Last year I decided, well I guess I thought.. how can I make next year’s Melloblocco different for me? How about flying in to Bergamo and get there under my own steam, carrying my boulder mat and camping equipment on my bike. On the map it is not far, 100k or so, but it does go over the 2000m Passo San Marco. That would be different.
Melloblocco appears on my radar like a Nimitz class carrier.. it is unavoidable. I look forward to it each year and swear I am actually going to train and crush some of those granite blocs. Of course I never do, but it doesn’t stop me wanting to go back again.
So I was committed and the main task would be to work out how to attach stuff to my bike. The trip was 10 days, I needed a usable boulder mat (my days of beer towel were long gone), tent, sleeping bag, sleeping mat, cooking equipment, spare clothes, bike repair kit and d-SLR.
Looking around, there are not that many off-the-shelf options for carrying a boulder mat on a bike. That’s not surprising it is a bit niche, but I was fortunate that we had a pannier sized mat that Pete had recently developed. It had a small footprint, but was a good compromise for portability. Bodging my classic Blackburn pannier to my front forks with some bent aluminium bar and a couple of wing nuts was fairly easy. It was probably fortunate I was not aware the total weight it would have to support.
So I arrived at Bergamo with my bike in a bag psyched the trip was on. I didn’t waste anytime at all in getting set up, everything went together pretty sweetly in the airport car park. Left luggage was 40€ so I decided to fill the empty retro Karrimor pannier with the 2kg weight of the bike bag and I was off, albeit slightly wobbly. Ok so it would have been a good idea to fully load the bike before now, truth was I didn’t know what a fully loaded cycle touring bike should feel like, but this felt heavy.
The first obstacle was Bergamo rush hour traffic and I felt like a pregnant woman 8 and a half months gone on the first day of the January sales. Despite my trepidation I knew I had somewhere to be and putting the peddle to the metal I was out and heading towards the mountains via San Pelligrino.
My second challenge was to be an anticlimax. Stopping just shy of a tunnel I psyched myself up. I knew tunnels in these parts were narrow and went on for hundreds of metres so I turned on my lights and gingerly entered the dark gaping hole.. only to find it was 100m long!
Pushing on through San Pelligrino I started to feel like I was getting somewhere and started to relax. A short stop for a pizza and I just needed to find a secluded spot to crash down for the night.
The following morning the climb started immediately. I took it steady, one bend at a time pacing myself against an elderly couple ambling up the road. We made the 600m climb within 10 minutes of each other to face the show packed road that descended the northern side of the pass into Valtellina. As I descended over the frozen snow pack my only company was a party of ski mountaineers and some hardy marmots.
The descent to Morbegno was welcome, as was the opportunity to finally pick up some puncture repair patches and glue in case of emergencies. I grabbed an amazing panino for lunch before making the 600m climb up the opposite valley into Val Masino via Dazio. From here it was all down hill, well nearly all down hill and I rolled into the Centro Polifunzionale around 6pm. One of Iris’s beers was gladly swigged and I settled down into a week of blissful climbing.