Colle del Nivolet
Hidden away in the northwest corner of Italy is a climb of such grand scale and rare beauty it’s a wonder that more people don’t know about it. Best get there before they find out
This Italian climb is a road to nowhere – but what a beautiful way of getting there!
As the bus swerves down the hillside, the occupants are flung from side to side at each hairpin bend. The large stack of stolen gold slides across the floor until eventually the rear end of the bus skids off the road and is left hanging precariously over the void below. With the heavy stash of gold threatening to tip the bus and its passengers into the abyss, Michael Caine delivers one of the most famous final lines in movie history: ‘Hang on a minute, lads, I’ve got a great idea.’
That scene in the The Italian Job was shot on the slopes of the Colle del Nivolet. Michael Caine and his gang were supposed to be escaping over the Alps after pulling off a heist in Turin, except if they were on the Nivolet then they were most certainly going the wrong way.
The Colle del Nivolet is a road to nowhere, only built to service the dam at Lago Serrù and provide tourist access to the Gran Paradiso National Park. The road peters out a short distance beyond the summit and from there you’ll need to don walking boots and crampons if you want to escape over the border into France. (As an aside, if you did trek across those border peaks you’d find yourself at the top of another classic climb, the Col de l’iseran.)
The Nivolet’s narrow, winding road is no place for buses, and its summit barely has space for cars to do a U-turn, which goes some way to explaining why it has been largely ignored by the Giro d’italia – there just isn’t room to set up a summit finish. But that’s all for the best, because its lack of notoriety means you won’t have to share your space with hordes of colbaggers, and you can enjoy the beauty of the climb in splendid isolation.
Things get steep very quickly. The road lurches to the right and you’re faced with a flurry of hairpins at 15%
Mind you, it’s hard to say where the Colle del Nivolet actually starts. If you wanted you could start in Turin and be climbing on a single road for the best part of 100km, however most people set off from the small town of Locana, which is the last settlement of any size before the road heads into the wilds of the Graian Alps.
Head up, keep going
From Locana it’s 40km to the top, nearly all of it uphill. You simply point yourself in a westerly direction and keep going.
The first 14km meander upwards at a gentle gradient; so gentle, in fact, you could be forgiven for thinking you were on the flat. It’s only the heavy feeling in your legs that gives away the fact you’re gaining height. It’s also during this phase that you come to a worrying realisation: the 4.9% average gradient is obviously not spread evenly throughout the climb. These early slopes of 1-2% are an indicator that things are going to get steep later on.
Actually things get steep very quickly. Just as you’re enjoying ambling through a lush valley next to a lazy river, passing occasional farmsteads and holiday homes, the road suddenly lurches to the right and you’re faced with a flurry of hairpins at 15%.
Once you struggle past them you immediately arrive at a fresh obstacle: a 3.5km tunnel, which itself includes some pretty severe gradients, only this time they need to be tackled in the dark.
Fortunately, there’s an escape road to the side of the tunnel, which is a bit gravelly and potholed in places, but is much more pleasant than grinding uphill in a tunnel as fast as you can while praying that a coachload of Michael Caine fans doesn’t come barrelling through at the same time.
Beyond the tunnel the route returns to more bucolic meandering beside rivers and lakes, with families enjoying picnics in the sunshine, until you arrive at kilometre 27. That’s where the road swings abruptly away from the valley and you find yourself venturing upwards into a different world.
From here the gradients get steeper and the landscape more dramatic. The gentle fields are replaced by rock-strewn hillsides and the trees give way to hardier grasses and ferns. Dark mountains loom ahead, their flanks covered with snow even in the height of summer.
A 3.5km tunnel includes some severe gradients, only this time they need to be tackled in the dark
There’s nothing else to do but turn around and let gravity carry you back down for 2,000 vertical metres
After 7km the road arrives at the imposing stone wall of the Serrù Dam, which holds back the water that supplies Turin and the surrounding Piedmont region. On the only occasion the Giro visited these slopes, this is as far as the race got. On Stage 13 of the 2019 edition, Russia’s Ilnur Zakarin won solo at the foot of the great dam.
While it’s certain the riders were happy that the finish line wasn’t any higher up, it was also a shame for anyone watching the race because the next bit only gets more beautiful still.
Giddy heights
By now you’re in amongst mountains that dwarf everything in their shadow. The road flattens briefly as it passes the icy, turquoise waters of Lago Agnel, before pitching up more steeply again through a series of hairpins that snake between great cliffs of grey rock.
Just before the summit, take a peek back over your left shoulder and you’ll be rewarded with one of the finest views available to a cyclist: a monumental bowl of rock and ice, peppered with lakes and bisected by a narrow scrawl of tarmac that disappears into the far distance.
At the top there is no cafe or gift shop, no monument to Fausto Coppi or car park full of tourist buses, just a sign informing you that you are at 2,612m, almost as high as the Col du Galibier and significantly higher than the likes of the Tourmalet and Mont Ventoux.
Once you’ve gorged on the views and given your legs a chance to recover there’s nothing else to do but turn around and let gravity carry you back down for 40 wonderful kilometres and 2,000 vertical metres to Locana.
Now that is a great idea.
Pete Muir is editor of Cyclist and ranks the Nivolet as the best climb he has ever done