The lowest point hits us about 5 am. Frozen legs, numb toes and crooked backs. For the past eight hours we’ve been huddled in sleeping bags and bivvy bags, willing the sun to rise. There are still two hours to go. Needless to say, this wasn’t how we’d imagined this trip.
A now annual tradition
It has become something of a tradition that once a year Julian, who works in the marketing department at SCOTT, and I set off on our bikes to discover somewhere new. The premise is pretty simple: do our best to avoid convention and get off-the-beaten track. The first of our trips was four years ago when we unearthed singletrack heaven at Singltrek pod Smrkem as we traversed Poland and the Czech Republic. The following year was our inaugural E-MTB quickie in the Stubai Alps, followed 12 months later by a two-wheeled tourist trip around Rome. This year decreed Trentino, or more specifically Monte Calisio, where our buddy Felix joined us for bike-packing and bivvy-bagging. Might sound a bit #BrokebackMountain, but it was more survival than sensual.
Bikepacking 2.0
Successful bikepacking trips are reliant on a few key ingredients: having the right equipment is a good place to start, along with experience and selecting the right season (in terms of climate). We had unwittingly made some grave errors in our absence of planning; it turns out there isn’t perpetual warmth in the south, especially not after sunset – which, coincidentally, is why the first ingredient is top of the list. Any self-aware packer will place great emphasis on blissfully packing a decent sleeping bag, roll mat and even dry wood in order to get a fire started. None of us owned any special frame bags for bikepacking so we fashioned carriers on our handlebars for the sleeping bags. Each allocated things to carry; I’d been put in charge of cooking paraphernalia. My choice of a mini gas canister was met with snorts of derision from Julian. We reasoned that a quick detour to the nearest petrol station should solve the issue – it didn’t. Nor did the longer detour to Decathlon. Turns out that gas canisters have an even more perplexing range of ‘standards’ than the bike industry.
Fortunately, we’ve got an ace up our novice bike-packing sleeves: instead of the customary dropper bar, rigid fork set-up for a trip like this, we’ve got powerful SCOTT E-Mountainbikes, which look set to majorly increase the fun we’ll get on climbs as well as the descents.
If it were summer we’d all be doing it!
Scaling history on the climbs
This precise mountain is known as ‘Argentario’ to the locals given its history as a silver mine until the 15th century. Silver, which translates as ‘argento’ in Italian, was a key commodity for Tyrol and Merano. The mining industry clearly left its mark here; the gravel access roads are a remnant of the heavy-duty work that went on here, and as we pedal we keep passing tunnel entrances built into the mountainside and plateau.
Make your bed, now lie in it
We reach the summit after an hour of fairly leisurely Eco-mode riding, with some sections ridden in Trail mode. Up here we’re met by the plateau with a lot of holes and grooves, a littering of trees and some spectacular views. Time for us novices to find a suitable sleeping patch. We select a sheltered pace, out of the wind with a breath-taking view towards the East. The general consensus is positive; tomorrow morning we count on awaking to the warmth of the sun.
Refuel and heat up – nothing else matters on a night like this.
Back to basics
Naturally there’s a dearth of Wifi in our makeshift hotel, but even on this mountain peak there’s a great 4G connection. Yet instead of updating our Instagram stories, we’ve got other, more primitive priorities like making a fire. For which we need dry wood, and plenty of it to get us through the many, quite frankly daunting, hours of darkness ahead. Based on the numbness of our toes, the choice of cleated shoes is a rookie error that we won’t be making again.
Cleats + snow = frozen toes!
The longest night of our lives
Away from the cosiness of joggers and Netflix, we’re sitting around the fire, philosophising over pasta and pesto. The self-imposed weight restrictions for the ride had put paid to my pleas to bring a bottle of red wine, but now they’re all regretting it too. After three toasty hours next to the fire we decide to crawl into our respective sleeping bags and bivvy bags. Felix and I have both brought our own, while Julian borrowed ‘a really great one’ from a well-meaning friend. Another rookie error! No longer such a fine specimen, his rather anaemic sleeping bag is clearly past its best and has visibly shed most of its thermal interior over the past decade. Not the best case when the outside temperature is -4°C and there’s a clear sky. Despondent and shivering, Julian lay down between the two of us, encasing his upper body in one down jacket and his legs in another.
A good, long sleep in your own bed is an overlooked luxury, which is confirmed by the intrusive cold we encounter during this night. With minimal roll mats and no real pillows, we’re all restlessly awake by 5 am. There are still two hours to go until sunrise.
It’ll be warm once the sun hits … or not.
The sun’s rays aren’t the first thing to warm us up; that’ll be the freshly done mocha pot and steaming coffee. Once the caffeine starts to coarse through our bloodstream and activate our synapses we muster the energy to repack the equipment in the bags and load up the bikes. The frozen displays on the bikes are the last remaining evidence of the cold night we’ve just had.
The cold is rapidly forgotten as we drop onto the trail, and our senses are wide awake. The narrow trail is full of tight, twisty turns, and is majorly exposed at times. Running down the south-facing side of Monte Calisio, it’s the sort of techy trail that’d require some handling on a regular mountain bike, but imagine a heavy backpack and fully loaded E-MTBs; it’s a full-on challenge, but one that we’re embracing.
The cold is rapidly forgotten as we drop onto the trail, and our senses are wide awake. The narrow trail is full of tight, twisty turns, and is majorly exposed at times. Running down the south-facing side of Monte Calisio, it’s the sort of techy trail that’d require some handling on a regular mountain bike, but imagine a heavy backpack and fully loaded E-MTBs; it’s a full-on challenge, but one that we’re embracing.
In a sublime ode to the Vertriders, we find ourselves endo’ing our way down the trail, turning with skills, on the early steep parts before it gets smoother, faster and more flowing. The quicker we go, the more the nominally attached sleeping bag hurls its weight back and forth across the handlebars. Fortunately the bikes hold their line brilliantly and the 700-metre drop of altitude is ticked off all too quickly.
South-facing trails FTW! Hot hot heat as we navigate the techy descent in the sun.
Back on the valley floor we treat ourselves to a cappuccino and a reflection on the past few hours. While we reason that it’d have been far easier in summer, we know that the experience took us to the edge of our comfort zone (and even beyond in the case of Julian’s sleeping bag) so it’s certainly going to have embedded itself into our memories. And if it was easy, where would be the fun in that?
Supported by SCOTT/Outdoor Research
This article is from ENDURO issue #032
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Words: Photos: Christoph Bayer, Julian Oswald
