After arriving in Czech in early July, we decided to take a quick 7 day trip to Italy and re-visit an old favorite of ours - Prato a Stelvio and a new town 50k south of there, Ponte di Legno. I repo'ed my wife's road bike and brought it with me to keep in Czech with the hope to watch and climb some of the Tour de France climbs. We altered our plans slightly and met couple of our friends visiting from California to do a few Giro di Italia climbs - Passo di Gavia and Passo di Stelvio.
The elevation did not make things easy and the first few days were not much fun. Even though the Stelvio is definitely a longer a tougher climb, having couple of extra days at elevation really helped and the 25 km climb up the Stelvio felt quite enjoyable - the first and second time. Total climbing time from Prato was 2h:25m, with approx 30 minutes descending.
So even though the Gavia was much shorter and the elevation gain smaller, the 15k climb was a bear. At times I cursed my decision to stick with the 39x25, but having just setup Aimee's bike with a 9-speed tranny, I did not have a 27 cog handy. So I wrote the climbs off as another opportunity for some low-cadence strength training and concentrated on enjoying the scenery, whenever I possibly could. And the scenery was one of a kind...
I've seen couple of different bike tour companies operate on the slope and provide SAG to their riders. I started my ascent a bit later than most riders and counted about 40 or so riders descending in the afternoon sun. Most sane persons would have already climbed, enjoyed their espressos and lattes and moved on to an afternoon nap and a massage. Well, more road for me!
And the reward... the pass with a small restaurant celebrating the 50th anniversary of Giro di Italia, which just passed through here in May. I contemplated dropping down a few miles and climbing back out, but I really wasn't looking for more more 50-cadence climbing and decided to hang out at the top, which was frequented by mountain and road bikers as well as many motorcyclists. Here are couple more pictures, the rest can be found on the link below.
Here is the happy geek himself:
And the bar-restaurant - Rifugio Bonetta:
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