Eiger Bike Challenge

 

This profile tells enough of the tale of the Eiger bike challenge, but I should have paid more attention to it before hand. In my mind, this event was about the two ascents of Gross Scheidegg and Klein Scheidegg, with some connection lumps in between. Yes, I had seen Feld on the profile, but totally overlooked Bort - this is a super steep tarmac ascent for 3km, at which there are large crowds and an anouncement that the bergpreis is over, except that the track continues steeply up for a considerable distance more on concrete mesh surface, which eventually requires a dismount and push.
It took 5 hours to get to the turning point for the Klein Scheidegg bonus loop, a further 2.5 hours from there.
The course is a lot of tarmac climbs, and also some steep tarmac descents which end up with cooked brakes. There are short sections of single trail, but these are often stepped, or large rocks, so as they are so short they were not worth taking any risks and short walking downhill was also required. The rest was gravel tracks, often I felt unsteady when descending on such tracks as the wheels can slip at any moment. The final joke was approaching the summit of Klein Scheidegg, where we took a left turn up a steep field, wasn't crazy long push like the Sella Ronda Hero, but the final push for the day then its almost all downhill from here.
In all, it still reinforced my experience of Grindelwald being tedious long tarmac descents followed by brake pad burning descents and with virtually no flowing singletrail to enjoy.
This was a tough event, 4000m ascent over 88km, a little bruised as well as tired after this one.

7hr 25m 30s