Tour der Rekorde

Tour of Records

Warm-Up Since we arrived in Sterzing only in the afternoon, there wasn’t time for a proper stage. To warm up, the short outing to the nearby Gilfenklamm was just right. The steep rocks and high waterfalls were truly spectacular! Day 1 Then it really started. And in wonderful weather: Some of us rode without a shirt, even though it was already the end of September! Our first summit was the Penser Joch. There we had a magnificent view! Afterwards, we rolled down to Bolzano. Just before reaching our daily goal, we rode through about 20 tunnels and humorously tried to ride up a vineyard road with a 30% grade while carrying luggage. Day 2 The next day, the Niger Pass was on the agenda. Especially where the road passed through a town, there were always steep sections with almost 20% gradients that challenged us greatly. After a small coffee break at Niger Pass, we weren’t far from the Karer Pass. The hotel there offered the "best pizza in Europe" and was located just below the Rosengarten. So we decided to spend the night there. Day 3 The day before we had gone almost entirely uphill, now it was almost entirely downhill. Often we rode past vineyards through Val di Fiemme down to Trento. While we didn’t gather too many altitude meters on this stage, the distance was in the three digits. In the evening, we rode up a hill in Trento where the mausoleum of Cesare Battisti is located. Day 4 The first 40 km through Valsugana were unusually flat. It wasn’t until we reached the foot of the mountain that we had planned for this stage that we encountered some nasty steep sections. Since we didn’t want to reach the summit in darkness, we saved that for the next day and ended the stage about 650 meters below the summit at the Rifugio Carlettini. Day 5 The next morning, we unfortunately had to realize that a rainy day awaited us. The remaining altitude meters mostly took us along wet gravel paths to Passo Cinque Croci. In the rain and temperatures barely above 0 °C, the clouds also didn’t reward us with a nice view, and the truly unpleasant part was the bitterly cold descent. In the afternoon, a flooded gravel road transformed into a steep downhill trail that we had to push uphill. But about that we could only laugh in hindsight! Day 6 My favorite stage was the sixth: From San Martino di Castrozza, we first climbed to Passo Rolle (1989 m). From there, we had a great view of the 3000s, which had hidden themselves in the clouds the day before. We then rolled down 400 m to immediately crank back up to the Valles Pass (2032 m). Along the way, there was practically no traffic, every now and then a cow would cross the road. After the long, cold descent down to about 800 m in altitude, we had to warm up first with some hot chocolate or coffee. Then we were highly motivated to tackle the third mountain to reach the world-famous Cortina d'Ampezzo. As with the other mountain roads of the day, the road to Passo di Falzarego (2105 m) was very pleasant to ride, not too steep and in good condition. At dusk, we rolled down, and after a brief yet impressive encounter with a fox, we actually reached Cortina d'Ampezzo. We called this stage "queen stage", as it offered us not only 2360 meters of elevation gain and 93 km, but also a lot of scenic beauty to enjoy. Day 7 The next day, we were challenged in a completely different way. Practically the entire course through Fanesalm consisted of gravel paths, some of which were quite steep uphill. Thanks to our experience at Lake Garda, we were somewhat used to it, but we still had to push from time to time. The landscape at Passo di Limo looked like it was from another world: huge, rugged mountains, many of which had already seen landslides. The difficult search for accommodation eventually succeeded in St. Martin in Thurn. Day 8 With Würzjoch, we conquered the sixth 2000 of the tour on the last stage: Personal record! Through the Eisack Valley and the Wipptal Valley, we then returned to Sterzing. But since we were in search of records, we took another detour into the Pfitscher Valley to break the 600-km mark: in the end, we had 610 km on the odometer.