Ride the most beautiful dirt roads and trails, climb the highest off-road mountain passes and ride face to face with incredible rock shapes.
Grassy meadows, windy ridges, cabins with a view, local food and craft beer. The adventure begins from the uncontaminated Tires valley, half an hour's drive from Bolzano. Start your day while the morning sun rises on the shoulders of the Catinaccio mountain, pedal in harmony among larches, fields and crops. Small ancient villages and castles will show you the way north to the medieval town of Castelrotto before entering Gardena.
The Puez-Odle Natural Park and Alta Badia now await you with some of the most iconic peaks in the whole region. Feel like a Giro d'Italia pro as you climb the legendary Pordoi Pass, but please remember your true nature: that of a Gravel Grinder! Enjoy the off-road fun again with a glimpse of the Marmolada glacier, descend into Val di Fassa and then again, ascend in silence reaching the Alpe di Siusi. This is the largest European plateau and they were lucky cows living at the foot of the imposing silhouette of Mount Sassopiatto.
This is the tour planned by Michele Minessi and his associates and this is their story: "The tour is not our own work but in any case good, local work from our friend Alberto Frizziero who for some time has organized a very beautiful thing which has to do with gravel in the Dolomites ( Dolomiti Gravel ).
Given his experience and passion, we could only rely on him and one of his tour packages.
Alberto is tailoring bike packer tours for gravel in the Dolomites, tours of all kinds but above all, what we like, tours that are not at all obvious for true lovers of wild cycling... obviously he has satisfied us. It's summer, the end of a long holiday spent in a van along the Alps, it seemed right to treat ourselves to one last trip to end the holiday well, and like any self-respecting improvisation, Piero joins us at the last minute!
Meeting in the evening, dinner in the vans, packing bags, a greeting to Alberto who comes to visit us, between a glass of wine and a plate of pasta carbonara, it gets late and we retire to the vans for the night.
The next day, ready to leave Tires, we immediately realize that it won't be a walk but Alberto had prepared some local variations for us, mostly along dirt roads we reach the Siusi plateau and the Molignon refuge where in theory the stage ended but we continued because we decided that we would sleep in a tent somewhere as soon as we found a place we liked and so it went, after passing the Sella pass we knew that going down a forestry road we would come across some tool sheds, and seeing as Piero was without a tent we were looking for one for the night to shelter from the incoming storms.
We will remember it for a long time, the search for the shed, one closed, the other collapsed, and here we are, we approach it, it's a little crooked but it's open... it's him!
Piero and Giudi's enthusiasm is uncontainable... mine a little less since it seemed to me that a light breeze was enough to make it collapse. I am the eldest and most responsible, I have to contain this delirious enthusiasm... but in the end I let myself go and give in to happiness on the condition that we would have dinner outside and if it hadn't collapsed for the entire duration of the dinner then we would have gone in... fortunately it didn't collapse, it sheltered us from the storm, we slept very well obviously on the ground but with bags and mattresses we didn't miss anything!
In the morning breakfast with what was left and off we went in the saddle, unfortunately the weather worsened again in the late morning so we returned skipping the Vajolet part but we had already been there on foot, so not bad, passage through Lake Carezza, many many beautiful forest roads and here we are again to the vans ready for rivers of beer!
