Alps Motorcycle Touring: Passes, Seasons and Route Planning

A handful of passes define Alpine touring, and building a route around a few of them is how most great trips start. The Stelvio, in the Italian Alps, is the one everybody knows: 48 hairpins on its northern approach climbing to 2,757 metres, spectacular and correspondingly busy — ride it early in the day. Nearby, the Gavia and Mortirolo are narrower, quieter, and arguably better riding. Over in Austria, the Grossglockner High Alpine Road is a toll road of extraordinary engineering, sweeping to 2,500 metres past a glacier; it is a maintained tourist route rather than a wild pass, but the surface and the scenery are worth the entry fee.

France contributes the highest paved passes in the range — the Col de l’Iseran (2,764 m) and the Col du Galibier — strung together by the Route des Grandes Alpes, a signposted itinerary of around 685 km from Lake Geneva to the Mediterranean that is the closest thing the Alps have to a grand tour. Switzerland ties it all together with the Furka, Susten, and Grimsel passes, three roads that can be ridden as a single sublime day. And the Dolomites, in Italy’s north-east, are a world of their own: the Sella Ronda circuit links four passes around the Sella massif in a loop you can ride before lunch and immediately want to ride again.

You cannot ride them all in one trip, and trying is the classic beginner’s mistake. Pick a base — the Dolomites, the Swiss central passes, or the French Grandes Alpes — and ride it well rather than chasing a checklist across the whole range.

The single most important fact about Alpine touring is that the high passes are seasonal, and getting the timing wrong turns a dream route into a locked gate. As a rule, the highest passes open from late May or June and close again in October or November, with exact dates decided each year by snow rather than the calendar — a heavy winter can keep the Stelvio shut into late June, while a mild autumn leaves the Grimsel open past Halloween. Never assume; the tourist boards and pass-status websites publish live opening information, and it is worth checking within days of departure.

July and August are the safe months for guaranteed access, but they are also the busy ones — the famous passes carry heavy tourist traffic, cyclists in packs, and camper vans that turn a flowing descent into a queue. The shoulder weeks are worth planning around: mid-to-late June, when the passes have just opened and the peaks still hold snow, and September, when the traffic thins, the air sharpens, and the light turns golden. Early and late in the season, carry warm and waterproof layers regardless of the valley forecast — a sunny 25°C start can become sleet at 2,500 metres within the hour.

Weather in the Alps is genuinely mountain weather: fast-moving, localised, and unforgiving of the underdressed. Thunderstorms build on summer afternoons, so many riders tackle the big passes in the morning and are down in the valley by the time the sky darkens. A cheap set of packable waterproofs and a warm mid-layer live permanently in an Alpine tourer's luggage for exactly this reason — the weather owes you nothing at 2,500 metres.

The Alps span five countries, and the open Schengen borders mean a good route ignores them entirely — a single day can start in Italy, cross into Switzerland over a pass, and finish in Austria without a document check. That freedom is the point, but it does mean a little cross-border admin homework. Switzerland and Austria both require a motorway vignette (Switzerland’s is annual and sold at the border; Austria’s comes in short-duration options), though the scenic passes themselves are usually toll-free apart from showpiece roads like the Grossglockner. France’s certified-glove rule applies the moment you cross in, and Italy’s ZTL town-centre zones catch out riders who roll into a historic centre for lunch. Our riding-laws guide covers the per-country details.

For distances, resist ambition. Alpine passes are slow — a 200 km day on paper can be six hours of concentration on the road, and that is before the photo stops the scenery demands. Two hundred to three hundred kilometres is a full, satisfying Alpine day; plan more and you spend the trip watching the clock instead of the view. Base yourself somewhere central to a cluster of passes rather than moving hotel every night, and you trade packing time for riding time.

Many of the best Alpine tours are run by operators who have ridden these roads for decades — they know which pass is resurfaced this year, which refuge does lunch for a group, and which valley to duck into when a storm rolls in. Whether you ride it guided, self-guided, or independently, the Alps reward planning more than almost any region on earth.