The first stone presses into my right shoulder blade. Next is the hip. I already know this sequence. The air mattress now deflates until I'm lying completely in the rubble.
On contact with the razor-sharp marble rock, the damn thing must have split open and I can't find the hole in the dark. Stefan is snoring next to me. My swearing doesn't wake him up, so I inflate the sleeping mat for the fourth time.
This is not how I imagined Tuscany. I had this typical image of rolling hills with manor houses, poppy meadows and cypress trees in my head. A landscape as soft as a four-poster bed. But this is different. I've never had to bivouac on such sharp rocks in the high mountains before. My shoulder blade is already starting to hurt again. Stefan grunts contentedly in his sleep. I give up, wriggle out of my sleeping bag and leave this bed of torture! A little further down, Richard and Sandra have secured the only reasonably flat spot with a forest floor. Sandra wakes up immediately. Richard jokes sleepily: "It's just Harald. He probably wants a cuddle!" The two of them slide together and make room for me. Shortly afterwards, Richard is snoring even louder than Stefan and I can already feel the first chestnuts through my floppy sleeping mat.
I met Richard five years ago in Valle Argentina. The tall Brit worked there as a guide and showed me his favourite trail at the time, a playful ridge path.
"Ridgeline trails are the best!" he emphasised over and over again and shot downhill uncatchably. And this despite the fact that he only learnt mountain biking as a guide. He met his girlfriend Sandra by chance in a similar way: she was once the only female participant in a bike group in Valle Argentina and therefore received special attention from Rich. It wasn't long before they decided to give up their jobs and homes and explore a completely new bike region together. Their choice eventually fell on the Garfagnana. A mountainous landscape still untouched by bike tourism between the steep faces of the Apuan Alps and the gentler foothills of the Apennines. I absolutely had to come and visit her in Castelnuovo, Rich wrote in an email. The area is exactly my style: summit biking, rollercoaster trails and ridge paths everywhere!" Of course, I didn't think twice about it - and now I'm lying here sleepless on this uncomfortable mountain.
The sunrise finally brings me relief. Only now do I realise what an exposed summit we have spent the night on. Steep mountain flanks of the Apuan Alps surround us, except to the west, where the view glides over the Mediterranean. If you look down into the valley, however, the mountains look like a set of teeth with cavities. The most valuable marble has been quarried on these mountain slopes for centuries. The brutal quarries gleam white towards us. I could look at this contrast of mining industry, inaccessible cliffs and Mediterranean views for an eternity, but the other three are well-rested and bursting with energy.
The rock also shows its teeth on the descent. The steep mountain path doesn't allow a single careless moment and scares us with unpredictable ledges and boulder passages. A bit like at home in the Karwendel. I have to manoeuvre very precisely through the sharp-edged rocks. Richard tries "straight lines" and is sometimes successful. I like steep tinkering trails like this, but I have a different idea of a rollercoaster trail. As if he had read my thoughts, Richard grins: "Wait, we're about to start!" Shortly afterwards, we take an inconspicuous turn-off and Richard's prediction comes true. Although the terrain remains alpine, the trail is suddenly much nicer to us: short rhythm sections and clean ideal lines now surprise us between the boulders. Stefan shoots past us - as a former World Cup downhiller, he is right in his element here. It's amazing how much smoother this trail is than the previous one - even though it looks almost the same. "Two weeks of hard work went into it!" Richard triumphs. Using a leaf blower, chainsaw and machete, he spent ten hours a day fighting his way through this dilapidated trail. The result: a completely natural-looking but easy to ride mountain trail. The winding trail is now called "Sexy Thai Cat", named after Sandra's cat. Because that's another beast. He describes his fight against the merciless thorny undergrowth with colourful exaggerations. Richard likes heroic stories. And heroic tales of failure in equal measure. Sandra once had to pick him up because he was caught in a thunderstorm and had lost his car keys. Why he was finally picked up by Sandra, dancing with a machete and stark naked, is best told by himself.
