The Alpenhaus divides the second section on a large road for racers and the third section on a narrower path. SIUNGARY 2008
BIG trip - Daniel Gobert - day 5
day 1 - day 2 - day 3 - day 4 - day 5 - day 6 - day 7 - day 8
Sunday the 17th of august 2008
Cape on the Horn
I know, somthing like crazyness is inside us. Many people dream of holidays all inclusive, feet and body on sofa, cocktail with pin-ups, waterpools and sunny trees near the beach. Me, in my funny head of cycloclimber loving steep slopes, my dream all along the year was this special day, during this sunny sunday in Tyrol. "Nothing inclusive", feet sticked to pedals, stood up on the bike, only water in the bottles, perspiration of sportsmen and too hot surfaced roads. Masochism, when you are nearby!
Eric Lucas has recalled it to me recently:the Kitzbüheler Horn, it's simply 10km at 13%, nothing else. 1300m in 10km,it's impossible to make in another way. To get this average data, one must surely, do I think during the superb breakfast in the Noichl Hostel, climb some 20% sections and never having flat sections. I prepared myself mentally (but with the motivation won since six months about this goal, I had it !), to have difficult sections, with aches all along the legs, with the heart boxing our breast like a prisoner against the door of his cellar, and with the moral in the sockets. I prepared myself to install the Kitzbüheler Horn just next to Angliru, Zoncolan or Balmberg in my souvenir's album. And it didn't deceive me. Oh no, my dear, I drank it until the last droplet!
10 km from the hostel until the car-park between St-Johann and Kitzbühel. 5 places free, still unoccupied because it's early in the morning, because I've many kilometers to ride with the car afterwards and the day is very long, too, today ! Travel to the east, Hungary and Györ ! But we are in the month of august, it's sunday, a sunny sunday and the Horn is the main attraction for trekkers and tourists around Kitzbühel. Sure, I shall not be alone on the road !
Well, from the start in the car-park, how does the climb look like ? Three different sections : a first one through a village, with some crossroads on steep sections during 1 km. Afterwards, a short flat area leading to the start of the time-trial (km O) and more than 6 km of time-trial on terrible sections, leading to the arrival of the stages in the Austrian tour for professional, the Alpenhaus, 1670m high. Last section, after the short flat car-park of the house, a narrower path, well surfaced, through more terrible slopes sometimes at the end, to the Gipfelhaus and the TV tower. From 700m to 2000m (1996m precisely in the TV tower, 1970m for the road), it's hard form the hardest until the hardest hardest of the hard !
The Alpenhaus divides the second section on a large road for racers and the third section on a narrower path.
To start cold is never simple amost on 10% slopes , but we have the brain busy with the way to find in the village. A curve to the left ? Yes, it's the good way. Flat area, here is the start of the time-trial with a white line on the road. Directly hard ! Well, 13% perhaps or something like that. 20 hairpins named and ranked with a number on each of them. A rolling skater pass me rapidly and I pass rapidly a man on a laying bike and about 20 trekkers. There is people here but I seem to be alone on a road bike. The curve (Kehre) number 8 is surely at around 20% : terrible ! My GPS indicates 25%. Between the km 5 and 6 of the tme-trial, one takes 150m of difference of level ! Good luck ! Well, I feel good there, never mind the slope, never mind the suffering, my goal seems to approach and I like this kind of effort, I like this kind of extreme sport without danger but some kind of mentality. Stood up or sat down, with an average speed of 6-7 km an hour , it's not so bad for this kind of slope.
Landscapes are large and sceneries are beautiful , the road is well surfaced and the roadsigns are present and well written, motivating our effort. After the Alpenhaus, you have to ride on the narrow path, but passing under a barreer. You must stop. The trekkers laugh seeing me under the barreer trying to pass my road bike. After this barreer, ow to start again on direct 15% slope ? Well, well, well ! Three solutions, to go down on the left in a gravel road and to go back risking to slide with narrow tyres. Secondly, to ask to a trekker to push ourseles but I don't like it ! Third solution (that I've chosen), to place my bike perpendicular to the road and to try in the one meter large road to click my pedal and to push in one shot with my back to turn in direction of the top. I try it with some spectators completely smiling ! They finally laugh but also say "hurrah!" when I succeed in climbing.
22% in the path between' the Alpenhaus and the Gipfelhaus, don't be frightened, be strong !(photo : Quaeldich) 
On a 1 meter large path , passing over so many trekkers all along the climb, and also many MTB, crossing the road coming from gravel roads ask me to slalom all the time but also to say sorry, but give the possibility to have many anonymous supporters on the road. The last wo hairpins near the top are completely uncredible, over 20%. The trekkers stop and look at you with so big eays ! You're up, your goal is reached !
The TV tower is over the monument of the Kitzbühel region.
