Ibergeregg–Sattelegg–Linth

The two craggy limestone Mythen mountains tower up defiantly from the lush green fields and dark firs of the valley floor. And there lies Schwyz, guardian of Switzerland’s historic heritage, the Federal Charter of 1291, and from where five million perfectly polished Swiss Army Knives are exported across the world.

Past Switzerland’s oldest wooden house (1287) along the flanks of the Gr. Mythen, climbing endlessly – an almost 900m height difference and up to 14% gradient - to Ibergeregg, at each bend a beautiful view back to the Vierwaldstättersee. On the other side of the pass, in Ybrig, in the valley of the Minster, flower-filled moorland increases as you approach the shallow Sihlsee. Today’s serene reservoir was created between 1900 - 1938 in a fierce tug of war between traditionalists and modernists: over 60 farmsteads, land and houses, were drowned, but as was said at the municipal meeting as early as 1900 «the spark of electricity has powerfully flashed into the new century.» Today around 270 million kWh is delivered to the SBB (Swiss Federal Railway).

Goodbye to the lake, another 300 m climb to the Satteleggpass, a patchwork landscape of woodland and pastures and an Alpine panorama. A tough descent to the Satteleggstrasse, built by prisoners of war in 1940-42, through the Wägital valley in the extensive March plains, where the Linth correction created precisely set-out fields.