North Vancouver and Whistler, our home towns, are awesome places to ride. But the world is vast. So much to offer, it's great when you get an opportunity to venture further and see what else is out there.

This year we returned to Switzerland and South Tirol, some less traveled mountain bike destinations. Being Vancouver homers, we wore a lot of Race Face clothing to show our proud Canuck roots.

We checked out the touristy area of Grindewald, home of the Jungfraujoch. We did manage a few rides there that were pretty fun. I'd say checking out the Jungfraujoch is worth it, especially if you haven't been on a glacier before. They've done a really good job to give you that experience. Some of the nicer riding is at the other end of the Glacier that starts at the Jungfraujoch - Aletsch Glacier in the area of Fiesch, Riederalp, Bettmeralp, Bellwald. This area of Wallis is quite well known for skiing and even road riding. But the riding on the Wanderwegs wasn't bad! Neither were the views!

You can see the Matterhorn of Zermatt in the background.

The Aletsch Glacier. The snowy slope in the background is near the Jungfraujoch, pretty cool. I don't think you can ride from there to here though! This is a dying Swiss Glacier.



These Wanderwegs have been around for YEARS! They're in such great shape since you can only use them from July to Sept or October and they are more traversing then typical mountain bike trails.



Sharon rockin' the Race Face Khyber Kit. The Khyber shorts offered enough warmth for riding in the Alpine when it got cool, with vents that allowed you to stay cool when we got back to the valley.

The best thing about riding in Switzerland is you can have a real lunch after you climb for two hours! Then you can go on your descent on a full stomach!



After riding in Wallis we took the train to Sud Tirol to check out the Dolomites. This area is in a valley between the Austrian Alps to the East and North, the Swiss canton of Graubünden to the west and Dolomites of Italy to the East. The valley is at about 900m elevation which gives it much warmer, drier riding season. We started in the middle of the valley at Bruneck, and made our way to Brixen, Latemar Rosengarten and finally to Latsch.

Many photo's maps, elevation profiles can be found here Sud Tirol.

Highly worthwhile trip! Can't wait to go back!