Raid Dolomites Day 5

A long days riding. Leaving Chiavenna you immediately start on a climb up the Maloja Pass. Can’t be a very special climb as I don’t recall much about it, apart from the fact that when you get to the top there is no descent the other side. Instead there is a large lake there that you ride around eventually reaching St Moritz. Despite some warnings this proved quite simple to traverse unlike the next col which followed it.

This was the Bernina pass and though it marked the high part of the day (in metres terms) it gets my vote as the least enjoyable climb of the trip, principle amongst which was the biting headwind that I had to ride into throughout the climb. There are some nice glaciers on view but these don’t make up for the long straights and the absence of anything special when you get the highest point. I was very happy to make it there and head down over the other side.

The more so as the weather turned more sunny and I met up with the support lorry to get some fruit and drink. Coming over the next pass (Forcola di Livigno) I was overtaken for the only time in the trip, by a mountain bike of all things. In my defence the rider was in some sort of race that finished at the top of the climb (I had another 50km and 2 more climbs to go).

Once over Livigno I headed down to the village of the same name. This was situated in a very picturesque valley. I almost came a cropper by missing a turning and heading down when I should have started to go up but fortunately I realised my mistake early so did not waste too much time/energy. There were a couple of climbs, Eira and Foscagno that came one after another. The final climb over the Foscagno was made weird and a bit hard by the fact that there was a huge traffic jam before the customs stop at the top. I found out later that this is due to Livigno having a special tax free status which means people pop over the mountain to stock up on cheap booze, cigarettes and the like. The downside to this is having to risk a several hour wait to get back.

Neither of the final climbs were particularly hard , though the cumulative effect of riding 130km and climbing nearly 3000m on top of a couple of previous hard days was making itself felt by the end. Nonetheless after the final descent I had enough energy left to catch up a couple of the New Zealanders in the party on the final stretch into Bormio. This proved to be a good thing as I found out from them that our support lorry was stuck in the traffic jam we had just passed. Little point heading to the hotel so we found a café in nice sunny square in Bormio and waited there, eventually to be joined by other members of our group.

Eventually word came that the lorry had arrived so we headed to the hotel, looking forward to the Stelvio the next day.


Days stats: Distance 131km Time 6:02, AVS 22kph, Mclimb 2916,