Today we made a few changes to our route on the fly. Originally we had planned to climb the Mortirolo out of Tirano, but we thought better of that since my knees have been tricky. That climb is a monster, averaging 10+% and we didn’t need to put ourselves through that. Instead we detoured around and climbed Aprica Pass (via Stazzona) and then Tonale Pass. 2550m of climbing and about 120km distance.
With our normal early start, we had already wrapped up Aprica before we even fully woke up. In fact, about 15 min from the top we had our first (and only) coffee of the day from a classic Italian corner bar.
I really, really love Italy!
One piece of good news is that my knees are back to normal, as far as I can tell! It does seem almost too good to be true to have an injury like that heal without rest days, but thankfully the setup changes really worked wonders. Or, perhaps the crash on day one did more damage than we thought and part of it had healing from that. I still have some pretty nasty looking bruises on both knees, my hip and my shoulder. Oh, my finger is almost 100% too, no more wrapping it or anything.
A brief aside on my power meter pedals: For this trip I bought dual-sided power pedals so I can track the power of each leg individually. It’s not uncommon to measure power for one leg and just multiply it x2, assuming your other leg puts out the same power. But, in fact, it’s quite common to have a power imbalance and after injuring my left knee, the imbalance was dramatic. At the end of day 2, my power balance was as bad as 35:65. Every day since it’s improved and today, over the course of the entire ride, my power balance was 50:50. ⭐ for my knees!
Back to the ride: we descended from Aprica for 20-25 minutes. It was a nice descent that required minimal braking, which was a big change from yesterday’s. Minimal traffic, but on descents traffic is less noticeable because we’re moving much closer to car speed.
Of course, once you run out of downhill, it’s pretty much uphill again so for the next 2-3 hours we were either heading to the base of the Tonale or actually climbing it. All of that’s uphill and in quite a busy valley full of all sorts of ways to enjoy the outside.
Probably the biggest annoyance of the day was the motorcycles. Most drivers in Italy are perhaps a bit aggressive with pretty close passes being the norm. Three foot rule? Bah, they use the metric system! But anyway, the motorcycles on Saturday and Sunday are absolutely insane. We must have been passed by many hundreds of motorcycles driving very aggressively in groups, etc. I’m sure they’re having a blast but it gets old (and I know it makes me sound old). Anyways rant off. Once I’m able to post more videos I’ll have to do a motorcycle supercut!
The Tonale feels like a classic climb with switchbacks, crisscrossing gondola tracks, and of course construction that causes traffic to run in waves as the one thru lane alternates directions. Incidentally, no, motorcycles are not content to wait in line and will zoom all over the road passing at double the speed limit…. Anyway, I digress. Weather was pretty perfect for me because I like to ride in the heat – I’d say upper 80’s was the norm today.
Most there, this sign was an old one taken from the top:
And we made it! At the top was all sorts of infrastructure for skiing, most of it shuttered for the season. But there was an extremely popular biker bar (for motorcyclists) and also some downhill MTB action going on, in addition to your normal tourists and of course, other cyclists from both sides.
Next would come about 40km of descending through the Val di Sole, fast and steep at first (on pretty crappy roads, to be honest) then slower but beautiful bike trails further down. Once we reached a low enough altitude, we found ourselves riding through field after field of fruit trees, many of them with visible fruit ripening.
The day was getting long with elapsed ride time approaching 10 hrs and actual on bike time at 7 1/2 hrs. So we were glad to finally reach our hotel in Brez, giving us a good launching pad for tomorrow to Bolzano along with a monstera mountain pass to its east.
