Day 8: There is no word for flat in Swiss-German

Tl;dr Lots of up

Though it did rain a little last night, we woke up to a sunny clearing. After a light breakfast of bread and granola we started the day with a nice 500 meter climb. Thankfully there was a beautiful view and whatever the German word for ice cream parlor at the top.

That was the worst of the climbs but there were more to come. On the way down we set up a picture of all three of us and also found a small castle which we later deemed to be a look out tower.

After two hours we had only gone 20 km, due to all the hills, we had 55 more to go. The next 40km were the same. Unlike the Austrian paths, which were paved and took us along the river, the Switzerland paths take us from mountain town to mountain town along dirt roads. With the sun out, it was sweat city for us. Thankfully all along the paths in both Austria and Switzerland they have these drinking water pumps. It just took us 3 days to figure out they were drinkable.

As we approached St. Moritz the path leveled out, but a strong head wind took over. Even with Nate's bomber lead, we were still averaging 15km/hr on flat dirt roads.

With 10 km to go we were all feeling it, and so bought some Swiss chocolate crackers to cheer us up.

We decided to bike through St. Moritz to get to our campsite instead of staying on the north side. After all the path followed a stream, how hard could it be? Turns out the stream was more of a water falling creek and there was a lot of hard pedaling to insure we made it up. Whoops.

Thankfully we made it though (also, shout out to Mark's superb navigating) and have the tent all set up.

Everything here is extremely expensive but we were able to find some cheaper Donar Kabob (much to Nate's delight) that filled us up for dinner.

It's beginning to rain again so we're off to bed. Thankfully tomorrow is a rest day to prepare for another climb after that.