Wet Summer Solstice at the Passo di Mendola
June 21, 1999

Distance: 55 miles/88 kilometers
Elevation: 5,830 feet/1,805 meters
Difficulty: 7/10
Scenery: 7/10;
Route: Bolzano-St. Michele-Passo di Mendola-Fondo-Passo delle Palade-
Tesimo-Prissian- Nals-Andrian-Bolzano

Passes Covered:
Passo di Mendola (15 kms/1,363m)
Passo delle Pallade, (14 kms/1,518m)

Summer Solstice, Bolzano edition dawned grey and ominous. I looked out the window and tried to find a patch of blue on which to pin my hopes for a rideable day. But the sky was as uniformly grey as a flat watercolor wash, though the precipitation the sky produced was but a drizzle. Dejectedly, I got dressed for riding, then went down for breakfast only to find out, as I got out of the elevator, that heavy rain had started falling.

For some reason I didn’t feel much like riding in the rain that day, so I decided to wait out the rain. In the meantime, I tried to salvage the morning by checking out what’s on the Bolzano touristic menu. I had wanted to check out the remarkably well-preserved mesolithic ice-age man, Fritz, discovered only a couple of years before in the heavily glaciated Otztal mountains of Tirol now on display in one of the city’s museum. Alas, all the museums in Bolzano were closed, this being a Monday.

In the meantime, the rain continued unabated. I was getting antsy; I bought all the English-language newspapers I could find, plunked myself down a café, and decided to wait out the rain with the aid of a cappuccino.

Rain stopped abruptly at 10:30 in the morning, just as I was getting cosy reading the paper. I went back to the hotel, got Erasmus ready again, and rolled out an hour later.

My route for the day was much less ambitious than yesterday’s punishing ride. My intent was to cross the Adige Valley and check out the mountains standing west of Bolzano.

The main road out of Bolzano heading west was Via Marconi/Drususallee, a very busy thoroughfare through the unappealing industrial section of the city. Think Finchley Road in London or Mission Street in San Francisco. I did manage to find a less busy road through Cornaiano that effectively cut out the busy stretch of the S12 and that emerged very near the turnoff to the base of the Passo di Mendola.

The road to Passo di Mendola, by contrast, was eerily deserted this soggy Monday morning. The eastern approach to Mendola started out a kilometer south of San Michele. The climb from this point is approximately 900 meters (3,000 feet) in 15 kilometers. The road rises out of the narrow Adige valley initially through vineyards then, after having narrowed, continues more or less along the contours of the mountain, tucked close to the protective slopes of Monte Penegal.

On the whole, the lower section of the climb to Passo Mendola from the east was quite pleasant and only moderately challenging. Here and there, I caught glimpses of the Adige Valley below—from a high vantage point, one could quite appreciate the length (and the narrowness) of the valley. Traffic was negligible (owing, without doubt, to the morning’s lowering skies).

I was riding blissfully along up the road when rain came back, though not so heavily. I still had ten kilometers to the summit. The rain flustered me initially, but after a while, the raindrops faded from my consciousness and became a natural part of the whole sylvan package. Personally, I’m only put off by rain when starting a ride; I don’t much mind rain when it comes in the midst of a ride. In fact, I quite like it—I like the pitter-patter sound of raindrops on my windbreaker and on my helmet. I like the tickly way a stream of water runs down from my thighs to my kneecaps to my calves. Of course, rain and cold weather would be a different story. But the middle section of the climb up Mendola was canopied with trees which sheltered me from the chilling effects of the wind.

At about 700 meters elevation the switchback numberings appeared. Turn #2 was the first I noticed. As it turned out, the eastern approach has 16 numbered turns in all. But the logic behind the choice of which turns to number remained a mystery to me. I counted more than 16 turns before I reached the summit. One interval in particular, between #9 and #10 if my memory serves me right, were separated by several bends and almost 200 meters of climbing!

Rain started falling more heavily as I neared the summit. From an elevation of 1,100 meters, the road turned really crooked, more like a classic series of Alpine bends. Turns 10 to 15 came in rapid succession. Unfortunately, so did the raindrops. What made it worse was that the upper sections of the climb were without much cover. First the rain—then the cold wind—started buffeting me. Strong runoff started streaming down the steep road and my tires started kicking up water.

Then I noticed a long series of "Pantani"s painted on the road. I meant a really long series, like for 200 meters! This meant, of course, that I was nearing the summit. I crested Passo di Mendola at around 1PM--just in time, too, for the sky very shortly thereafter unleashed its strongest fury.

Last Updated: August 11, 1999