Stelvio questions.

davep1

meursault wrote:

Also just returned from Bormio.

Had a great weekend in a truly iconic location. I found the climb from Bormio harder than Ventoux. I would go as far as one Passo di Stelvio equals two Ventoux ascents! Maybe I was fitter/lighter last year, but I think I did roughly the same amount of training. From what I read and local information, they say the average gradient is about 6% It could well be, due to some short (too short) false flats etc. but in reality most of the climb is 9-11% and the end is pretty steep too. I have a heart rate monitor and wanted to keep in the three zone to conserve some energy, so I knew I would make the summit, but I was slow and way down the Strava pages. We rode on the Saturday and there are so many motorbikes it almost ruins the day. Riding non weekend if you can is good advice. Same as Ventoux, I realise the mountain is for everybody, but the noise and way they race is inconsiderate. Most car drivers patient and courteous. It's busy at the top but plenty of choice for food and drink and more beautiful views. Excellent descent, but the bikes we hired Trek Domanes, were not that good. Didn't feel stable to really push the speed, we were not impressed with them. be careful of the damp patches in the tunnels too. Overall excellent trip, and created the sort of memories money can't buy, highly recommended.

Really looking forward to my trip now! Bit worried about my fitness, nowhere near where I have been in years gone by. Am doing lots of hilly rides at the moment and can practice on the Blockhaus in Italy the weeks before, so should be ok. Hopefully the weather is reasonable and the lack of traffic should take the worst part of it away.

meursault

DaveP1 wrote:

meursault wrote:

Also just returned from Bormio.

Had a great weekend in a truly iconic location. I found the climb from Bormio harder than Ventoux. I would go as far as one Passo di Stelvio equals two Ventoux ascents! Maybe I was fitter/lighter last year, but I think I did roughly the same amount of training. From what I read and local information, they say the average gradient is about 6% It could well be, due to some short (too short) false flats etc. but in reality most of the climb is 9-11% and the end is pretty steep too. I have a heart rate monitor and wanted to keep in the three zone to conserve some energy, so I knew I would make the summit, but I was slow and way down the Strava pages. We rode on the Saturday and there are so many motorbikes it almost ruins the day. Riding non weekend if you can is good advice. Same as Ventoux, I realise the mountain is for everybody, but the noise and way they race is inconsiderate. Most car drivers patient and courteous. It's busy at the top but plenty of choice for food and drink and more beautiful views. Excellent descent, but the bikes we hired Trek Domanes, were not that good. Didn't feel stable to really push the speed, we were not impressed with them. be careful of the damp patches in the tunnels too. Overall excellent trip, and created the sort of memories money can't buy, highly recommended.

Really looking forward to my trip now! Bit worried about my fitness, nowhere near where I have been in years gone by. Am doing lots of hilly rides at the moment and can practice on the Blockhaus in Italy the weeks before, so should be ok. Hopefully the weather is reasonable and the lack of traffic should take the worst part of it away.

Buona fortuna! If it feels too easy at the start you are doing something right! Don't forget to post your thoughts.

crescent

meursault wrote:

If it feels too easy at the start you are doing something right!

This was my approach, too. My goal was to complete the climbs without putting my foot down. This was only possible (for me at least) by proper pacing and keeping my HR below 160. At 170 I am in the red and breathing out my @**e so quite a lot of my preparation was understanding my heart rate and limitations better. Nothing new in this approach but it worked a treat and it's definitely worth resisting the temptation to set off too quickly. Typically, I now feel as if I could probably have done it a bit faster but it's a fine line I suppose. Thoroughly enjoyable week.
There are a lot of pros in the area and I came across quite a few of them on the Passo del Foscagno, which seems to be quite a popular training climb. Several riders from Lotto Soudal, Deceunick, Gazprom and what looked like the entire Israel Cycling Academy all zipping about with team cars following. Quite humbling when you are toiling away and a couple of them pass you chatting to each other or texting on their phone.

meursault

Yes, we had Astana (B) fly past us, my mate managed to shout 'Sky' (fatigue). Did look cool though, pro chaingang.

meursault

This is pretty cool, might be the new relive? I dunno??

