MILKING TRAILS

Have you ever wondered about all those ancient trails winding and weaving throughout the European Alps? How old are they? Who built them? I have questions like this about many places I go on my bike. The Milking Trails journey started from a love of simple, raw milk, and a daydream about how funny it could be to ride through the Alps shredding singletrack and stopping at dairy farms to drink milk and eat cheese.

I initially dismissed it as a silly idea, but some weeks later I was talking to a friend, Nancy, while in Verbier, Switzerland. The conversation drifted from my job and upcoming adventure trips to wholesome food and her knowledge of the Swiss people, and I laughingly dropped in my daydream story. Nancy proceeded to fill me in on the operations of Swiss mountain folk. Now I had the “key”. The cows are taken up high into the alpine grazing for the entire summer, where they are milked at “alpage” huts. With access often remote, the milk can’t be delivered, hence the old tradition of a simple life lived in the alpine, focused on daily cheese