“Emil & Karl” is an uplifting 22-minute film that follows two dads and their young sons on a six-day bikepacking journey through the Swiss Alps. With patience, humor, and a healthy dose of pushing, it’s a celebration of childlike wonder and shared family adventure. Watch it and find an introduction from director Holger Wimmer here…
One hundred and sixty kilometers. Roughly 6,000 meters of climbing. Two dads. Two kids, both two-and-a-half years old. Countless naps. And exactly zero moments that went according to plan. Welcome to what might be the most unconventional bikepacking trip ever attempted around the Swiss National Park.
How it All Started
Jakob Breitwieser and I have known each other since 2013. Every two or three years since then, we’ve cooked up some kind of mountain bike project together, at least until scheduling the next one started to get… complicated. Jakob became a dad in 2021.
Finding a window in the parental calendar turned into its own minor expedition, until Jakob shrugged and said the line that started all of this: “If we can’t find a date without the kid, we’ll just bring him along.” Said. Done.
What happened next, no one could have planned, and maybe that was the best part. Konne, Jakob’s friend and neighbor, who had also recently joined the dad club, caught wind of the idea and was immediately in. Beyond the parallel parenting timelines, the two share hobbies like biking and climbing. The moms were surprisingly easy to convince, and just like that, the roster was set.
A film project quietly turned into an actual family expedition: Jakob with his son, Emil, and Konne with his son, Karl. Two dads, both mountain bikers of 25+ years, both towing a two-and-a-half-year-old in a trailer. Plus the film crew (Marcus and me) on e-bikes, who, despite tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and camera backpacks, somehow still hauled less weight than the two dads on their fully analog bikes.
Marmot’s Land as Inspiration
The backdrop for the trip was the Marmot’s Land route, found here on BIKEPACKING.com. Officially listed as a five- to six-day tour, it spans 274 kilometers and 7,950 meters of climbing, topping out at 2,669 meters. We connected it with one of the most beautiful bikepacking routes in the Swiss Engadin, looping around the national park: Val Mora, Val Müstair, over to Livigno in Italy, then up to the Kesch Hut and back.
Sounds glorious. It is. But with its brutally steep climbs and singletrack sections, the route is also a serious physical undertaking for two dads. It became clear pretty fast that we’d need special singletrack trailers from Tout Terrain just to make this thing physically possible with a kid on board. That added roughly 65 kilos to the equation, kid included, on top of bike and rider. And what neither dad had thought about was swapping their chainrings for something smaller, normally ridden unloaded around Freiburg in the Black Forest, which turned out to be wildly over-geared for Swiss alpine passes. Suffice it to say, we were less than perfectly prepared.
Day 1: Zernez to Ftan
We started in Zernez, the gateway to the Swiss National Park. Departure time: noon. With kids, everything takes a little longer. After the first flat kilometers, it happened fast: both kids fell asleep, almost in sync. Not a problem at all. Jakob and Konne tucked them into the trailers, where they kept napping happily, bobbing and swaying along. Perfect. Now the dads could concentrate on riding, because rule number one of the trip turned out to be: “The moment the kids are asleep, the dads cover as much ground as humanly possible.” The next play break tends to arrive sooner than you’d like out here.
The challenge: legs, steep mountains, and absurdly tall gearing combined with 65 kilos of children, toys, diapers, trailers, food, tents, and everything that comes with all of the above. By 6 p.m., we rolled into Ftan. Right on cue, the kids announced that they were hungry. Immediately. No discussion. The additional 1,000 vertical meters originally on the menu were quietly deleted. We improvised, asked around for a place to sleep, and were promptly offered one.
Day 2: Ftan to Scuol
Wide trails, a solid rhythm, and halfway along the route, at Alp Laret, a Swiss alphorn brass band. The kind of clichéd welcome that you couldn’t script if you tried: perfect weather, an enormous view, music, and Kaiserschmarrn. The tour can absolutely keep going like this. Plan A was another 500 vertical meters up to Piz Minschun, but Emil and Karl had other ideas. They wanted to ride their balance bikes themselves. So down toward Scuol they went, under their own power, until—surprise—the next nap.
At the campground in Scuol, we celebrated a shower, electricity (for the e-bike batteries), and, far more importantly, a massive playground. Paradise for the kids, badly needed recovery for everyone else. Slowly, we started to learn the rhythm of the trip. Mostly by not planning it, and just following it.
Day 3: Over the Costainas Pass
From Scuol came the first five-kilometer kick up toward S-charl and on to the Costainas Pass. With plenty of stops to throw rocks in the river, change diapers, eat outrageously well, and take a few more breaks than originally hoped, we made the top.
