Acherli Pass outside of Lucern, Switzerland is not a famous climb. It’s never been featured in any race of note and probably isn’t on many lists of climbs to conquer. But it should be. This pass has the ingredients of sadistic cycling showdown, to mix the metaphor. The terrain, gradient, road condition and weather all play significant roles in its difficulty not to be out done by other factors of nature perhaps not considered.
In 2005, three of us, Ross, Amy and I, went on a ride from Lucern, Switzerland , where we were vacationing. Ross had ridden the pass the previous year and was desperate to show us this climb. It was about 35km from our hostel to the base. We rode out of Lucern along the lake and past the cliffs of Burgenstock. As we head south to the eastbound pass we can see the summit looming. It was mid September, partly to mostly cloudy with temperatures in the 60’s. No wind to speak of.
To put the ride in a little context, Ross was in Lucern for the Lucern Music Festival. Amy and I came over to visit, be tourists and ride in Switzerland. Ross had been there the previous year and knew plenty of great rides leaving from town. The day we set out for Acherli Pass he had a performance he needed to attend in the early evening. The total ride distance is almost 55 miles.
We turned east onto the Pass and the climb started immediately. The first 3km cross between the pastures of two very old farms. Cows saunter with massive bells strapped to their necks. The scene is bucolic Swiss propaganda. Picture Switzerland outside of a city in late summer. It looks exactly like that but the grass and trees are greener, the houses are older and more authentic, and the cows are bigger; their bells deafening. The road climbs straight for about a kilometer then switches back sharply and heads the other direction for the same distance. It does this one more time before we enter the forest. These first kilometers have a 7% average gradient.
Once in the forest the pitch levels briefly but never really lets up. The views to the south grow more climactic the higher we climb. From time to time when we’d exit the forest we could see the summit lightly shrouded with wispy clouds. After about 5km, the climbing truly begins and does not cease until descending the other side. Long switchbacks make up the entire climb with a few short and very steep twists thrown in for good measure. We stopped to fill bottles at a spring. We’d been climbing for only 6km. The road surface is unpainted, one lane and surprisingly smooth, except the one short section of gravel. After 8km we exit the trees and enter yet another pasture, this one more heavily occupied with bell clad bovine. A number of old porcelain bath tubs lined the road at one point. This seemed an odd juxtaposition against the backdrop. We realized their purpose a turn later when roughly a dozen cows trotting down the pass greeted us in the middle of the road. We dismounted and stood still as the passed. Their size daunting to say the least and the ringing of their bells vociferous. On the left side of the road was an obviously electrified fence. In a moment of slight panic, Amy stepped off the road and under the electric fence, bike in hand, so as not to disturb the cows’ passing. Ross and I stood in the road motionless as these Fiat sized animals passed clanging their tuneless melody. When they all finally passed we watched for for a few moments. They stopped a couple hundred feet later at the bath tubs to drink.
We finished the remaining 2km and began the glorious descent to Dallenwil. More generous with its switchbacks, the far side of the pass begins casual and quickly becomes a zigzagging roller coaster complete with cattle guard at every turn. About 2km down we are stopped by a largely built woman herding her cattle up the road. She exclaims to us in heavily dialectic Swiss-German that (we learn later) the road is closed ahead by a landslide and that we must go back up and over the other side. That was out of the question. We were in no mood to climb and to descend the same side we climbed would likely destroy what brake pads we had remaining. So we pondered briefly. The woman pointed with her horsewhip (cow whip?) to a building about 300 meters up the road saying something indiscernible. The building was the top landing of an ancient gondola. The towers and cables now becoming visible, we pedaled the short stretch back up the hill and went into the gondola building. Clearly, this gondola was the first gondola in history. Nothing about the structure looked modern or even renovated in the last 70 years. We looked for an attendant or another person to see if we could use the gondola but saw only an older man boarding one of the cars with a grocery bag. We noticed that he turned a crank inside the car and spoke into a microphone, likely alerting someone that he was ready to come down. Another gondola car came around and we piled in. It was far too small to fit the three of us and bikes so we hung my bike (that I purchased two days befoe leaving for Switzerland) and Ross’ bike to two metal arms protruding out the back of the car, much like a trunk mounted bike rack, but scarier. Amy’s bike we crammed inside with us. Ross cranked the phone and said “drei personnes and drei velo. (three people and three bikes)” Someone down below responded. We closed the door and waited. We jolted into motion and down we went, two bikes hanging perilously outside. Another sign of the gondola’s age was the distance between the towers. At any ski resort at least two towers would fit between each span. We swung low in between each tower, soon hovering over the massive landslide the destroyed the road. As the car rolled over the pulleys at the towers our hanging bikes bounced around. We could finally see the bottom station and started to feel some relief. The sign said Dallenwil so at least we were to land in the right town.
The gondola car came to a stop at the bottom and we exited. I unloaded the bikes from their “rack” and we headed to the ticket booth. The attendant said something quickly in Swiss-German. At our pause she looked up and at us. “Three Swiss francs each.” Ross was about to pay when he spotted a refrigerator. “And three Good Humour bars, please,” he said. We paid, at our ice cream and headed for the main road. We had an hour and a half to make it back to Lucern for Ross’ performance. Amped up on the most outrageous ascent and descent we could have possibly imagined, we time trialled back with time to spare.
Ascending Acherli Pass is 10km long with an average gradient of 9.9%. The descent is slightly longer and only 9%. Unless you do it in a gondola… Sadly, between the three of us we only had one broken camera. The included photo is from the previous year.