Once in the valley, we shuttle back up to the Ceragetta hut. The inn clings to the side of the mountain like an eagle's nest and the food is amazing. We actually wanted to ride down the next trail from up here, but suddenly there was this house schnapps on the table: "Niente" is its name, which actually means "nothing". But it tastes really sweet like cherries and gets you drunk really quickly. So in the end we prefer to leave the bikes on the trailer and take the shuttle back down to the valley. On the way, Richard points out the landscape every few kilometres. He has christened this slope "Spider-mountain" because his self-created trail network leads down the mountain in all directions like spider legs. I'm looking forward to the next few days. Stefan sleeps next to me in the back seat.
After a year and a half in the Garfagnana, Richard has cleared, reactivated and rebuilt over 30 trails. While in German-speaking countries we are usually not even allowed to ride the trails that already exist by law, mountain bikers seem to have absolute freedom here. But it's not quite that simple. In Italy, it's not so much the laws that regulate things, but the micro-politics. You have to know exactly who the important people in the valley are and who to ask. Without a sure instinct and a good knowledge of Italian, nothing works here either. Sandra has learnt from Langenscheidt and is now teaching the self-taught Richard correct Italian. Although he actually communicates well with "Yoda grammar", he says.
Sandra drives the bus the next morning, everyone else is still hungover. Today we are travelling to the Apennines opposite. Although this mountain range is significantly higher than the Apuan Alps, it seems much gentler when viewed from the valley. I am all the more surprised when our tour to the start begins directly with an exposed ridge path above the tree line. This path branches off from a main path that runs along the entire mountain range at an altitude of 2,000 metres, practically along the entire Italian boot. But we are now heading eastwards, directly downhill. It doesn't take long for us to cross the sharply defined forest boundary and glide through a sparse birch forest. A rush that only ends at the door of the Battisti hut. After lunch, we ride a little way up to Monte Cusna, but don't get very far: a sandy playground with lots of small freeride lines is on our agenda for the day. When the golden evening light and a tremendous view as far as the Matterhorn are added to the mix, we quickly realise: we're staying at the Battisti hut tonight. A good decision, because as soon as we sit down to eat, a nasty cold wind howls around the house.
The storm has become stronger overnight. On the morning ascent to the summit of Monte Cusna, we are still enjoying the powerful push from behind. However, once we reach the top, the wind hits us from the side, and if you're already leaned over when travelling straight ahead, there's only one direction that works. That doesn't make the bumpy scree descent any easier. Nevertheless, Richard insists that we get back on an ancient chairlift at the bottom. In Austria, no lift would run in gale-force winds like this, but we survive and take another of Richard's favourite ridge paths at the top. 1800 metres of downhill thrills from panoramic to fast as an arrow and rough to creative and playful. A dream. At least as long as we make it back to the valley by sunset. The surface would certainly be a nasty air mattress killer.
INFO TOSCANA
The precinct
Garfagnana is a mountainous region in northern Tuscany. It lies between the rugged Apuan Alps and the first foothills of the Apennines. The nearest airport is Pisa. In addition to the two large mountain ranges, which are only just being opened up to bikers, there is another mountain to the west of Pisa, near Calci. Enduro riders already know this mountain, which is interspersed with trails, from various races. Although local bikers have been cutting out trails for bikers and making them rideable for over a year, the area is only a real treat for good riding technicians. Wild, untouched mountain landscapes, ridgelines and kilometres of trail challenges are the reward for tough climbs with bike and hike passages.
Guided tours
Richard and Sandra live in Castelnuovo and offer guided tours with and without a shuttle from here all year round. The most ambitious tour is a multi-day crossing of the Apennines, following the ridge path southwards for several days. Info and booking: www.ridgeline.bike
General information
Accommodation and further information about the region can be found here:
www.garfagnanaturistica.info and www.castelnuovodigarfagnana.info
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