AOSTA VALLEY
Dan Milner explores Italy's beautiful Aosta Valley and finds it's a pristine playground for mountain bikers and wildlife alike
Dan Milner explores this beautiful area of the Italian Alps and finds it’s a pristine playground for mountain bikers and wildlife alike. One to add to the wishlist for when non-essential travel resumes!
it's a pristine, wild landscape of towering peaks and thundering glacial rivers. we might as well be in alaska
An ibex stands about 200m away, his long, curved horns thrusting skyward. These are horns that say, ‘don’t mess with me’. This wild mountain goat weighs about 110kg – nearly twice what I do – and, for a moment, I’m glad of the distance separating us. The beefy beast throws us a cursory glance and holds his head high. Half nonchalance, half pride. This is his domain and he knows it. We’re just visitors, tourists, daytrippers – a mild irritant that’ll be gone with the setting sun. But it hasn’t always been like that. The undulating traverse we’re riding, suspended on a steep mountainside, owes its existence to the men who hunted these magnificent, impressively-horned ibex. This area was once the private hunting reserve of Duke Victor Emmanuel II. They certainly wouldn’t have envisaged it at the time but, love ’em or hate ’em, hunters seem to build very good mountain bike trails.
As we leave our ibex to continue with his bodybuilderlike posturing, I wonder what the duke would think if he could see us – three body-armoured aliens aboard bicycles so unrecognisable to his 19th century eyes that they must surely be the devil’s work. “So, this is what progression looks like?” he’d likely ask one of his cohorts, before sipping some grappa and dispatching another goat with an echoing blast from his blunderbuss. One hundred and fifty years on, the valley in the Gran Paradiso National Park we now traverse is quiet, aside from the distant white noise of a surging glacial river far below. The trail we’re riding is a narrow ribbon of perfect singletrack, hanging high on the side of the kind of perfectly-sculpted U-shaped valley that gets geography teachers excited. We carve through its twists and turns and push wheels over rock steps, thankful for now having gravity on our side – payback for the 1,300m of climbing behind us. Somewhere off to my left glaciers tumble down the opposite mountain, their moraine-sheathed masses of ice beginning to glow in the first warm embers of early evening light. While I could stay to soak up this stunning landscape for hours – along with a bit of ibex-watching – I realise we can’t afford to loiter. We have another 800m of descent to go and our guide Fabrizio tells me, as always with a broad smile, that the last part is “quite technical”. Fabrizio is as given to understatements as the ibex is to posing, it turns out.
RIDE AND shine
Fabrizio Charruaz is as local as you can get. He grew up in the Val di Rhemes, one of the Aosta Valley region’s many steep, unspoilt valleys that are awash with the kind of alpine beauty that makes bike riding here so damned rewarding. We were in Fabrizio’s home valley this morning, pedalling away from the Aosta Valley Freeride van, relying on headtorches to illuminate our way. It seemed brave starting so early, but inside I was silently longing for a cuppa and some breakfast. Instead I got an epic sunrise that hurled shafts of horizontal light across jagged peaks, followed by a descent that knotted switchbacks down a grassy mountainside. It was quite a wake-up call and a solid introduction to trail hunting, Gran Paradiso style. Corn flakes can wait.
Pointing to a trail that drops in from above us, I ask if Fabrizio and Massimo have ridden it. Of course they have. “It’s amazing, but it’s a little hard to reach so we don’t guide on it,” says Massimo. “Maybe carrying your bike for two hours isn’t the ideal holiday,” elaborates Fabrizio, before adding: “but then the descent is so long and so good, it’s easy to forget the climb!” Beyond the trail a sea of converging glaciers swamps the head of our valley, flowing around the base of rugged peaks like spilt milk. It’s a pristine, wild landscape of towering peaks and
thundering glacial rivers. We might as well be in Alaska. It’s hard to believe the bustling town of Aosta and its 35,000 inhabitants are only a half-hour’s drive away.
