The Stelvio Pass – 48 magic turns

The “Stilfser Joch”. The “Stelvio Pass”. The “Giogo dello Stelvio”. Also known as “Cima Coppi”, because of some heroic climb of one of the greatest italian bicycle-racers in older times. This is my home route since 25 years, my muse, my drama. 48 hairpin bends on the South Tyrolean site lead to the highest pass of Italy – directly in front of my door. That’s top, top of the Alps, isn’t it?

Before you read, please note: this post was translated with the help of Deepl.
If you find any errors – please have fun first and then give me a hint.

Today the Stelvio is the alpine passes superstar: the highest situated fairground in Europe, the highest situated traffic chaos in the Alps. But at one time it was just an old mule track, a path on which even the Romans sweated. Well, that doesn’t mean anything, because they were really everywhere.. Salt from Hall in Tyrol and wine from the Valtellina crossed the pass. Drinking is always the order of the day.

Despite the height of almost 2760 metres, the road rises by only 10% on average. The warmongers of the early centuries wanted to climb high with their heavy metal weapons and – around 1800 – had the road built as flat as possible. But “only 10%” and “flat” have to be put into perspective – on a bicycle you still suffer a lot of pain.

It feels like the route climbs through 34 vegetation zones – past apple orchards, rotten landslides, almost empty villages with dead ski lifts, through dense forests with curious deer, past respectable rock formations, creeping through narrow passages. Some of the peaks and dents in the road have been the same for years, some have disappeared, new ones arise constantly.

Old
  italian colour

While swinging through the hairpin bends, even after 25 years I still wonder which kind of colour the Giro d’Italia fans use for writing on the street – their slogans simply do not fade. Famous names, sprayed into the serpentines as graffiti, defy double-digit temperatures below zero and meter-high snow in winter. Cyclist dramas accompany on every metre, empty gel tubes and power bar packaging as well, garnished with fragments of motorcycle turn signals and mirrors.

There are some smaller parking places to watch the hustle and bustle, the munching and the falling – sometimes I sit down on the warm stones to look at the opposite mountain giants and to realize what a tiny grain of sand I am, in the gear of the world.

Franzenshöhe – a tennis court in the middle of the high mountains. It’s fenced in and rusty, but it’s there. Emperor Franz (no, not Beckenbauer) spent the night up here – and everything, in which an Austrian emperor once laid down his head, got his name afterwards. At the very top of the Stilfserjoch a certain Ferdinand also spent a night, once – the first hotel on the square therefore bore the name “Ferdinandshöhe”.

W aiting for the moment
when the Stelvio fetches a motorcycle

The landscape becomes barren. Marmots tidy up their lofts in the retaining walls and pile stones on the way. From time to time a fur lies on the back waiting for the bearded vulture to pick it up – or for the South Tyrolean Road Service, which already swings the broom at five in the morning.

No matter when, whether in the morning at five or in the afternoon at three – you feel that you are at a high altitude. After severe winters even in August there are still snowfields and your motorcycle is getting filthy. So you shouldn’t have a mania for cleaning, and you also should be able to cope with some ricochet when leaning into the bends. You should NOT think about the fact that in the Tibethütte people press their noses against the panorama windows and wait for the road to fetch a bike – this makes you feel unnecessarily nervous.

Shortly before the pass, sensitive noses will smell the waste water from the hotel facilities or the swaths of burnt sausages. After 48 hairpins, two close calls and twenty times hoping that the bus won’t appear behind the next corner, you are standing at the top and can’t find a parking place. Crazy, the junk of the kiosks, and – if you ever would find something to buy – you would end shocked about the price for it. You see skiers in the middle of summer and feel shocked, because you wish winter to be as far away as possible. Looking down into the valley you will be and will stay impressed, again and again, even after a thousand times of climbing the Stelvio.

I love it,
“my” Stelvio

It’s undergone a wonderful transformation over the past few years. 25 years ago, I was always on the path of neglect on the way to the top: parts of the road were missing, the ugly concrete blocks to secure the abyss were not always completely at the edge of the road – more than one was lying on the edge of the road, swept along by an avalanche, useless on barren green. Nobody cared about the dissolution of the road surface, nobody even cared about the racing cyclists lost in the wide asphalt crevasses.

But now you can find new, smooth – relatively smooth – tarmac at the very top. The unsightly concrete blocks, which did not do justice to the Queen of the Alpine passes, have given way to wonderful natural stone walls built with great effort by hand. The bottleneck at “Weisser Knott” is now an almost three-lane expressway, and wherever it was possible, the road was repaired and widened.

British TV stations sent their craziest employees with super cars through the 48 tornanti in order to subsequently award the Stelvio the Best Road of the World. Thousands of cyclists climb the mountain closed to motorised traffic on the Stilfserjoch cycling day – from all three possible sides, Prad, Bormio and Sta. Maria in Switzerland. The hardest run to the magic pass in a Marathon. I like to climb it early in the morning on one of my motorcycles to watch the sunrise behind the Tibet-Hütte. And in autumn 2018 I finally conquered the Stelvio on my bicycle.

The Stelvio is being revalued and appreciated again as what it is in the middle of the alpine high mountains: a masterpiece of engineering, a monument of the Alps, created in millions of working hours by thousands of workers’ hands.

A bright, curved ribbon
in the shadow of the Ortler

Perfectly matching