The Story of YOLOmites5000: The Hardest Backroads Dolomites Cycling Route
You only live once! Make the most of it on the world’s greatest ride—the YOLOmites5000—held each September in the heart of Alta Badia.
Legend has it that two friends—Igor Tavella, a Ladin from Italy’s village of Badia, and Jered Gruber, the American cycling photographer—were riding bikes on the various steep backroads, farm tracks, and trails in and around Alta Badia in Italy’s Dolomite mountains.
Jered asked Igor: “What’s the shortest route you could create to get to 5,000 meters of climbing?” And Igor got to work creating the route that would become #YOLOmites5000 (You Only Live Once!).
YOLOmites5000 is about 80 miles. This backroads cycling route never strays more than about 20km from where you start, and it never repeats the same road in the same direction. There is always a crux point—for example, the infamous “mushroom patch—that you have to get through at some point, but the views all day are staggering.
Igor’s ride is even choreographed to the rising and setting sun, so you reach the meadow at just the right time to see the sun’s rays light up the dew on the blades of grass.
This ride is hard, it is a bit absurd, it is stunningly beautiful. It isn’t a race, it isn’t a gran fondo. YOLOmites5000 is its own thing: about 70% dirt/gravel, 20% meadows/mushroom patch/pasture, and only about 10% paved. It’s awesome in every way—and maybe a smidgen ridiculous, as the following story reveals.
The crux of the 2022 YOLOmites5000
The majestic Dolomites buzz with a rosy glow as the sun bounces from their sheer walls. We ride toward the lower flanks of Sass de Putia, a bifurcated spire of towering rock near Passo delle Erbe. We are approaching “The Mushroom Path,” says my friend Igor Tavella with a mischievous grin and slightly broken English.
We continue down an anonymous gravel road, tall grasses sprouting between parallel hewn grooves. It gradually contracts, and the greenery becomes plusher. Finally, all evidence of any road vanishes. Our route is not so much a path as it is a circumstance.
We arrive in a field of knobby green mounds, dotted with larch trees drooping like scarecrows, golden light piercing this dank bog. We attempt to pilot our bikes over the spongy ground. We fail; we take to foot. Someone’s white Sidi shoes turn the color of manure as we tiptoe between patches of enormous mushrooms.
After 10 minutes of squishing, we earn our reward: A dramatic break in the trees reveals a ripped tower of rock, surrounded by flowing pastoral grasses. We regroup at a rustic mountain hut for delicately moist strudel and crisp cappuccino. The view is staggering, our smiles broad. Our feet are really wet. This YOLOmites5000. This is the Dolomites.
Ride It with Alter Exploration
Challenge yourself on YOLOmites5000! Join Alter Exploration for our next Secret Dolomiti Cycling Tours. See more about the destination and our fully custom itineraries.