There's a couple of weird bits where I lost gps in the tunnels, but still.

https://ayvri.com/scene/r7j0q6wdky/cjyt ... 65n94tnhy6

davep1

Just back from 3 weeks away, which peaked :roll: for me with the climb to the top of the Stelvio from Bormio on Saturday morning, on Stelvio Day, the day they close the road to vehicles. It’s free, you don’t even have to register, you just turn up and ride. You know those days, when the road and weather come together to make an experience you have dreamt about and planned for years exceed all expectations, to sear the pictures in your brain?! Wow!
We go to Italy every year during the last two weeks of August, and have discovered various different ways of getting there. Unfortunately, last year I crashed on the bike and broke my scapula 2 days before we were due to start the journey...luckily my daughter's boyfriend was coming along to share the driving, and the comfiest place for my body was sat in a car seat with the elbow rest... Anyway, this all meant I hadn't done a proper mountain climb for two years, the South Downs have plenty of the short steep climbs that are common in southern England, but nothing like the mountains, where you just sit in bottom gear for what seems like hour after hour, sweat running off your sunnies and splattering the top tube, occasionally you check you haven't got a gear left...

This is the site for Stelvio Day - http://www.stelviopark.bz.it/en/radtag/ I'm waiting for the update for 2019.

The road is also closed from Bormio, although they don't publicise it as much as far as I can see. I tried to do the ride from Prato in 2017, but snow meant they closed the road to all traffic at Trafoi; I found out about the closure before I got dressed so didn't even bother taking the bike off the car. This year I couldn't find anywhere to stay in Prato so plumped for the Bormio climb.

Accomodation is very hard to find in the area this weekend, I think they get 11,000 riders when the weather is nice, and the hotels etc get booked up before Christmas. I managed to find somewhere that seemed reasonable, but it was outside Bormio at +400 m, which I didn't realise until we started driving up to it the night before. This might be on the Gavia route, or close by.

We drove up from Prato to the top and then down to Bormio on our approach. The two climbs are quite different, I would say the Prato side is more sheltered by trees (I can't think of any section on the Bormio side where there is complete tree cover) but the tunnels/galleria from Bormio are something different. I also think the road and corners from Bormio are marginally wider; to me the Bormio side felt marginally safer in the car. There was a sportive climbing up from Prato, with support cars for some riders and vans, and water stops, so possibly Prato was busier anyway, but it just seemed more fraught going up than coming down in the car.

We had a long drive to do on Saturday after my ride, so I got up before 6. I was still a bit sleepy, I couldn't work out how to get out of the hotel! I drove down into Bormio as I couldn't face the climb back to the hotel, and thinking about it now, riding down in the dark with a mere 6 degrees really would have frozen me before the main event. I then faffed about trying to find a car park space that I was sure was near the start of the climb, eventually settling for a small space near the "Bormio" sign in bricks on a corner. There weren't many riders around, and I was beginning to think I had the wrong weekend; luckily I spotted the road closure sign around the next corner.

