Day 52: DH Final at Val di Sole

21 Aug 2011

Day 52: Val di Sole development and an awesome DH event. Early in the morning I met up with Sergio at the ‘Out of Gravity’ shop and we hit the trails. Straight up to the top of the gondola. There is a mid-station from where the main bike park trails for next year will be running (as was the DH today), but you can take the bike up higher to access plenty of other enduro single-track. And it gives you a huge 1300m height gain to play with on the way back down!

The emphasis at Val di Sole is on developing the miles of natural trails that exist here. Many are old farming tracks that came about by driving cattle from the valley up to the high pastures, and they are never touched by hikers and can be easily converted into some super-fun single track. The trails were not particularly demanding, but they were still great fun and the introduction to mountain biking course run by Sergio and the guys here is perfect for anyone just starting out. There are future plans to link trails to the lifts at Folgarida and Marilleva, which also operate lifts so you can see where this is going. Work will continue in September on the 2 new DH courses that run down either side of this weekends race course so by next year there will be 3 dedicated DH tracks on top of the area’s natural single track. Which means there is something for every rider interest and every rider standard.

Then there was the racing. In sweltering heat Aaron Gwin and Myriam Nicole took the wins on a course that seemed to change every hour as the dusty loam sank down and the roots and rocks rose higher out the ground. A really gnarly course and great to watch – check out Warner’s Course Ride on freecaster for some idea of how extreme this was.

So that’s it for our time in Val di Sole – a bike park in the making with an established reputation for big UCI events over the last few years. Should make for some very promising trails in 2012! Travel day tomorrow and we are heading west across the top of Italy to Alpi Bike Resort and the town of Bardonecchia. No getting around it, just got to put the miles in on the road.

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