Sud Tirol Day4 Dolomites Mountain Biking 2014 – Valle Aurina Tauernweg

We rode in South Tyrol in 2012 (Pinkbike 4 -part story here) and had a great time. We wanted to come back to see other areas and spend more time. The South Tyroleans have the biking experience figured out. Basically a collection of hotels have set up infrastructure (guides, bike storage, trail information etc) and collaborated to establish a consistent customer experience. They’ve done so via their Bike Hotels concept.

This time we stayed in Rabla at the Design Hotel Tyrol near Merano, we checked out the Testivale (a bike festival) at Brixen, staying at the Bike Hotel Jonathan and explored another area closer to Austria, Val Aurina, staying at the Bike Hotel Linderhof. The bike hotels are run by families who also bike, there are many trails in these areas and having a guide is the most effcient way to link up the goods.

Valle Aurina

Where? Valle Aurina or Ahrntal might be one of the most beautiful places in the world that the English speaking world hasn’t heard about. 70km NE of Bolzano on the Austrian border, Valle Aurina is more popular in the winter with the snowsports crowd. However this area does offer some great summer recreation.

For example waterfalls of Riva at Campo Tures, Castel Tures, the mining museum in Cadipietra, the 16th century S. Spirito church at the head of the valley as well as the more than 80 three-thousanders surrounding the valley, Valle Aurina is place for culture, history and sports buffs. For Europe Valle Aurina also has very few people (population total 5500) with many small hamlets (Steinhaus where we stayed is typical with a population of about 500.

The Valley separates the Zillertal Alps in the north and west from the Hohe Tauern range (Rieserferner Group) in the south and east. People have been hiking here forever and are now welcoming mountain bikers.

Today we did the Tauernweg. This is a high alpine traverse along the N and S sides of the valley; a particularly useful way to check out the lay of the land. It starts as paved road from Steinhaus where we were based then becomes gravel road/doubletrack as you climb from the last village of the valley at approximately 1400m up to the subalpine at 2000m. From the subalpine you then see astounding views and mixed doubletrack/singletrack. The trail is shares some very old smugglers routes (about 400 years ago the Ahrntal was a major route for smuggling tobacco and booze from Italy to Austria and back). At the alpine at the TauernAlm hut you can then either hike a bike another 300+m to a pass where you can look over to Innsbruck in Austria or head back down the valley.

We were guided by Willie of Ahrntal Aktiv who works through the Bike Hotels here to offer their services.

Valle Aurina – Steinhaus to the Tauernweg from Lee Lau on Vimeo.

Unfortunately there is a lot of road riding on the rides, but you can avoid most of it by the shuttles offered by the guided rides at the Hotels.

Our Shuttle

The views start right away!

Easy climb to the alpine

Three thousander’s abound. You can also hike or mountaineer to these high peaks. The big one here is the Dreiherrenspitze. Our guide Willy pointed out all the ski touring routes to the peak and we babbled on about ski touring as we were riding bikes in the hot sun