Cruising on Alpine Passes

I decided that it is time to take the van across the border and spend 2 days driving across mountain passes in the Alps.

First stop was Thusis in Switzerland, south of Chur. A rainy evening. The campground is under trees, nicely shaded during hot summer heat. Now it has gotten a bit colder, but the trees still are nice, providing a good sound dampening from the nearby road, and emitting a nice forest smell.

With the heating on it was quite comfortable inside the van.

Next day through Via Mala across the Splügenpass. Up the mountain goes a nice narrow road, very tight turns, quite challenging for the LDV.  But it drove over it very well. This LDV never had been so high up: 2113m. This was the very first mountain pass crossing of this camper.

On the way down from Splügenpass I had to use the brakes a lot. Engine brake did not help, because the road was quite steep and the vehicle did accelerate downhill, even with the motor in low gear. When I arrived down in the valley, I smelt that the brakes were hot. I touched the wheels, and yes, they were very warm. So I took a break for an hour and let the brakes cool down.

Then driving further across Malojapass and Ofenpass into the Val Mustair. Both passes easy to drive, no challenge there, almost like a motorway.

The next camping site is located at the northern ramp of the Umbrailpass. It began to rain around 16:00 and continued raining the whole evening. I arrived there around 17:30.

Simple dinner in the van - too wet and cold to go anywhere outside.

Then next day the highlight of this weekend: first up the Umbrail Pass, the highest mountain pass of Switzerland at 2503m. Nice narrow road, and very little traffic.

Snow had fallen during the night - there was snow on the sides above 1800m. But the road was clear - the surface sill has stored the summer heat, so any snow was melting away quickly.

Quite lonely on the top of this Umbrailpass, the houses there appear abandoned.

A few meters down from the Umbrailpass-Peak, then up again towards the Stilfser Joch.

Up there at 2760m elevation there is quite a zoo: many tourist stores, restaurants.

These guys prepared my dinner: the highest Bratwurst in Europe!

The LDV is resting after the long uphill climb.
And this would be the downhill slope:

x 

On the drive down I noticed that the LDV exhaust was very cloudy: grey, dark, blueish. And it smelled burnt. This was after a more than 1 hour stop at the Stilfser Joch top. Maybe the motor did not like the high elevation, the low air pressure and therefore low oxygen content, or the low below-freezing temperature. I tried to rev as little as possible, but I also had to monitor the brakes - not too much usage of the brakes, otherwise they would get hot. The smoke was there when I stepped on the gas. So I tried to take this easy too. Quite a balance act, between avoiding hot brakes and avoiding too much smoke.

Once down in the valley the smoky exhaust disappeared. Only one more, at a straight stretch a few miles further down did again the smoke look cloudy, but after that no more cloudy smoke, and the burnt smell was also gone.

Here is the LDV with the Ortler, one of the highest mountain of Italy at 3905m.

Driving further on to the Reschenpass. This seems not to be a real pass in comparison...

And finally across the Fernpass back to Germany.

A nice weekend tour! 7 mountain passes: Spluegen (2113m), Maloja (1815m), Ofenpass (2149m), Umbrailpass (2503m), Stilfserjoch (2760m), Reschenpass (1507m), and Fernpass (1212m). The LDV goes strong. I hope that the smoking exhaust at the Stilfserjoch downhill drive does not indicate any major problem...