We woke up early, got our bikes and panniers out, and rode out of Bormio with our new lights flashing on our bikes. It was cloudy and ominous, but the forecast said that it wouldn't really start raining until 2:00pm. I had laid out a route on Garmin Connect the night before, but instructed Arturo to just stay on the main road and follow signs for Laghi Cancano so as to avoid whatever hijinks Garmin Connect chose for us.
Sure enough, we ended up ignoring the Garmin generated route all the way until the signs for Laghi Cancano, but there was a sign announcing a road closure. Fortunately, the road closure only applied to direct route to Degola and Pedenosso, and the official route stayed higher. There was not much traffic in the morning, though we saw signs that someone had camped out on the road the night before --- their tent was still present.
We hit the switchbacks and rain drops started to be felt. We kept going, however, and sure enough at the tunnel, the sky turned blue and we had an outstanding view of the switchbacks from whence we had come. Past the tunnel, the road flattened out and we got gorgeous views of the first lake. It turned out that there were 3 lakes, with two of them being part of the power generation system and the third was just a pond and not often mentioned or even remembered.
At the first of the major lakes the road turned into gravel but the scenery got better! As we rode on the dam at the end of the second lake we were treated to glorious views of the surrounding mountains. At the far end of these was a Refugio and a bus stop. From here on out there would be no way to bail out. We saw a waterfall coming out of a culvert followed by an abandoned village with a church that looked like it was in good condition.
Following Sean's directions we found a sign for Passo Di Valle Alpisella. From here on the road got steeper and more rugged until we had to get off and push the bike! Or rather, I pushed the bike while Boen entertained us. The lakes were at 1950m and the pass was at 2292m, which meant that we had to climb more than 300m. I estimate that we spent at least 45 minutes intermittently riding and walking the bikes. Each time we saw a lake we would be hopeful that we would reach the summit, only to have our hopes dashed when the road relentlessly marched upwards. We saw a number of mountain bikers but nearly all of them had electric motors mounted. Two SUVs passed us.
Nevertheless, after the first couple of lakes we became able to ride on a more consistent basis and sure enough we were soon at the summit. There we took pictures and put on our jackets. The sign said 2km to Livigno. "Those must be Italian kilometers. That's 400m of descent!" I was wrong about the distance the road descended steeply, with occasional culverts and diversionary reinforcement on the road so that it wouldn't get washed out by the next rain. It was steep enough that I was hanging on to my brakes the whole time going at walking speed. That's safe because at walking speed you're not building up enough heat to blow out the tandem's tires.
Past the first kilometer the road (some might call it a hiking trail, but it was much wider than a single-track) flattened out a bit and I could now take the road at a decently fast speed. The culverts got deeper and deeper, however, until we clipped a pedal and would have crashed if I hadn't had so much practice doing crazy things on a tandem.
Arriving safely at the bottom we felt rain drops and started riding to the hotel but only made it to the hiking trail's parking lot when it started coming down hard. We sheltered under a closed hotel until it stopped raining. We booked a hotel and when the rain let up we rode on wet roads. I was pretty exhausted at this point, and as we went under an underpass I suggested walking our bikes up the steep grade on the other side. "No way!" declared Boen. Sure enough, he pushed hard on the pedals and we got up the grade and made it to our hotel.
It took a while to find a receptionist to check us in. But as we moved in, did laundry, and walked out to dinner we considered it a very satisfying day. We'd achieved our goals, defied the odds, and showed ourselves to be great bike handlers.
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