On the top, I sit down, just front of the scale leading to the TV tower . An austrian guy asks me wher I come from. I answer "from Belgian". He asks me where I started. I answer "Down in Kitzbühel". He asks me how much time I used. I answer "1 hour 25 minutes". He congratulates me deeply, saying that he is a marathon man and that the Horn with this time is harder than a marathon with 3h30. I don't believe him completely but I appreciate the grateful compliments. I drink a full bottle of water and I go down, slowly, completely sticked to my breaks, always speaking to prevent the families and the dogs. I'm happy to pass under the barreer another time. Down the Alpenhaus, the speed can be quicker and I find back my car on the foot with a lot of other cars aound. Kitzbüheler Horn is in the pocket, in my souvenir's album, in my cycloclimbing legend. Life is beautiful !
In the downhill, I understand that my brakes are nearly out . I've used my brakes in all the steep downhills and I must still keep them during three days because I'll be soon in Hungary with some difficulties surely to find those brakes and today, it's sunday with the shops closed. I ride to the east with the car, thinking about this fact, crossing Saalfelden (we talk about this city later), and I take the decision to use mainly my front brakes in the next downhills. Preiner Gscheid and Rohrer Sattel were previously in my programm but the time is missing, the additional tours seem to be on very small and narrow roads and the Dientner Sattel is on my way. I decide to lay the car on the top, and to climb this pass as the second and last climb B.I.G of the day.
The sun is shining ,the top of the Dientner Sattel is busy with motobikes and trekkers. I go down from the top to the foot on my bike, telling me inside that I've all the afternoon to go back up if the orn stays too much in my legs. Of course, the Dientner Sattel offers slopes but nothing to see with the morning. The road is large and so well surfaced. Everything here is beautiful and pretty. Deep Tyrol! I don't climb it very quickly because I have plenty of different thoughts in my head. "Never say why, always say how" like I often say, but... But ... This B.I.G, this challenge B.I.G , my baby, my child. The crazy dream of a teenager changed today, 23 years later, in agreat association with nearly 1500 members everywhere in Europe. The challenge who has taken company to all my life, that often built it but also sometimes broke it. This eternal balance between passion and reason, between mountains and my country, between my dreams and my diary, between the bike and the family. My family is missing me. Terribly ! How to balance between cycloclimbing and "familying". Why biking ? Why homing ( :-) ). With my family, I'm dreaming on those places in high altitude and in those places, I'm dreaming on mines : my wife, my children, my parents,... mines. I would like that they would be there, with me, in this majestuous place. Those with whom I share everyday hapiness and pity, victory and sorry. Those who I love ... Paradox of my life during this climbinb of the Dientner sattel.
Such a so clean landscape that it's quite unreal .
Until a more objective paradox .I'm thinking for the first time of the trip to stick a sticker on the top. I take a photo with my old photomachine of the old time, not digital at all. I'm always one of the last users of modernity. Why ? The last one in business to have a mobilephone, the last one to have a digital photomachine, the last one to have had clicks on my pedals. I'm so strange sometimes. I laugh alone under the eyes of the motorbikers of the top. .
Well, let's go, Hungary, here I am ! I'm riding direction ienna, eating a new spaghetti Bolognaise ont he road. I buy the hungarian vignette on the border, the lonely one that we haven't to stick on the front window of the car. Only a papersheet. Direction Györ and Budapest. The overnight will be at Györ. Budapest will be for tomorrow. Since the border, I don't understand anymore the roadsigns. What is this language. Ikew that it is an ouralian language, but well, I don't understand even the exits and the patrol offices. And what about the meals ? When I see 21000 ft, I think in myself "and they don't count in meters, they count in feet, like the british". Crazy guy that I'm : it's their money. Ft means Forint, the hungarian money. 21000 Forints = 100 €, simple, no ? No !
Here is already Györ and it's already 8 o'clock PM. I'm sooner than yesterday but Viamichelin gives me names of streets that I don't see nowhere. I lose myself in the center of the city. Trafic in this center because there is a msical feast on the river. I see a plan of the town, I stop my car in the middle of the road, it's written too small. Shit ! I finally ask to young people. I hope that they are speaking english. IN fact, they speak. Hurrah ! They tell me that the hostel is in the old part of the city, in the bad and black quarters. My car hasn't got any insurance against the fact that it can be stolen. I'm not completely fit and well about this possibility. I will not sleep well.
Finally at 9.30 PM, I find y "panzio" (booked through Internet). In fact, it's a strange quarter, with strange groups of men walking all around you with bizarre eyes, just in the opposite of the center of the city where everybody was singing and laughing. The waitress is young, very beautiful, but doesn't speak neither english nor german , only hungarian. She shows me the bedroom, a kind of student narrow bedroom , 5 meters high with a bathroom a little old and not so pretty. After a call in Belgium and having watched a water-polo match of the hungarian team in the olympic games, I finally find the sleep but late.