Monte Grappa

Be inspired!

1. Info

An hour away from Venice, at the beginning of the Dolomites, 200 m above the sea at the foot of the mountain and 1775 m at the top. The First World War left in this vast and diverse mountain a little sea of routes and tracks most of which are very nice for MTB riding.

All you need for exploring it by bike, and to ride some serious stuff, is the topo map from Tabbaco 1:25.000, No. 051, which is sufficiently accurate and shows the network of CAI paths by Italian Alpine Association as well. You can purchase it on-line, for example, at Landkartenhaus.

There are a lot of descriptions, videos, and GPS tracks on the Internet. If you do not like asphalt, like me, be careful, because a lot of tracks lead to the top along the main asphalt road, which is wide, steep and quite busy.

At the top of the mountain, in addition to beautiful views, there is a monument to fallen between the First World War and a bit bigger alpine hut as well.

Since Monte Grappa is the first rising ground above the plane of the Adriatic Sea, it is very popular among paragliders.

Monte Grappa is ideal for a long weekend. At the foot of the mountain there is a small and comfortable camp Santa Felicita. The specialty of this camp is that check-out is not in the middle of the day as usual, but it is possible to leave in the evening.

With one of my brothers we were there in May this year. The first day we took longer and demanding tour with the famous descent along the route CAI 153 (see next page for info).

On the second day we had bad weather approaching so we chose a shorter one - climb along the beautiful mulatiera CAI 152 and then all the way along CAI 80. Nice ride with only shorter technical sections towards the end.

You can even watch the first tour ;-)
http://youtu.be/iBfHkq8XwQE