Pyrenees, Alps, Dolomites Solo

I stayed at Hotel Aurora. Pretty nice. They were very friendly, gave me a double room for single price. Very nice room, and a garage for the bikes if you want. The price is average for Andermatt. (twice what you pay in Italy)

Day 9. Time to say goodbye to beautiful Switzerland and head east to Italy.

Upon awaking and looking out the window, I see that the clouds had lifted to reveal that all the rain that fell in town was snow in the mountains.





I headed south over the St. Gothard Pass and got a look at the snow up close.







Brrr!! I'm from Key West!! This is cold!! Actually I was well prepared and very comfortable with my gear on.



Once down from the pass on the south side the skies cleared, the sun was shining and I was soon pulling over to take off the balaclava, change to my more comfy warm weather gloves, and enjoy the ride through small towns very close to the Italian border. My route however would have me turn back to the northeast and as I got close to San Bernadino Pass the air was getting cold again. At least the sky was mostly clear and the roads were dry.



I don't know why but I didn't take many photos this day. I have none of San Bernadino Pass. After the pass I rode northeast next to the autostrasse for a while before turning southeast towards St. Moritz.
I have no photos of Julier Pass, none of St. Moritz, and none of Bernina Pass.
These are the only two shots I have from that whole stretch.





At the top of Bernina Pass I turned left and crossed the border in to Italy, then over the Livigno Pass to the scenic town of Livigno.



282 KMs (175 miles)

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yup!

its a shocker no doubt



handy little gadget to remind you you're cold eh?

great pics for just using a phone!

I know it's too late now, but ...



priority to the right




you have the priority


nice trip

2000 the glacier was in a walking distance. In a few years it will be gone........



Great pics. Your IPhone camera is astounding!

Was in Switzerland, Italy and a few other countries in 97 but not on a motorcycle.

Really enjoying the RR and Pics.

For those that have never been there, it is very difficult for pictures--beautiful as they are--to fully capture the breathtaking views and feeling of being there live and in 3d.

Day 10.

Took a few pics from my room up on the hill over Livigno, Italy in the morning before heading out.







I rode over Passo Foscagno towards Bormio.



Just before Bormio I turned onto the Stelvio Pass road. The anticipation was building as this is such a well known pass, and I was excited to finally see it and be in the Dolomites. I started up the road which starts out with a ride along a ridge then you have a couple of switchbacks and then along the ridge, couple more switchbacks, along the ridge, a few more switchbacks, then you ride the ridge and come around a bend and finally see the steep lower section of the south side of Stelvio.



The falls that run down next to the pass.



From about half way up looking down.



After the steep section you ride around the side of the mountain and get to this part, nearing the summit.





At the summit there are lots of bikers and people in cars milling about, taking pictures and buying souvenirs and having coffee.







I started down the north side and didn't get far before I had to stop to take these.





Looking back up the north side headwall.



The weakness of the iPhone camera is evident when zooming.



I wasn't quite done with the switchbacks.



Ride The World.



At the base of Stelvio's north side. I'm a sucker for a church with a mountain backdrop.



Heading towards Merano I passed this castle.



Then I stopped for pizza and this McLaren was in the parking lot. It was attracting a lot of attention.





Full of pizza, I ride towards Passo Costalunga and the scenery gets real good.







If you come this way don't miss Lago di Carezza, a little emerald in the forest.







Continuing towards the Pordoi Pass























The scenic little town of Arabba that would be home for a few days to ride the surrounding area.



This was a really nice day with amazing scenery and great roads.


*EDIT* I'm so frustrated with Google Maps and trying to get the route correctly. It shows me on the Autostrasse a few times but I was actually on the secondary roads besides the highway. The GPS I used on the trip would sometimes try to trick me in to getting on the highway, too. Once I had to backtrack around 20 kms to avoid it.


234 KMs (145 miles)

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What a great ride through the mountains. I'm impressed with the use of the iphone.

[ <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"> <tbody><tr> <td class="dg-bbcode dg-bbcode-quote"> Originally Posted by DolphinJohn



</td> </tr> </tbody></table> Hi DolphinJohn,

Was enjoying your RR and photos and noticed you'd chosen one of my own favourite places to stop... especially in summer = nice and shady. I don't live too far from there... small world.

Keep it coming and ride safe.

Cheers
Potski



[/URL][/IMG]



Me too, looks like they filled in the guard rails and laid some fresh track. Great Ride. I'll have to look closer at your report, pretty sure this isn't the only pic that matches up, thanks for bringing back some good memories.

snowy Stelvio.... cool

2004

Thanks for the great ride report. We had breakfast with you in Andermatt on our trip. Glad to see the the rest of your trip went well. We might see you in Key West this March.

You got to go to the Stelvio Pass! I'm so jealous
One of my buddies drove it in his 135i this summer - he went with a group from the site 1addicts.com. I watched his vids of the experience - that must have been an unbelievable ride for you. I think the blokes on Top Gear also did an episode on it. Definitely on my bucket list.
I'm enjoying the RR. Keep it up!

