Mountainbiking on Monte Cristalo

28 August 2015
Today we take a cable car part way up the mountain having hired some old pushirons down in Cortina and navigated them through the furious traffic. The cable car is one of the steepest and longest wires – it seems almost vertical when you look out of the back of the car. The idea is then to ride down tracks in the mountains and the forest, arrive at the Tre Croce pass for lunch and then take a further chair lift to a high mountain area on Monte Cristalo where we can ride more extreme down hill tracks to eventually arrive back in Cortina. The day was hot and sunny, so the shade in the forests was very welcome. The tracks were quite gnarly but we did fine on the way to the lunch stop and sat outside with flags waving and sun glinting in our beers. Then we took our bikes and hooked them on to the back of one of the chairs going up to the top of the mountain. We got help with this, thankfully.
Not being especially hardcore mountain bikers and our bikes not being very good, (lack of suspension and disc brakes) we found some of the tracks we started on just too steep and gravelly, and found ourselves walking shamefully downhill, pretending we were tying shoes or drinking if serious bikers came by. But is was wonderful to be biking up here in the mountains and no cars anywhere near.

Soon we came to a beautiful green lake that reflected the mountains and had a mysterious spring bubbling up in the centre. we stopped for while and walked around it, glad of the rest from the jolting unfamiliar saddles. Long forest tracks then took us downhill to the old railway and from there back into Cortina.