This was such an adventure I can’t even explain in words how crazy this day ended up being. Monte Grappa is a mountain range in Veneto and was on the ChatGPT list of recommendations for places to go mountain biking and hiking. None of these tracks in the mountains of Italy are easy for mountain bikes – my Italian friend and I discovered this on our ride around Valdobbiadene and it looks like there are no exceptions to this rule.
A ‘blue’ ride in Italy would easily be considered a ‘black’ in Australia and a ‘green’ ride in Italy is probably what Australia would consider to be a ‘low level blue’ trail, if you follow my meaning. If you don’t follow then trust me when I tell you – there seems to be no easy mountain bike trails in this part of Italy – all of them are hard with difficult terrain.
With this knowledge in mind, I set out to plan a decent route that would give us some panoramic views, but stick to roads for the ascent and only ride green trails. Using trailforks, this is a graphic which shows the exact route I planned (emphasis on planned here – things did not to go plan).
I can talk through it if it’s too hard to follow; basically there are two green tracks here that looked really good for a scenic view. I wanted to basically plot a route that would ascend the mountain via road, and then go downhill most of the way down the green tracks to get a beautiful view. In doing so I had to avoid the blue and black tracks because they would likely be too hard based on our existing experiences.
So we set off on our first leg, here’s the actual track and the photos we took on the way.
We then got started on our ascent and moving across to the first green track, here’s the track and the shots of the ascent as we powered up the hill on our e-bikes.
Eventually we actually hit the clouds – it got really cold and the views started to disappear replaced by fog. It was surreal.
We found the entrance to the first track, the ‘Sentiero delle Meatte’, and although it was foggy and blocked what would have been stunning panoramic views, it had its own kind of beauty.
After we finished with the ‘Sentiero delle Meatte’, it was time to go down the next stretch of road and meet the entrance to the next green track, the ‘920 Panorama’. The issue was that the way down on the road was blocked by construction and completely impassable.
We had not considered this at all – I expected that maybe like in Napoli the tracks would be closed for maintenance, but I didn’t expect there would be completely unmarked construction – yet that was the case.
Faced with this obstacle, we had to decide how to proceed. There was a blue trail that I noted from the trailforks map that we could follow to meet back up with our track – so we set out on that path.
It was seriously tough climbing. We ended up at multiple points having to push the bikes up rocky terrain that we had no real hope of riding up on the bike. This terrain was seriously difficult only the most experienced mountain bike riders could have possibly ridden up this terrain. In doing so they would have had to bunny-hop and employ all sorts of tricky techniques to get up – we had no chance, especially with heavy e-bikes on low battery.
After we progressed a while, it was time to give up and head back to the road. Here’s a quick sketch of the path we took, we started along the blue section and then doubled back and proceeded down the orange.
Of course, although we were defeated by the terrain, the views were still specular. Here’s what we were greeted with on the way back.
Once we made it to the bottom, we naturally had earned a large beer and a meal – what a day.
This was an incredible day out, we were absolutely distrutto (destroyed) . While its unfortunate that we couldn’t complete our planned circuit, it’s hard to argue that we didn’t get a beautiful taste of what Mount Grappa had to offer.
I’d actually like to go back one day when there’s less cloud cover. That’s sort of the thing with these adventures – you plan as best you can but when you get to the destination you learn things that now equip you to make plans for a truly spectacular day. The second trip would then end up being the one where you have the best experience. Hopefully I get the opportunity one day to come back and do it again.
In the meantime, that’s it for another gitarella – the last for this whirl around Europe. I’m heading home soon!