Tobogganing down St. Moritz longest 6.5km run in Preda / Bergun, Switzerland

Activities, Earth, Europe, Switzerland, West Europe

Tobogganing down St. Moritz longest 6.5km run in Preda / Bergun, Switzerland

December 27, 2018

t. Moritz has several toboggan runs nearby. Some of them are steep, fast and short, and others are longer but more gentle. I chose the Preda – Bergun run because it’s the longest (6.5km) and because there’s a train that will take you to the top of the run. So no pulling a sled back up the mountain each time you want to make another run.

Getting to Preda is easy, you can buy an all-day pass that will allow you to ride the train all day. Not just taboggons you’ll be on the train with a lot of skiers as well. They use different trails and get off at later stops.

1. Details

At the Preda station when you get off the train, almost directly across the platform is a place where you can rent your sled. They’re wooden sleds with red ‘seat’s’ and metal runners. The rental for the day wasn’t much, under 20 euro each.

There’s another place that rents sleds further down the road, these are black and look a little faster. In the end, I was glad I stuck with the red ones.

Then it’s just a few meters to the start of the run. Having no experience with tobogganing I had no idea what to expect.

While there are areas that you slow down, it’s incredibly fast, steep, and full of hairpin turns, you’re out in the snow-covered woods and mountains and there’s no place to call for help if you need it. You shoot under stone bridges and past black mountain streams on your way down to Bergen.

My partner crashed several times, it’s relatively easy to do as it’s difficult to turn the sleds in time and you’re going so fast. Additionally as day turns to night the snow freezes and then no amount of digging your feet into the snow will slow you – it will just wear the rubber off the bottom of your shoes.

While there weren’t many people sledding the day we went I couldn’t help feeling that most of them had familiarity with the sport, and had probably grown up with it, as some had their own sleds and made the turns easily.

Most surprising is how dangerous it could easily be, there are no guardrails, if you make a mistake you could fly right off the course and down the mountain in some spots. I guess that’s part of the Swiss fun. And it was fun!

Out of all the things we did in Switzerland this was my favorite day.

When you finally make it to the bottom in a small town called Bergun there’s a bathroom and kiosk for some hot drinks and mulled wine. You need to pull your sled through the quaint town and back up to the train station to make the trip back up. Bergun was an old fashioned fairy-tale city, but I wondered how the residents must feel having their streets full of toboggans for half the year.

After our second run, we ate a small (thankfully warm) restaurant in the center of town that served big portions for small prices, bought some small souvenirs from a nearby store and then made it back up the mountain for our third attempt.

By this time it was full dark, and the run is fully lit as go down. The run was all ice by this time and for sure it was the fastest run of the day. While before we had stopped at various points to wait for each other – this time we both just made a mad dash to the bottom trying to just get there alive.

Although we could have gone one more time my travel partner was tired and it was a cold, trip home in the train where we sat on the floor by the heating vents. Most people were dressed properly for the snow, but we weren’t. At the very least you need some boots with good rubber grips and that can be waterproofed with mink oil.

You’ll also need a warm jacket and preferably some medium weight long underwear or some other underlayer and a hat and gloves.

We wanted to try other runs, but hearing they were even steeper and faster, we didn’t push our luck and instead tried ice skating.