Cycling on Swiss mountain passes in late October
Ross is planning a cycling trip in Switzerland during the last week of October and is curious about the likelihood of mountain passes (like Susten and St. Gotthard) being open for cyclists. He understands that the weather can affect accessibility, but wants to know if it's generally too late in the season for cycling on these routes.
- Many mountain passes are closed to motorized vehicles from November, but specific rules for cyclists may vary.
- While barriers may close passes to cars, cyclists can often navigate around them, although doing so may pose legal risks.
- For current conditions and planning, refer to traffic information sources and local cycling guides.
AI-generated summary-
hi all
I am planning a trip to Switzerland and i wanted to find out what the probability is of the passes (Susten, St Gotthard, Furka, Grimsel etc) being open for cycling in the final week of October? I know it’s impossible to predict, and the decision may be made based on weather in an instant, but perhaps this week is already so late that it’s absolutely guaranteed that the passes are closed for cycling?
Thank you,
Ross
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Hi Ross,
Welcome to MySwissAlps.
Generally, many of the mountain passes are closed to motorized traffic in winter (from November to April or later) depending on the weather and snow conditions. However I’m not too sure if similar restrictions apply for cyclists. It still feels pretty warm here the first day of October so maybe you can still go for your autumn ride on the Gotthard Pass in the last week of October. You’ll find useful traffic information here to plan your trips: http://www.myswissalps.com/car/trafficinfo
Also, the following links may help:
Cycling in Switzerland (Schweizmobil)
Regards,
Anna
thanks Anna, that’s really useful information, thanks for the links.
If anyone here knows about that cyclist restriction compared to cars, let me know! But I’ll hope for the best and hope to make it up those passes just before they close.
Swiss mountain passes are closed simply by putting a barrier across the road. I’m not sure about the legality but, put simply, you can walk a bicycle round the barrier quite easily (as you can do with most regular road barriers) compared to a car so there is definitely no physical way you can be stopped from cycling up a mountain pass. What I suspect is that you would have no legal rights if you were injured in any way and no right to be rescued if you are breaking any laws about using a closed road.
Having said that it is quite obvious that people walk up closed mountain passes beyond the barrier which prevent car access. I’ve not witnessed anything in October, but I have seen it the other way round. I often visit Switzerland at Easter and I recall two examples:
We were at the bottom of the Fluela Pass in early April. The pass was still closed, but it was warm and sunny where we were at the lower end of the pass road and the road was clear as far up as we could see, and we walked beyond the barrier, and I’m fairly certain local cyclists may well have taken advantage of a completely snow free and car free road to do some training.
On another occasion we had a lunch break between two train services at Naetschen (Oberalp pass route above Andermatt). There was snow around the railway station but in sunny exposed places the snow had melted and that included the Oberalp Pass road which we could see was completely free of snow all the way down the hairpins to Andermatt (at the same time we were watching skiing still taking place on the higher mountain above Andermatt
I’ve found a picture of the Fluela
Whilst we walked above the level of the barrier via fields it does look from the picture (at the time we didn’t actually go up the road past the barrier) that technically speaking there is a no pedestrians sign as well as a no traffic sign.
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