With my friends Ad and Ronald I made an Alps-crossing from Lermoos (actually Ehrwald) to Riva at Lake Garda in the north of Italy. Ehrwald is a tourist village just south of the Zugspitze on the border with Germany. See tour below, click on picture to enlarge.


It was a 6 stage tour. We had the GPS-tracks from BikeAlpin, a German touroperator specialized in bike trips like this. They had booked the hotels and took care of the transportation of our luggage from one hotel to the other, so that we only had to carry a day pack on our backs. The stages were: Ehrwald – Mieders, 72 kms, 1700 ascent, Mieders – Sterzing (Vipiteno), 64 kms, 2240 ascent, Sterzing – Sarntheim (Sarentino), 55 kms, 1420 ascent, Sarntheim – Tramin (Termeno), 63 kms, 1460 ascent, Tramin  – Molveno, 67 kms, 2100 ascent , Molveno – Riva del Garda, 53 kms, 1180 ascent.

Statistics: 9950 meters of ascent, 9800 meters descent, total distance 374 kilometers, highest point: 2200 mtrs above sea level.
See profile of altitudes:

In Ehrwald we learned that at the same time 10 other people would be riding the same route. During the second day Marc and Stephen joined us and on the 5th day Jens and Claudia hooked on. Most of the time at dinner and at breakfast we met with the whole group and it was a nice lot together.

The tour was rather heavy. There were (too) long stretches that were too steep to ride. We pushed our bikes for hours altogether. Please don’t be mistaken, it’s not that we don’t know how to ride up a mountain, many times it was simply impossible. Though one is a better climber than the other of course.

Altogether we had a very enjoyable week. The weather was fine and so were our moods. We’ll be back!!

A very big surprise (not for me) was that at the piazza in Riva my friend Gino Gomba stood waiting for us. He had come all the way from Torino to meet his work-partners and friends Ronald and myself.

For a selection of pictures, please copy the link below in your browser:

http://picasaweb.google.com/f.brosens/2008TransalpLermoosRivaDelGarda