This weekend's gorgeous weather is probably encouraging many of us to now head to the mountains to enjoy the scenery rather than the skiing. Last summer, I cycled up many of the mountain passes, and I plan to hit many more this summer . It doesn't look like there is much about the various passes on this forum, so I thought I'd contribute a couple of useful web indexes of the passes. However, I've been unable to find a site listing which are currently open or closed.

The best index of Swiss passes that I've found is a website called the "Tour of Switzerland in 80 Passes", the site is in French or German, but the language doesn't really matter because the names of the passes, their heights and the towns they start and end at generally don't change based on the language you use. They also have some photos of each pass and a brief description. This site is geared mostly towards motorcyclists but the information is useful regardless of how you choose to travel. Also, the name of the site is a bit misleading because they now have about 100 passes listed!

There's also a list of Swiss mountain passes at Wikipedia. They have map indexes of the passes, and in addition to the road passes, there is also a list of hiking passes and rail passes.

The one thing that I have not been able to find is an index listing when each pass opens and closes each year. This is often listed on maps, but I'm sure that someone on this forum knows of a web-based index that lists whether each pass is currently open or when it is expected to open.

check this out...
http://www.cols-suisses.ch/
or better yet for you cyclists..
http://www.cols-suisses.ch/accueil.htm
also good for cars and bikes.

http://www.swissinfo.org/ger/verkehr...eSect=490#pass

Thanks, Yokine; that site can also been viewed in French.

Looks like some of the passes may open early

"The dearth of snow this winter should lead to the opening of mountain pass roads earlier than usual. The cantonal authorities in Uri said they expected to have the Gotthard pass cleared by the first week of May – three weeks ahead of schedule."

Try http://www.swisstxt.ch/SF1/494-00.html

That's actually page 494 on TeleText for SF1... You can view it online or on TV!

I recently heard about an excellent website that has awesome information on mountain passes all over Europe, plus many other mountain roads that are not passes: climbbybike.com. It is specifically geared towards cyclists, but others might also find the information useful. It has profiles of each climb that include the average gradient in each km, or each section of the climb, in a color-coded graph (see attachment). Plus the base height, summit height, length, average gradient, and a difficulty score. The difficulty score is based on a complex calculation that sums the difficulty of each section of the climb to get a total score, and it seems to give pretty indicative scores.

The attachment is the profile of the Umbrail pass, which goes from Graubunden (Santa Maria) to Italy (Bormio). It is the climb that I've done that has the highest difficulty rating (132.4), and is the highest pass in Switzerland (2501m). My wife and I did this at the end of a long tour across the Swiss Alps last summer, on fully-loaded touring bikes.

I just found a useful site on the TCS website showing which passes and tunnels are open or closed: French, German, or Italian.

A similar site to climbbybike which shows all the cols around Europe. I find this one more easy to navigate than climbbybike.


http://www.cyclingcols.com/

Some more pass listings that I found:

http://www.alpineroads.com/passstatus.php
http://www.swissinfo.org/ger/verkehr...eSect=490#pass

-Scott

Another thread is posted in Support and I cannot access it.

Information on Swiss mountain passes and the approach roads to Alpine tunnels can be found on the Swiss motoring club TCS website

http://www.tcs.ch/main/de/home/verke...e_tunnels.html "Frei = Open" "Gesperrt = Closed"

Please note the "Gesperrt" roads and passes are also legally closed! Even for the 4x4 owners.

Information is also on Swiss TV teletext page 460 (Index) and 495, 496

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