Today was going to be a slam-dunk. The sun was shining, we were in the middle of the Dolomites, and we were on motorcycles. For our first day in the area I had put together a loop that would take in the best roads and sights that I experienced 2 years ago. It was nice to start the day knowing the roads were going to be great, as opposed to the last few days where we explored and hoped for the best.
Breakfast was excellent and even more filling than last trip since the hotel has added made-to-order egg dishes to their offerings in the morning. I went with the bacon and eggs, and found the eggs delicious but the bacon nearly raw - the concept of crispy cooked bacon hasn't really caught on in the area I suppose. They don't know what they're missing.
One of the best things about the Hotel Mesdi (and there are many good things) is it's location - it's literally on a hairpin curve at the base of my favorite pass in the Alps, Passo Pordoi. You turn right out of the parking lot and start swinging the bike side to side as you ascend the mountain. That fun would have to wait a bit on this day as first order of business was fueling up and the nearest gas station was 4 miles on the other side of town. On my last visit this station was always staffed, but this morning we had to figure out the automated fueling station for ourselves. No credit cards were accepted (credit cards are hit-and-miss for gas in the area), so you had to guesstimate how much fuel you would need and prepay with euros. Unless you have multiple bikes with you to take up the excess it's best to underestimate what you think you'll need.
With all the bikes having more gas than when we got there (but not filled) we doubled back through town, past the Mesdi, and began the ascent of Passo Pordoi. I'll say it once again - I can't tell you how thrilled I was to be back in this area and particularly on this road again. We broke off to "meet at the top" and I zoomed ahead to setup for some pictures of the guys coming up. I can't decide what I was looking forward to more - riding the pass or seeing the reactions of the other guys when we talked at the top.
Between the buffet and the eggs, you could eat enough for the whole day at breakfast
The view out the back of the hotel
The view out the front of the hotel
Rain gear is not going to be required today
Took a bit to figure out the cash machine
No one rode straight to the top though, unless you're the most hardcore "ride all day" type you have to stop and take in the magnificent vistas in front of you. As I expected, the other guys were blown away by the road and the views - and the day was just getting started! We leapfrogged each other up the pass as one person would pull over to take pictures, then another, etc. This side of Pordoi sports 33 hairpins, or tornantes, and we made the best of them.
At the top we made our traditional shopping stop - I was looking to add more pass pins to my collection (though I already had Pordoi of course) and Dave was collecting stickers. In hindsight, 1.5 euro stickers make more sense than 6 euro pass pins, especially as the count rises into the teens. I think I now have about $150 worth of Alps pass pins on my walls at work.
Peter checks out the view of Arabba
Peter
Dave
Some of the turns of Pordoi are visible in this view down to Arabba
Frank's the first one by
You see every kind of bike in the Alps, and pretty much everyone of them is tearing it up
Peter on Passo Pordoi
Dave enjoying Passo Pordoi
Passo Pordoi
At the top of the pass is a tram to the top of the mountain
We continued down the other side of the pass, working through another dozen or so hairpins mixed in with just "regular" tight turns until we picked up the start of Passo Sella. Sella is probably the most popular pass in the area and generally is much busier than the rest of the passes. Parts of it are also quite a bit tighter than Pordoi, and this combination of cramped quarters and lots of traffic somewhat diminishes my enjoyment of it. What it does have over some of the other passes are fantastic views at the summit - I dare say it may be the most beautiful view in the Dolomites at the top. If you can get a clean run up Sella, with little traffic to deal with, it can be an amazing experience. Unfortunately this is rarely possible.
And it certainly wasn't possible on this Monday morning as Sella was quite busy with cars, pack of cyclists, other motorcycles, and busses. Each of these modes of transportation is dealt with differently, with cars being the most trivial -you just pass them. You pass cyclists as well, but they often cause backups as cars get jammed up behind them waiting for a long enough section to pass. Motorcycles, at least for us, are more of a threat from behind. None of us just put-put along the road, but almost without exception bikers in the Alps are exceptionally fast, skilled and from what I could tell, fearless. They come up quick, and at the slightest opening (or in some cases imagined openings) they flash by. It's the busses that are the worst though, and more often the issue is them coming the other direction. With some of the hairpins on these roads, as another STN'er put it, "tight enough so you can read your own license plate", you can imagine how much of the road a tour bus needs to make the turn. Yup, every square inch of it. If you see them coming with a corner between you and them, you need to recalculate how you're going to get through. My biggest moment on the way up Sella involved a pack of cyclists. I was rounding a super-tight right-hand turn that was very steep, and turned the corner to meet up with about a dozen cyclists going 1mph. With cars and bikes coming the other way blocking my pass I was reduced to pretty much paddle-walking the bike up the slope until an opening appeared.