Yeah, it was perfect; snowy but nice dry roads and clear sunny skies.

.

Hey, REDRIDER!! Yeah the rest of my trip was great. I will eventually finish the report, there's much more.

How about you guys? How was the rest of your trip? I guess you were on the tail end of yours and were headed down to Milano? (that's how you say it if you're cool and you've been to Italy )

I think I remember you saying you were going to Lake Como?

You have to do a ride report now, there's no avoiding it. You've outed yourself!

It was nice to get to speak some American with you guys. Let me know if you're coming down this way.

.

Incredible pictures!! Be safe & keep posting

Thanks Dubl-A and everyone for the comments.

I'm safe at home on my couch now. I'm going to try to get the report finished up very soon.

.

I was told about about Arabba and Hotel Olympia by the REDRIDER2 crew who had just been there. I had originally planned to stay in Corvara just a few kms north but firsthand knowledge is always good.

They were spot-on and I knew I would like the place from the moment I walked in the lobby and was greeted by a very sexy (in a subtle way) young woman with dark hair wearing glasses and a traditional Tyrolean dress, which is low-cut like you'd see at an Octoberfest. (ok, that part wasn't so subtle).

I asked if there was a room available for three or four nights and she said no, the hotel is full ..... but there is an apartment available in the Residence Panorama which is on the hill above the hotel and connected by a covered stairway.

"Hmmm", I thought to myself, "that sounds expensive. An apartment... I just need a room."

I asked how much the apartment was and she said "it's 60 euros including breakfast and dinner".

I almost laughed out loud. Dinner alone was nearly 60 euros in Switzerland. "I'll take it" I said.

While she was checking me in people were coming and going and I heard her speaking German and Italian.

Trying to be charming, I said "wow, you speak English, German, and Italian?"
She said yes but her native language is not Italian but Ladin. I had never heard of Ladin (big surprise) and she said it is the native language of the Dolomites. I asked if it was similar to Italian and she said no, it is completely different.

So, I rode up to my apartment and checked out the view of the town and surrounding mountains from the balcony.






I showered and spread my map out on the kitchen table to plan the next few days. It was nice to be in a place where I could take leisurely rides, leave the side cases home, and just enjoy the surroundings.

I was quite surprised to find that the included dinner was a nice 4 course meal with a salad bar and several choices for primo, secondo, and dolce. The food was very good and I met some nice people from all over. Nearly everyone staying here in the summer is on a bike. There are lots of Ducatis, Aprillias, Japanese sport bikes, a few Harleys, and of course the big BMW 1200 GS. It seems like every other bike is a GS.
I met a nice guy from Germany who was retired and loved to bring his bikes down to ride the Dolomites. On this trip he had brought these two Ducatis.



The elevation of Arabba is over a mile high and I was huffing for breath after climbing the stairs back to the apartment from the hotel. I'm a sea-level flatlander, remember.

Ok, on to the riding....

The first day I wanted to check out a lake I had read about in someone's ride report so I started by heading east out of town. A few kms up the road you come around a bend and get this view. (forgive the wires, there are limited places where it is safe to pull over)



And a few more kms up the road, a closer look.



Continuing on, I turned to the south and through some forest with nice connected sweepers and a few hairpins as I descended in to the valley. I passed through a few small villages along the way that I stupidly never really photographed.
My one regret from the whole trip is not capturing the small towns and the way the road winds through them with buildings built right up to the road sometimes creating a canyon-like feel.

I then climbed up Passo Fedaia and back down to the valley where the lake is.

Lago di Fedaia is a dam-made lake that sits at the base of the Marmolada, the highest mountain in the Dolomites at 3343 meters (almost 11,000 ft.).



















A few kms past the lake there is a clearing with another angle of Marmolada







From there I went over the Pordoi again and back down to Arabba. It was a short loop but very scenic and I took my time and enjoyed every moment of it.

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brilliant

we stayed in Canazai last year, Hotel Fiordaliso, and did the same thing... left bags & rode loops.
Dolomites are amazing.

damn fine pics too mate (but I told you that).

more please

Ladin is a vulgarized latin left over by Romans mixed with the pre-roman local languages - its one of the "grandfathers" of Italian ... Italian itself as we now know, is a really young language, that have no more of 200 years of official use and less than 50 of vulgar/people use . in fact is the TV that imposed the italian language to ... italians

there's a good page in wikipedia if you are interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladin_language

This is the Civetta mount 3220 metres , and its world-famous (at least between climbers) northwest side
The north-western side of the mountain has a steep cliff more than 1,000 m high. In 1925 Emil Solleder and Gustl Lettenbauer climbed a route on it which is historically considered the first "sixth grade" in six-tier scale of alpinistic difficulties proposed by Willo Welzenbach (actually corresponding to 5.9 ). Thirty years later UIAA used it as a basis for its grading system.

Subscribed thread !

Thanks, Giorgio!!