What can you say about a pass that has 49 switchbacks to the top with the last 20 or so up a vertical wall?
What adjective can I use to describe this day? This was the day that we had been thinking about all winter long!
Dread, worry, anticipation, concern, fear, enthusiasm, pain, abuse; I could go on and on.
With the temperature at about 28C, the day started with some serious heat as we left Naturns for a 35km neutral ride to the bottom of the Stilfserjoch, Stelvios’ official name. It seemed the weather had finally changed to the heat that we had expected for the race. Stelvio is about 23 km long and climbs about 1900m for an average gradient of about 8%. By our calculations it was the toughest climb of the race rating a difficulty of 194 compared to Cypress’s measly 76. By all accounts the climb started well with several of the boys attacking off the bottom. Jamie Armstrong flew by me vowing to be the first to the top; Thomas Haas was not far behind. The rest of us settled in for the long climb. The scenery was spectacular and on the way up the first several km. I had the chance to see our descent route from the mountain bike TransAlp three years earlier.
Stelvio is extremely intimidating. The start seems to meander up the valley. At about 10 km in it starts switch backing seriously up the side of the mountain and at about 13 km in you look up and see the “wall”.
The wall seems like an endless number of switchbacks and it literally goes straight up the side of the mountain. You can see it all from the bottom and it really does strike some serious “apprehension/fear” in your heart.
Of course, as could be expected, the weather took a significant change for the worse at exactly this time with a nasty head wind and very cold rain when riding/looking toward the wall. Most of us had dumped our “warmer” clothes at the start as it seemed that the chance of rain/snow was extremely slim. We all paid the price now. Thankfully the switches facing away from the “wall” allowed us to warm up a bit before we bit back into it on the switch above. We eventually made it up to the highest point in the entire race (2750m) only to find a bunch of junior ski racers just finishing their morning training and coming off the snow loaded with skis. Slightly incongruous!Down we went on the other side with the temperature increasing by the minute until at the bottom we were again sweltering in the Italian heat. Almost immediately we started the second big climb of the day, the Passo Foscagno. As we reached the top, a quick look ahead revealed we were still in for some excitement as in the distance one of the biggest thunderheads I have ever seen was hanging over the last pass of the day, the Passo d’Eira.
As Dave and I started to descend toward the Passo d’Eira, the skies opened up and the lightning and thunder roared all around us. We both saw one lightning bolt hit a cell tower just off the side of the road and the thunder that followed just about knocked us off our bikes. The rain might as well have been biblical in amount. It just poured! Neither of us had real rain gear, and personally, I just made the decision to just get it over with as fast as I could. The descent off of Passo d’Eira was crazy. The road was a river with dirt and ditch debris sweeping over the road about 2 inches thick. I just thought mountain bike and let the thing go. 
By the time I reached the finish in Livigno, I could feel neither my fingers or my toes. It felt just like winter riding in Vancouver! The organizers at the finish were fantastic, attempting to deal with many hypothermic riders as they came across the finish. Although I thought that Dave’s and my ride was cold, the riders behind us had it even worse as the storm moved toward them. Dave and I may have suffered for maybe 20 minutes; many at the back were in the rain for almost an hour or more. Day 5 will certainly be remembered as an epic a ride as could be imagined.
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