Passo Invergneux, 2902m

Aosta Valley paid of whilst France was grey, with sunshine, delightful ribbons of flow and the usual Italian taste bud treats

It started as any good Italian ride should:

And once we started riding, the road soon turned uphill, to what inevitably any good adventure requires, the multiple hour climb to a trailhead:

In our case just under 3 hours of climbing lead us to the Passo Invergneux. It wasn't too bad a climb, our caffeinated legs sped us up the step tarmac road away from Cogne, and onto the fireroad for a couple of hours before the final hike-a-bike up to the Passo. We enjoyed the views, shelter from the wind and French baguettes with Tome de Savoie cheese. The tops of the Grand Paradiso National Park range where still snow covered, including the highest, the Grand Paradiso which me and my partner for the day, Rob had ski-toured earlier this spring.

The top of the descent started in a lunar like landscape that was dry and dusty, but actually fairly grippy unlike many gravel trails. It was smooth apart from the rock drainage gullies that previous mountain bikers had weaved around creating a 'bikers line'. It was super fun to ride and undulated through mini gullies, across wide expanses and stream crossings. There was never more than the odd fist sized rock to distract from the main ribbon of smooth singeltrack.

Halfway down when more rock steps began to appear and you had to pay a little more attention to just in front of your front wheel rather than 500 metres down the trail. By the end the roller coaster trail was interspersed with big technical rock step sections that really tested line choice after 45 minutes of following singletrack. In all the descent is about 12km long with 1400m height loss. It's a great trail for intermediates up to experts. The smoothness of the majority of trail will make all types of riders smile, and the few technical bits aren't too bad to walk, but will give the technician something extra to what is already a superb ride.

We descended right into Cogne village and searched for the Gelateria we had seen as we'd ridden through in the morning. Gelato was not enough to keep us happy however and we made plans to visit Aosta town in search of quality pizza and beer. Which of course we found fairly easily! Italy pays of again!

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