The road closure is from 8 am til 4 pm, so I still had some traffic to cope with; most of it was considerate but there are arseholes everywhere. It felt to me like the Italians have got worse for close passing in the two years since I last rode in Italy. The early stages see you climb up away from Bormio, with fantastic views over your left shoulder to the valley below. After a few km, you turn east-ish into another valley, which starts with a pretty flat km, and the tunnels are in this section. One of them is narrow enough to be one-way and have traffic lights to control the flow; the longest is around 250 m I think. I have a Giant Neostrack computer which I have been really pleased with, but it really couldn’t deal with the tunnels. My Strava trace jumps a couple of km to the other side of the valley in two of them, and does some weird stuff in the others.
After the tunnels section, the hairpins come closely packed for a while, 14 of them over 3 km. I love the signs, but I found it hard to deal with the numbers, even in this part when it felt like you got through a lot (relatively) quickly. Passing the 29th hairpin knowing you have another 28 more ahead of you wasn’t very motivating.
Then you are climbing up the valley towards the peak, about 4 km without a hairpin, the sun was beginning to climb and light up the valley by now. There’s a church and memorial to the Italians that died here during the First World War. You can’t imagine what it would have been like to have been fighting a war up here a hundred years ago, as you keep grinding out your rhythm on the pedals. On the other side of the memorial is a dairy farm that was put in during Mussolini’s time, using electricity and modern machinery, to prove how advanced Italy had become under Fascism. One of the last cars to come up the climb had to wait for me to get out of the entrance to the farm as I was taking pictures so he could drive in.
Just before the Umbrail turning are 4 more hairpins, which is where I was passed by another cyclist. He went down the Umbrail road, so I didn’t feel so bad about being overtaken! The final 3 km have 6 or 7 hairpins, and felt really hard to me. I think the gradient is highest here, and of course you are near the top of the climb so the air is at its thinnest. There was music playing, and a load of banners, and something about Running the Stelvio, which I thought had been the week before. I thought about buying a Stelvio jersey, partly as a souvenir, but also because I knew I was going to be cold going back down. We’d spent some time in the shops and cafes at the top when we had driven up the day before, so I didn’t feel the need to hang around. The people organising the running event were inflating large sausage shaped barriers to corale the runners when they finished, I had a bit of a struggle to get past both of them.
The descent was magical, hard, but magical. After my accident last year, I am paranoid about crashing, and my brakes are a bit grabby which really doesn’t help the confidence. Other riders were only just getting to the top, but the further down I went there were larger and larger groups of them. It was interesting seeing their reactions to someone already coming down; a real mixture of surprise, friendliness and irritation! I had a couple of incidences of having to shout to warn climbers who had wandered all over the road, but at my reduced descending speed it wasn’t a major problem.
By the time I was going through the tunnels section, the numbers of climbers were getting larger and larger. I saw one guy on a hand-bike, two people with baby trailers behind, a small bunch of runners, loads of walkers and a couple of those land-skis they have in the mountains, along with all the other types of bike. When I got back to my car, I had to wait to cross the road, and then once in the car, I had a really long wait as the cyclists seemed to be flooding out of Bormio.

meursault

Nice write up. Brought back loads of memories. I stopped for espresso and water at the chalet before the set of hairpins on the way up. Had a great pizza at the summit. Few scary tunnel wet patch moments on the descent, but awesome ride, one of the best.

davep1

meursault wrote:

Nice write up. Brought back loads of memories. I stopped for espresso and water at the chalet before the set of hairpins on the way up. Had a great pizza at the summit. Few scary tunnel wet patch moments on the descent, but awesome ride, one of the best.

I wanted to stop there but it didn't look open before 8am!

rc856

Hi.
I’m heading to Bormio in August. The plan is to ride the Stelvio, Gavia and Mortirolo.
Due to fitness/mileage/chance to get out for serious training..the usual excuses 😄...we’ll probably just do a climb a day so no mega miles.
So I was wondering if it matters what order we do them in or would anyone suggest a ‘best’ order?

Cheers

fenix

We did the Stelvio and most of the Gavia - had to stop for the snow. Didnt get to the Mortirolo - I'd do it in any order. It's a long slog up to Santa Katarina from Bormio for the Gavia. We thought that was worse than any of the proper climbs - so if you can do that bit with a tailwind it would help.

durhamwasp

Yeah any order, wouldn't make too much difference, views from Stelvio are spectacular (and from Gavia too) so save that for the best clear day. We did all 3, Stelvio, Gavia, Mortirolo in that order.
https://snookcycling.wordpress.com/stelvio/

[Deleted User]

Can't comment on Mortirolo as I didn't do it during my visit last year, but both Stelvio and Gavia are equally difficult in my opinion but both very rewarding. I don't think it matters which order you do them in. Definitely try to fit in Laghi de Cancano too - just stunning, and features in the Giro this year as well.

gsk82

Crescent said:

dish_dash wrote:

If it helps with negotiations, there is a cracking thermal spa half way up the Stelvio....

We are visiting primarily to allow me to tick the Stelvio off my "to do" list but we do need other things to do as well.

Yes, Gavia and Mortirol. Both are far more enjoyable than Stelvio.

fenix

Oh yes we did Cancano too. Didn't mean to - just out for a ride. Blimey.

rc856

Great. Thanks 👍