Riding across the Alps by unicycle...?!

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At Whitsun 1996 the Alps were crossed by unicycle for the very first time. Michael Kirsch, Robert Mager and Erik Kolb and I rode from Berchtesgaden via Grossglockner and straight through the Dolomites to Brixen. It was an over all distance of 320km and about 5000m difference in altitude. Here you can see a map of our route. Each of us strapped 15kg of luggage to our backs (no escort car like most of the bikers we passed - at steep inclinations you are indeed faster by unicycle than by bike!)

In the beginning the weather was quite bad. Until reaching the border to Austria it was sunny, but then the big rain came. On top of Grossglockner it looked like this. But on the other side of the pass the sun showed up again. So we became sun burned on the way from Lienz to Sillian. Looking at the Dolomites the bad weather of the first days was already forgotten. From now until Brixen there was nothing else but sunshine. But there have been other ways to become wet. At distances of up to 65km per day there was still some time left for stupid tricks.

This page is also available at its original home in Germany.

Wolfgang Strößner
Stroess@Mathematik.HU-Berlin.DE