Another hundred metres of climbing of this kind, and the dental seals are out. To be honest: my elbows and wrists are already through anyway. The GPS shows that we're only halfway up - a full five hundred metres in altitude are still to be covered before we reach the valley floor at the Brenta River. There are probably a good forty or fifty hairpin bends to go. A dream of a trail! Only this miserable pavement of broken limestone shakes us to the bone, and the countless steps - prrrr-ta-tapp! - make us lurch like a bouncy ball in a spin cycle. We descend a full thousand metres in altitude. But it could easily be twice that. Are we surfing the world's largest flight of steps here? Quite possibly.
But our trail has competition: like a fan, almost a dozen mule tracks lead from the old military road over the "12 campi" of Monte Grappa down into the Brenta valley. Anyone who isn't suitably impressed by the views down over the rocky outcrops below this wide supply road is truly not afraid of heights. So the idea that you can take these trail junctions seriously by bike is not necessarily obvious. But you can! Because the trail is a relic from the First World War. Whether German, Italian or Austrian - in those days, human lives didn't count for much in the mountain war. But there's no question that the military were masters of the fine art of path building! Fortunately for us.
You can find the entire article with all the roadbooks as a PDF download below.
You can also download the GPS data from author Ralf Glaser below:
- Military Road Marathon (65.30 km, 2410 m elevation gain, 7:00 h)
- 153er-Frontsteig (24.6 km, 1500 hm, 4:00 h)
- 12 Campi (34.7 km, 1250 m elevation gain, 4:30 h)
- High above the Val Brenta (26.1 km, 585 vertical metres, 2:20 h)
- Monte Colombera (17.5 km, 740 m elevation gain, 2:00 h)
- Trail quickie at Borso (7.7 km, 700 m elevation gain, 2:00 h)
You can find more GPS data for bike-gps.com tours here:
