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Klausen
1'948 m
Uri / Glarus
The Klausenpass climbs to 1,948 metres between Altdorf in Uri and Linthal in Glarus.
1'948 m
Uri / Glarus
The Klausenpass climbs to 1,948 metres between Altdorf in Uri and Linthal in Glarus.
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The Klausenpass climbs to 1,948 metres between Altdorf in Uri and Linthal in Glarus. It was never an old trading route – used only for herding cattle up to the high pastures – until a grand scenic road was carved over it, opened in 1900. There's a curiosity here: the cantonal border lies not at the summit but some eight kilometres down the Glarus side. Legend traces this to a contest of 1315: two runners would set off at cockcrow from Altdorf and Linthal, and the border would fall where they met. The Glarners fed their cockerel well, so that it overslept, while the people of Uri starved theirs, so that it crowed early from hunger – and the Uri runner had crossed the whole Urnerboden before the Glarus man even set out.
That high shelf, the Urnerboden, is the largest alpine pasture in Switzerland, grazed by up to 1,200 cows. And the pass won worldwide fame between the 1920s and 1930s as the home of the Klausenrennen, then reckoned Europe's hardest mountain race – a 21.5-kilometre hillclimb run on gravel at breakneck speed, drawing the era's greatest drivers, from Chiron's Bugatti to the Mercedes of Rudolf Caracciola, who set the all-time record in 1934. The finish house still stands at the top, and the race returns from time to time as a memorial for historic vehicles. Closed under snow each winter, the Klausen remains a raw, old-school alpine drive rather than a polished one – and one of the loveliest pass landscapes in the country.
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