From the Costainas Pass, Emil and Karl got back on their balance bikes for the first descending kilometers. It was the first proper mountain bike trail section of their lives, still with the dads nearby, but genuinely rad, full of action, and the grins were enormous. Then everyone swapped back to the big bikes, and we dropped down into Val Müstair to our next bed, gathering energy for what came next.
Day 4: The Most Beautiful Valley
Day four served up another solid 1,200 meters of climbing, this time into the stunning Val Mora, which many call the most beautiful valley in Switzerland. Below the Umbrail Pass, we savored wide mountain meadows and a path that felt like a long, slow exhale. A steady stream of other people, on bikes and on horseback, passed us and did double-takes when they realized the two dads were doing this without e-bikes.
The descent got more technical, narrower, more washed out, and more demanding. It was exactly the kind of terrain that Jakob and Konne, with 25+ years of mountain biking in their legs, were ready for. The two boys rode up front on their Shotgun seats, eyes huge at the stuff their dads were rolling down, having an absolute blast. In a few spots, the trail was so chewed up that we had to dismount and walk. A mountain bike with a kid trailer attached handles like an 18-wheeler on terrain like that.
Down at Lago di San Giacomo in Italy, we refueled Italian-style before grinding another 300 meters up over the Passo Trela to Livigno. August in Livigno means one thing: Ferragosto. Every campground full. We rode from one to the next, and the whole valley was sold out. Lucky for us, we ran into another bike tourist who’d been our neighbor the night before. He’d snagged the last emergency spot at one campground. The owner shook his head, “I really shouldn’t be letting you sleep here, you’re right next to the dumpsters.” It was that or nothing.
Day 6: Pass Chaschauna
A 7 a.m. wake-up call came courtesy of the garbage truck and the loud, rhythmic emptying of the glass recycling. What a way to start the queen stage. It was time for Pass Chaschauna, with an average gradient of 19 percent. With the load we were hauling, “riding” was no longer on the table early on. It was more like push, pause, push more, briefly question life choices, push some more. The redeeming factor was the two kids, who absolutely owned their role as co-pilots.
They kept the entertainment going, called for play breaks, and dispensed a steady supply of distracting toddler thoughts. Jakob had to convince Emil that there’d be more cows at the top, so we wouldn’t have to bail back down to see the ones we’d just passed. Emil was skeptical, but Jakob was right, and Emil even got bonus pigs on the way up. On the climb, Konne and Karl were stopped by bikers who, in disbelief, asked for a photo. “Otherwise, nobody will believe me,” one said.
After five hours of climbing, we made it. All of us were at 2,687 meters on the Chaschauna. Along with the absurd view (Ortler, among others), we refilled energy reserves and negotiated with two toddlers about exactly how many rocks they were allowed to take home, because, according to them, these were objectively the most beautiful rocks on the planet. A pretty normal day on this trip.
From the Chaschauna Pass, the two kids took their balance bikes back down the flow trail into Switzerland.
Day 7: The Kesch Hut
The plan was to climb to the Kesch Hut, sleep there, and descend the next day. The hut sits in an unreal spot, looking straight at Piz Kesch and its glacier. Marcus and I, filming, were already mentally drafting the sunset shots. Since we’d loop back to S-chanf anyway, the dads decided to save weight: leave the trailers and tents down in the valley, and only carry the essentials up. The catch: the kids still needed their naps. In the trailer, that had been working beautifully. The dads kept moving while the kids slept. Now they’d have to stop and wait it out.
So, very on-brand, we set off way later than planned. It became clear fast that Karl was already cooked and ready to nap after just six kilometers. Fine: Jakob and Emil would push on ahead, and Konne and Karl would catch up after the nap once Emil started his own further up the trail. Jakob and Emil tore up the steepest pitches. Ditching the weight had worked magic. But the catch was that there was no cell service anywhere in the valley. Jakob and Konne had no way to communicate. Marcus and I had split up, each shadowing one of the dads.
And so the inevitable happened: Karl recharged his batteries on a five-hour (!) nap, but by the time he woke up, it was too late to make it up to the hut before sunset. Jakob, from high up the climb, could see straight down into the valley and quickly clocked that the others weren’t catching up. So, after Emil’s nap, he turned around and rode back down to them. Because, for him, the rule of being out in the mountains together is simple: you stick together.
What Stays With You
If this trip taught us one thing, it’s something that applies to any bikepacking adventure, but takes on a whole new depth with kids along: “Plan generously. Improvise gladly. Let go of what isn’t working. Hold on to what actually matters.”
Emil and Karl didn’t teach us this on purpose. They taught us because they’re kids: curious, unbothered, and fully in the moment. They turned this trip into what it was. Not perfect, not complete, but whole. We hope this report and the film push you to try it yourself. With kids. With a trailer. With overly aggressive chainrings if it has to be. The mountains are patient. The kids, usually, are too.
You can learn more about “Emil & Karl” on the film’s official website.
Further Reading
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