Day 31: Finding Livigno’s Secrets

31 Jul 2011

Day 31: Hidden flow country and extreme XC potential. Today we ventured further afield to explore the other trails in the area. First off we met up with local (kind of) rider Simone, who knows the area pretty well. He showed us the famous “Flow Country” trail, designed and built by the legendary trials rider and Livigno local Hans ‘no-way’ Rey, and Diddie Schneider, expert trail builder responsible for many great things including Geisskopf Bike Park in Germany. I am sure this trail is not supposed to be hidden, but if you didn’t know to turn left out of the bike park start gate (instead of right, in the direction of all the trails on the park map) then you would not know it is there. And after a short 2 minute climb around the corner there are then 3 signs pointing you in the right direction. The problem appears to be that once at the end of the Flow Country trail, there are no official bike trails to take you back to the town – only general access hiking trails. Now these are great – some really cool single-track. But you then have the age-old conflict of hikers v. bikers, and it seems that Livigno is still in the process of resolving this. So in the mean time a trail designed by an expert trail builder and a mountain bike legend remains off the official trail map.

Meanwhile Sam, Nadège and Mark went on an XC epic, with over 2000m of height gain achieved during the day (fools – don’t they know what the gondola is for!?). Livigno is surrounded by endless cross-country possibilities. They incorporated the first section of the course used for stage 5 of the 2010 Transalp, following single-track up to the Passo Trela. These are not ‘bike-only’ trails, so you will encounter hikers along the way. However in our experience there were very few, even on one of the busiest Sundays of the summer. If you like flowing trails with breathtaking alpine scenery then there is plenty available here.

A refuel of posh-nosh in the Paprika restaurant in town, then a bit of bike tech in the evening. Tomorrow we move on to Leogang in Austria – the 5th country on the URT!

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