Threading our way back alongside tumbling waterfalls we eventually come to a solitary cafe in the village of Thumel – no more than a couple of houses and a milking parlour – and a long-awaited breakfast. While downing a second espresso, Fabrizio shows me a map of the valley. The trail we rode at sunrise is just a tiny brushstroke on a vast canvas of lines, one of 720km of marked trails that grid the Gran Paradiso National Park. He points up at the Leynir Pass, and then at the Entrelor and Rosset passes. All punch above 3,000m. “Here are the duke’s old hunting trails. He would cross between these valleys. This afternoon we’ll see the other side.” I look up at the 1,000 vertical metres of inevitable pain that separates us from the ride to come – it’s uncompromisingly steep. I order more caffeine.
My third coffee, it turns out happily, is surplus to requirements. Conquering a 3,000m pass to drop into the Valsavarenche Valley isn’t on today’s agenda. Instead we shuttle around to the village of Degioz then spin up a wide, meandering trail through shady larch forest to
claim the mere 400m ascent to the treeline. We emerge at the Orveielle hut, the duke’s former hunting lodge and staging post for most of his ibex-punishing ambitions.
It’s fair to say that alpine ibex have had a rough ride. Stalked not only for sport and meat, but also because various parts of their bodies were thought to possess therapeutic properties, unsurprisingly their numbers dwindled – to just 60 individuals spread across 20km2 in this part of Italy. Nothing pisses off hunters as much as things interfering with a good day’s shooting, so in 1856 the duke declared his favourite hunting patch a private reserve. As he was about to become the first king of Italy, few people challenged his decision. Ultimately it was his grandson, Victor Emmanuel III, who, in 1922, turned grandpapa’s hunting reserve into the Gran Paradiso National Park – Italy’s first national park.
IBEX YOUR pardon
The ibex have been pardoned, but not us. We pedal past the 200-year-old lodge and smile as scampering marmots are chased by smartphone-wielding hikers, hellbent on snapping Instagram gold. Meanwhile, our now braided singletrack winds ever upwards, past rolling pastures towards a stark, scree-covered headwall where a tiny slither of trail beckons. By the time we’ve scaled this headwall to reach the 2,789m Col Manteau, we’ll have put down a solid 1,300m of climbing since lunchtime. That third coffee has found its use at last.
The Gran Paradiso park, named after its highest peak, the 4,061m Gran Paradiso, covers over 700km2. With such a vast area to play in, it’s easy to find solitude here. At the pass we slump onto rocks, pull on jackets to ward off a cold wind and take in our surroundings. Far below we can spot the last bastion of family hikers, picnics spread out like an edible yard sale. Few venture further. Behind them rises the Gran Paradiso, a vertical wall of rock and ice so dramatic it looks transplanted from the Himalayas. I half expect a snow leopard to appear.
But no sooner have we remarked on the solitude than two more mountain bikers appear, pushing up the backside of the pass – a father and son, clearly enjoying a bonding day out together. We look at their mail-order mountain bikes – one sporting a set of slick street tyres, both with flimsy forks – and at the father’s chamber-pot climbing helmet and wonder at the drive or naivety – or both – that pushes people to venture into these mountains on such bikes. The father asks how the descent is. The son remains silent. The bond is deep. Unable to do much other than wish them luck, we leave our fellow cyclists to their fate and embrace our own.
Nearly 1,000m below us sits the end of our trail, now swallowed by dark shadows. Before we can celebrate our accomplishments and the end of a long day, we still have several kilometres to ride – first a lengthy thrash along an undulating traverse followed by hundreds of metres of steep, “quite technical” rocky staircase, a descent that’ll leave my palms sweating and my concentration frazzled. And somewhere along the way we’ll meet our ibex. For that fleeting moment we’ll share his kingdom. I wonder if he appreciates the glaciers and the clean air, the breathtaking views and the incredible way the trails flow here. I guess not, but I’m sure he’s happy that we aren’t carrying guns.