Switzerland 2012: Aletsch Arena - Fiesch and Bellwald Downhills - Part 3 of 4

|| Grindelwald/Jungfrau || Aletsch Arena - Alpine Rides|| Aletsch Arena - Fiesch & Bellwald downhills || Jeizinen in the Sonnenberg || Switzerland - General Tips and Tricks (must read for DIY'ers or if you want to know more about the country)

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Grüezi Mitenand
(Writers note - continuing from the story about the alpine of the Aletsch area ...)

Fiesch downhill

Märjalensee is the logical end of the culmination of many alpine rides on the Fiesch side of the Aletscharena. Options to get down from 2450m to valley floor at 1200m are varied but both times we did the fantastic Fiesch- Fieschertal singletrack descent This descent has a view of the Fiescherglacier. The combo of views and uncrowded fast not-so-steep-that-you're-always-on-brakes downhill was so good we did it twice instead of exploring another descent down to Fieschertal which is supposed to be steep at the start but looked like it would be fun too.... bad journalists (the other trail is the left fork in a junction just as you go by the Vordersee leaving the Gletscherstubbe. It means we have an excuse to come back to this slice of heaven to explore again right?

Unlike many other Swiss downhills this singletrack stays good all the way to the valley and is singletrack the majority of the way. No chue feld, very litte chue scheisse, for some reason very few wanderers. Just flow. Do it!

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Bellwald

On our third day we went up the Fuhrgangen gondola to ride Bellwald which is a mountain-bike specific downhill area. A Matterhorn-Gotthard Bahn (railway) quick trip from Fiesch takes you about 200m uphill paralleling the main highway on the valley floor and drops you off a gondola. The Fuhrgangen gondola is yet another Swiss gondola seemingly deposited in the middle of nowhere and drops you off at another small village. From there you ride up about 100m to the base of the Bellwald downhill bike supported trails.

Of course there's an alp restaurant where you can have yet more coffee. This was a weekend day but late in the season so the trails weren't all that busy. Usually we avoid mountain-bike specific trails in Europe like the plague. We live in Whistler/North Vancouver and ride that all the time so for us, we want to see something different.

However we'd heard that the Bellwald was worth riding and found it to be good DH track that's not fall-line and punched like many of the Swiss tracks we've seen in the late season. However it is a stop on the IXS downhill circuit and it has some big hits to test your mettle. DH bikes are nice for it as the track is best ridden at full speed; Lee found that mid travel 29ers & semislicks don't quite cut it as he cased some pretty big gaps.

From then on we took some road/singletrack sections from Egga down to Fieschertal then to Fiesch. This is a nice mellow ramble for a short day and goes through several typically Swiss charming villages. Perhaps not something I would recommend as a must-do but a nice way to get away from crowds on a Sunday

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Aletscharena rides

For more pictures of the area see the entire photo album set here - includes photos of landmarks and notable features

(Click on the links to bring the maps up full-page. You can download GPS also if you want to replicate the loops)

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Fiesch downhill

Statistics
Length: 8.3 km
Duration: 7 hours, 49 minutes, 32 seconds
Vertical up: 22m
Vertical down: 1232 m

Switzerland - Fiesch - Aletsch Arena

Märjelensee - Fiesch - Fieschertal - Aletscharena Sept 8, 2012 from Lee Lau on Vimeo.

Fiesch - Fuhrgangen - Bellwald - Fieschertal - Fiesch

StatisticsLength: 14.1 km
Duration: 2 hours, 35 minutes, 31 seconds
Vertical up: 611.9 m
Vertical down: 1079.1 m
Average Speed: 5.4 km/h

Switzerland - Feish - Bellwald

Fuhrgangen - Bellwald - Egga from Lee Lau on Vimeo.

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Big thanks to Tourism Switzerland (particularly Ursula and Mariel who did a fantastic job making sure we saw the highlights)

Thanks also to the people at

• Fiesch Tourism particularly Nadine Blatter who was unfailingly patient and courteous
• Kurt Schweizer at Bike Store Schweizer


Our bonus Swiss biking video courtesy of wizardry of Tom Malecha features riding from the Lötschental valley between the Bernese and Valaisian alps

BI|KE - A Symmetric Vehicle from Filme von Draussen on Vimeo.

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