We advise arriving in Venice a day early to allow your body to adjust to local time and to make sure any flight or luggage delays don’t spoil your trip.
We recommend staying at the Annia Park Hotel near Venice airport, since this is where the group will meet on day 1.
Your guide will meet you at the recommended hotel at Venice Airport at 9:30am, then you’ll get settled in for the 3-hour drive to the mountains.
On arrival your guide will go through the tour briefing over lunch, and you’ll have the chance to ask any questions and hear what the week has in store for you.
Then we’ll build your bikes in the bike room, before heading out onto the trails to get your first taste of this incredible region.
Tonight’s dinner will be in the hotel with views over the imposing peaks at the other side of the steep-sided valley.
Today we start exploring Val di Fassa and ride the race stages that make this valley so unique on the race calendar. This will give you a feel for the terrain and infrastructure created here for mountain biking.
We will utilise the amazing gondola system to maximise our time on trail, enabling us to cover as much ground as your legs and arms will allow. Today is a true classic, and already a day to remember as you’re introduced to views that will continue to impress throughout the week.
On our way back to town we will stop off for a quick beer in the square to relive today’s adventure and a quick look forward to tomorrow’s fun and games.
Yesterday you got to know the valley that you are staying in, but that’s just one part of our adventure here in the Dolomites.
Today we are going to the top of the second highest lift in the valley and being dropped across the valley from Marmolada, the ever-present giant in the region. You will be awestruck at its dominance and the hanging glacier facing you, and it will be a reminder that we are in the high mountains.
As you head up and over the shoulder of this mountain ridge you will be introduced to a variety of trail surfaces, and even start to notice the different trail builder styles at play in this region. You will take in multiple drops as you work your way from valley-to-valley before ending up at Passo Padon for lunch.
As lunch is digesting you will take your final gondola of the day, gaining almost all the height you lost during the morning’s ride. We’ll traverse back across the valley to your final trail of the day.
You still have some work to do, this trail is a high alpine traverse with continuous jaw dropping views, that leads to a farm access track descent to the head of Lake Fedaia, before you finish the trail on the most grin-inducing descent imaginable.
All delivering you back to the square and you new favourite post-ride beer stop!
Hovering high above the hotel, on the opposite side of the valley is a mountain with a large cross on it. It’s approximately 1000m above the hotel and Val di Fassa, and that’s your target this morning.
You will leave the hotel after breakfast and ride through town, stopping in at the local deli for some mid morning snacks to enjoy at the top. As you reach the other end of town after a gentle warm up ride, you will board the one and only gondola of the day. This will whisk us up to 800m above the valley floor, where the hard work starts: you have 200m vertical to get to the cross – a hard 200m, but totally manageable and worth the 1000m of descending ahead of you to come.
As you crest the top of the climb, the valley opens up in front of you, taking your breath away and revealing the past two days of riding in one panorama. Snacks devoured, you will turn and head down, taking in natural trails, race stages, local knowledge gold and some of the most stunning forest in the region.
It has been a hard two-and-a-half days of riding, so now you have the afternoon off to relax, hit the spa or sunbathe in the park, it’s up to you!
Today you will leave the hotel behind and ride off into the mountains for the next two days. On your back you will have all your normal gear, plus a change of clothes for the night ahead and your wash bag. But don’t worry, you won’t be roughing it! Your mountain rifugio half-way around the Sella Ronda tour is a wonderful, warm and welcoming place to spend the night enjoying food and wine.
The Sella Ronda tour is a well known doubletrack-style route that you can do in one day, but we don’t tend to do what other people do.
You will ride around the Sella Ronda route on as much singletrack as possible over the course of two days, taking in over 110km of trails with 7000m vertical over the course of 16 hours of riding. This is a great expedition ride that takes you full circle around some of the best scenery in the Dolomites.
Half-way around the tour you will stop overnight in a wonderful rifugio for some hearty home cooked food and a glass of wine as you watch the sun set over the surrounding mountains.
Day two of the Sella Ronda will see you complete the loop back to the hotel in Val di Fassa. This involves 3,500m of descending!
Once fuelled and sitting on your bike, you will set off to complete this circumnavigation of the Sella Massif mountains.
After another day of epic views and equally incredible trails you will finish with a rough and technical ride down into the valley and back to your hotel.
You’ll get showered up and meet for dinner in the hotel restaurant where we can enjoy the wonderful food on offer before heading off to bed to recharge the batteries for your last day in Val di Fassa.
After two days circumnavigating the Sella Ronda trails, it’s nice to back in the valley amongst familiar faces and trails.
This morning you will ride a selection of trails of your choice. You can revisit the best trails from earlier in the week, re-do the Nos tour or see some of the guide’s secret trails – you decide.
You will return to the hotel for a late lunch and then you’ll have time to clean and pack bikes, do some gift shopping, and prepare for you last night’s dinner at the guide’s favourite spot in town.
Sadly this is the end of your Monumental Dolomites adventure. It’s time to load up the van and head for home.
Your driver will return you to the airport in plenty of time to catch your flight home (please book a flight departing no earlier than 4pm, if possible). Arrivederci!