Day 4: Naturns to Livigno

118km, 3,572 meters of climbing.

Amazing day. Riding the Stelvio is unquestionably the highlight of all my cycling to date. The pictures don't do it justice. 25 km long. 49 switchbacks. 1850 meters of up. Tons of history.

Startline shot. GM and I. Rumon right. 1,300 riders corralled every morning into 4 large packs. Each pack is lead out through a "neutral" (no passing) start by official race vehicles (very pro).

Stelvio shots care of Rumon. I experienced a little setback with the breathing about 1/2 way up so we rode quite conservatively, hence the big grin.

This shot is at about 8 km left. You pop out of the forest and get to see the remainder of the climb and the 20 or so switchbacks that remain.

The top. For reference, Whistler's summit is about 2,200 meters. We're nearly 2,800 in this photo.

You'd think that we have lots of time given only 4 to 6 hours a day are spent on bike. Not true. Between packing, eating, gearing up, riding, finishing, eating, checking in, getting settled, eating, bike maintenance, eating and other post ride stuff, very little down time. This is part of our post ride routine.

Tomorrow is supposed to be an easier day but the organizers have reissued the route 2 times due to road permit problems. This 3rd iteration now has us climbing over the notorious Mortirolo. 1300 meters in 12 km. Some describe it as the most difficult cycling climb in Europe.