The top of Sella (well, the first top you come to, there's a much larger area another mile along) is very tiny but always packed with bikes. We managed to find spots to wedge our bikes into (Dave lost his first spot to a car that stole it "sorry") and walked around a bit.
I wonder if the guy on the GS500E packed his own chute?
While I'm mighty impressed with cyclists who can ride up mountain passes, they really mess with traffic flow
That's a tough view to beat (but we'll try). The Dolomites are like no other mountans in the world.
A gaggle of KTMs. I think there were 4 or 5 Dukes in the mix, a bike you hardly ever see in the states
Saw a couple of these KTM SM-T's over there. Sweet bike.
It was fun watching people walk onto the balcony and try to figure out why Dave (and others) were doubled over
Stunning, just stunning
OK...
Did you forget how much I lust after the CB1300S? Here's a reminder.
There were also a couple of quads out today
Dave enjoying a $6US can of Diet Coke
Me and Dave at the top of Sella
Dave and Peter
Me and Peter
Dave, Peter and Frank at Sella
We had a nice run down the other side of Sella and, turning off onto Passo Gardena, left most of the traffic behind us. Gardena is another pass with fantastic views, perhaps not as dramatic as those on Sella but still beautiful. It was tricky finding a place to park the bikes as a bunch of pay lots had sprung up since my last visit. We did our round of pass-pin/sticker shopping and I set up on a hairpin to get action pics of the guys.
Passo Gardena
There are hundreds of curves like this in the Dolomites
Frank getting some pics
You see all kinds of vehicles on these roads. Later in the week we say a couple groups of these crazy trikes.
Pretty Guzzi California Vintage
Peter on Gardena
Peter giving the FJR a workout (and with that long wheelbase the FJR was giving him a workout as well)
Peter on Gardena
And back down he goes
We kept running into this group of VMax's over the next couple days
That's one red bike you've got there
Dave heads down so I can get some (more) photos of him
Peter
Peter
Hayabusa with sidecar, interesting...
Dave on Gardena
Next up on the "Best of the Dolomites" loop was Passo Valperola which has a rocky landscape distinctly different than the rest of the surrounding area. Valperola leads up to an area of the Dolomites that was the site of fierce fighting in WWI - in fact this area of Italy belonged to Austria before the war. Fort Tre Sassi was closed when we arrived, but you can look down the hillside and just make out a series of buildings and trenches that were used during the war. We spent some time at the top, walked back a bit to the rifugio for some shopping, and the blasted down the short straightaway to the top of Passo Falzarego. The short stretch between these 2 pass tops is a good place to "clean out the carbs" as it's about nearly flat and straight as an arrow, something that can't be said of too many stretches of road in this part of the world.
The buildings are hard to find at first, which I suppose is the point
*****
Allow me to break out of this trip report for a minute. I returned to the Dolomites a week later with my family, and we had a chance to explore the fort and hike down to the open-air museum below. These next few photos are from that visit, though you might like to see them.
Easy to tell when the fort is open
Inside the fort were thousands of artifacts from the battles in this area (forgive the smudge bottom-center, took me 2 days to notice it and clean it)
The buildings blended in beautifully with the rocky landscape
Trench
Looking back up at the fort
*****
OK, back to photos from the motorcycling trip.
Peter's very impressed
View on our short walk to the rifugio, which you can just see part of in the upper-right section of the photo. We did not hike down to the pond.
There were lots of interesting trails available for those with more time
The top of Passo Falzarego is always busy, and this day was no exception, though unlike Sella or Gardena there's plenty of room to go around for parking. We parked for a while, got some more snacks (lunches were becoming a distant memory), and generally took in the scene and ogled the bikes. The route I planned for today allowed us a lot of time for distractions which worked out well.
Parking lot at Passo Falzarego
The view in the other direction wasn't too shabby. Lots of easy hikes in the area.
Made me miss my Multistrada
Didn't know there was such a thing as an R850RT
We saw a lot of Multistrada 1200's over the course of the trip, but none was tastier than this Tricolore. Drool...
There was a pack of Versys there as well, pretty perfect bike for the area I think
This was the most unique one, with Motech aluminum cases
I bet pops is a demon on that XL
It's one of those VMax's we keep running into...hey, check out that rear wheel...
