Fedaia

Time for a ride update. After completing the Maratona route on Sunday, June 27, Linda and I decided to take an "easy" day by riding to the Marmolada glacier, purportedly the last glacier remaining in the Dolomites, on Monday.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmolada

Maybe it was (is) the only glacier, I don't know. In any event, we thought, "eh, 14 kms and back, 28 kms total, that shouldn't be too bad." (14 kms is about 8.7 miles).

Um, well, Fedaia is a pretty tough climb. We ended up with about 40 kms (about 24-25 miles), not much in distance but it was a significant effort.

Supposedly the average gradient is about 7.8%, it felt a lot more than that. We may have been suffering from a little bit of burn-out from Sunday's efforts, whatever the reasons Fedaia was just a tough, tough climb. Part of it, too, and I may have mentioned this before, may have been the simple fact that we didn't know much about the climb, nothing in fact. Knowing something about what's to come makes it a little bit easier. For me it does, anyway.

If you're ever in the area and decide to take the climb starting from Caprile, make sure you take the route through the little town of Sottoguda. It takes you off the main road and through something called the "Serrai di Sottoguda". It's a pretty little canyon, for lack of a better term, that has a path running alongside a small river. It's really quite beautiful, and takes you away from cars and the ever-present motorcycles, if only for a couple of miles. You still have to work at it a little bit, it is still going uphill, but the sound of the water and the views make the trail a little easier. It's accessible only by bike in the uphill direction.

After clearing the Sottoguda section, we knew we had a few kms to go and figured it would take a short time and an easy effort. WRONG! Shortly after leaving the Sottoguda route, the road went uphill in a straight line for several kms. It's always better (easier) if the road twists and turns to break up the incline. Switchbacks are great. In a straight line, it's just hard work.

There were a few switchbacks at the top, but they weren't of the variety to ease things up too much. Some guy from Switzerland passed me on the way up. It bruises my fragile ego whenever that happens. After he passed me, though, I was able to keep the gap steady, and closed it towards the end. Small victories.

Linda had a nice experience with a woman that was somehow attached to the Swiss dude. This woman caught up with Linda and she talked Linda through a particularly tough section (near the end to the long, straight section I mentioned). Where was I? Umm, well, I uh. . . .

After finally reaching the top of this bugger we rode on over to take a look at the glacier. I'd upload some pics if the computer I'm working on would allow it.

Linda and I had some pizza, a coke, and rode back down.

The true indication of the steepness of a climb is often reflected in the speeds attained while going down what you just came up. That long, straight section of Fedaia I talked about? I hit 50 mph before I got scared and hit the brakes to slow down a bit. Every little bump, undulation, and imperfection in the pavement is magnified 10x and I just don't have the skills or the confidence to go full bore. I hit 50 just by coasting and keeping off the brakes. I can imagine the pros hit near 70 mph on that section. It's wide open, straight, no turns. Whew!

After finally making it back to the car we drove to our next Domomiten stop: Cortina d'Ampezzo.