CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Out of Bormio, one way: 96 km, roughly 1 h 54 in the saddle. The climb of the day is Stelvio Pass. It tops out at about 2,750 m. Stelvio Pass and Gavia Pass are open in summer only - check it is open before you set off. It crosses from Italy into Switzerland - carry ID and check vignette or toll rules. It is a high-mountain day.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 32 km this is Stelvio Pass, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
It is a small town with an old centre of stone houses, narrow streets and a clock tower, and it has been a spa town since Roman times, drawing on hot springs that still feed the baths.
Read the complete Bormio overnight base write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bormio overnight base is where the day begins. Next is Santa Maria fuel.
Santa Maria is the main village of the Val Mustair, a quiet Swiss valley that runs east from the Ofen Pass toward the Italian border, and the place where the road to the Umbrail Pass begins. It lies at roughly 1,400 metres, among meadows and pine forest, with a few traditional Romansh houses with deep window reveals and painted sgraffito decoration on their walls. The people here speak Romansh, a Latin-derived language that survives in only a few valleys of Switzerland.
Read the complete Santa Maria fuel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Santa Maria fuel is the fuel stop for this leg. Next is Stelvio Pass.
Few roads in Europe have a reputation as large as the Stelvio, and for once it is deserved. At 2,757 metres, it is one of the highest paved passes in the Alps, and the road up from the Trafoi side is a staircase of forty-eight numbered hairpins stacked against the mountainside, while the Bormio side has about forty of its own, longer and more open. Engineers of the Austrian empire built it in the 1820s to link Lombardy with the Tyrol, under the direction of Carlo Donegani, and it was meant for horse-drawn carts, which explains why the bends are so tight.
Read the complete Stelvio Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
This is where the road stops climbing. Next is Gavia Pass.
The Gavia is one of those passes that people talk about in lowered voices. At 2,621 metres it is among the highest paved roads in the Italian Alps, linking Bormio in the Valtellina with Ponte di Legno in the Val Camonica, and it crosses the rugged, rocky heart of the Stelvio National Park. The summit is bare and wild, with snow patches into July, two small lakes, the dark Lago Nero and the pale Lago Bianco, and a stone refuge, Rifugio Berni, with a restaurant and a view across the glaciers of the Ortler-Cevedale group.
Read the complete Gavia Pass write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Gavia Pass closes the day.
Bormio overnight base → Santa Maria fuel is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Santa Maria fuel → Stelvio Pass is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stelvio Pass → Gavia Pass is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.