Seriously? Does anyone really need MORE braking power on their rear wheel? Please enlighten me.
This guy had an awful lot of bling on that VMax
We saw a couple of the new VFR1200's
We took Falzarego down towards Arabba again, turning off onto SP563 before getting there. SP563 is a tiny, crooked little road with about a dozen hairpins that descends sharply on its way to Passo Fedaia. On the last trip we had come up 563 in the rain, with an Audi wagon on our taillights the whole time - this run was much more pleasant. Once on Fedaia we split up, with instructions to meet at the dam. Fedaia is an out-of-the-way pass that doesn't really go anywhere or connect anything to anything so it doesn't see a lot of traffic. It's also pretty spread-out so there are some nice fast sweepers to balance out the hairping sections. Fedaia runs through an area known as the Marmolada, home to the mountain of the same name, which is the highest peak in the Dolomites at 3,343 meters. At the top is the dam of Lake Lago de Fedaia, and was used in the beginning of the "Italian Job" remake.
We took a nice long break at the dam, seeing as the weather was just so perfect and the day was still relatively young. My planned route from this point was just to continue west on Fedaia, then turn north to meet up with Passo Pordoi and back to Arabba. After another ice cream (a pattern?) we decided to extend the day's ride. No problem, I figured, there's no shortage of great roads in the immediate area.
We doubled back down Fedaia (which was no hardship), then found ourselves on SP20, a little connector road that would lead us to Passo Giau, our next goal. Like many (most) roads in the area, SP20 turned out to be fantastic, working it's way through a deep canyon and past waterfalls. In a small way it reminded me of Smoke Hole Road in West Virginia, which is no bad thing.
View from the other side of the dam, you can see 3 long galleries on Passo Fedaia
My steed on the dam
Peter crossing the dam
Passo Giau was a favorite from our last trip, and it didn't disappoint this time around either. It's one of the two main passes to get from the "big" road that cuts through Arabba over to Cortina D'Ampezzo, and it's by far the lesser used one. Each side of the pass is distinctly different from the other - the southern/western approach is mostly hairpin after hairpin (maybe 20 or so?) but the northern/eastern ramp is a mix of every kind of bend imaginable with stunning views down to Cortina D'Ampezzo and the surrounding mountains. I much prefer the northern section, as the hairpin-short straight-hairpin-short straight thing can get monotonous after a while. Giau rose to the top of Frank's list of favorite passes, and I suspect it was close to the top of everyone else's.
We did our normal "meet at the top" thing, with everyone getting to do the pass at their own pace. After a short stay at the top I went ahead to setup for some more action photos since the background here is tough to beat.
Looking down the north ramp of Giau. Cortina D'Ampezzo is the town at the bottom.
The views on Giau are spectacular
Dave, Peter and Frank on Giau
Man I love those big nakeds
I lusted after this 1990's Triumph Sprint 900 when it came out
Can't escape that CB1300S
And now for the action shots of the guys. I liked several variations, so forgive the somewhat repetitive shots.
Peter coming down Giau
Next up was Frank
And last but not least, Dave
I zipped back on the bike and had a great run down the north ramp. At various places I passed some of the guys parked on the roadside taking in the sights so I found myself a nice hairpin to setup on and get more pictures.
This will do nicely
Dave's first by
Here come Frank
There goes Frank
Once we dispatched Passo Giau we headed for Passo Falzarego to get us back to the hotel. We had done half the pass earlier today, from the intersection at the top with Passo Falzarego west so this half up to the summit was new for the day. This half of Falzarego is pretty wide-open after some twisties at the start, and for the most part and you can maintain some decent speed. We stopped for a minute at the top just to regroup, and then Dave and I took off first. It was a lot of fun following Dave down the pass, I find I don't mind increasing my pace a bit when following someone I trust.
We rolled into the Hotel Mesdi around 7:00 with a full day's perfect riding behind us. It was one of the best day's riding I'ver ever had, and I know the other guys were thoroughly impressed with motorcycling in the Dolomites. A delicious dinner only added to the experience.
Lasagna
My chicken. Tasty.
Not knowing what it was, Dave ordered the Beef Carpaccio from the menu. Now, Dave is not a picky eater by any means, and he'll try just about anything. I wish you could have seen his reaction to the plate of raw meat placed in front of him. Absolutely not interested. I am NOT an adventurous eater, but I'm usually pretty OK with beef so I tried a couple small pieces and found it delicious! Dave eventually swapped meals with someone.
