Gotthard and Susten: the Tremola and the Devil’s Bridge

Route description

Start in Airolo, at the southern end of the Gotthard road tunnel. Instead of the tunnel, climb the Tremola, the old cobbled pass road with 24 hairpins stacked up the valley side. It is narrow, so large motorhomes should take the modern road, which runs parallel. At the top, at 2,106 m, the hospice and the national Gotthard museum stand among small lakes. The pass is open roughly June to October.

Descend north to Hospental and Andermatt, now a year-round resort. North of the village, the road enters the Schöllenen Gorge, where the Reuss thunders under the Devil’s Bridge. Walk down to the old stone bridge and the rock-cut monument to the Russian army of General Suvorov, which fought through here in 1799. Then continue down to Wassen, a village known for its church, seen three times by passengers on the Gotthard railway.

At Wassen, road 11 turns west and climbs to the Susten Pass at 2,224 m. Built in the 1940s, it has wide bends and tunnels and is one of the easier Swiss passes for motorhomes. Stop at the summit tunnel and again at Steingletscher, where the glacier ends above a lake. The descent follows the Gadmen valley down to Innertkirchen, close to the Aare Gorge.

From Innertkirchen it is 7 km to Meiringen. Just before the town, at Willigen, a small wooden funicular climbs to the Reichenbach Falls in summer; Conan Doyle set Sherlock Holmes’s last fight here. The three passes of the region, Grimsel, Furka and Susten, can be linked into a loop if you have a day more. All the passes close in winter.