train back to Fiesch, I extended the descent by catching a beautiful trail, which leads, again, to a trail that follows an irrigation stream, even narrower and more exposed than the previous one. You come to a road and follow it downhill, to the center and station of Brig,

The train to Fiesch leaves every hour. I recommend it because the only alternative is the valley floor road, 17 km busy and with 350 meters of elevation gain.