Rated Passes

Passo di Gavia – 2,621m

 
Passo di Gavia
Route: Italy SS300 Bormio to Ponte di Legno - 26 miles Excellent
 
Ridden: 16/06/2009
 
Another top 10 Alpine pass and another must do ride, if only for the scenery. Our suggestion would be to ride it from the north - Bormio - to the south - Ponte di Legno, as the southern ramp is mostly single track, steep and with tighter hairpins.
 
From Bormio you wind through some villages until when you exit Valfurva you have a flowing fast 5 mile run to Santa Caterina where the pass really starts. Leaving the village the road surface deteriorates and you climb through a series of hairpins until you reach a point where the road opens up and you have great views to the left over Pizzo Tresero - 3,594m. A further tighter section over a stream takes you to the final level with views to the Corno dei Tre Signori, 3,359m, to your left. Passing by a lake you reach the summit and a pleasant refugio with lots of photos of Giro d’Italia stages ridden in the snow, especially the famous stage of 5th June 1988 which took place during a snow storm.
 
Descending, the road is initially open but as you hit the tree line it narrows and the hairpins are tight. We saw some sports cars coming up, but unless they were just going for the view, their performance would have been almost totally superfluous.
 
 

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>