Double Stelvio in One Day: Cycling the Hardest Climb in Italy TWICE - Stage 3

Some mountains you climb once and never forget. On July 6th, 2026, I climbed this one twice — in the same day.

Stage 3 of Tour de Pasta 2026 starts in the dark, cool hush of Bormio before dawn, wheels rolling out under an overcast, misty sky that never quite decides whether to clear. The road climbs immediately into the Braulio valley — a name, oddly enough, that has nothing to do with the local dialect and everything to do with a 7th-century Spanish saint, Braulio of Zaragoza. Medieval travelers named this pass "mons Braulius" long before it was ever paved, and the name stuck to the valley below it for over a thousand years.

Through the tunnels blasted into the rock, past the impossibly stacked switchbacks of the Spondalunga hairpin section, the gradient never lets up. This western side of the Stelvio was engineered between 1820 and 1825 by Carlo Donegani for the Austrian Empire — a military road meant to link Lombardy to Vienna, built by two thousand workers who reportedly burned through five barrels of gunpowder a day just to carve a path through the mountain. Two centuries later, cyclists are still fighting the same rock.

Past the Casa Cantoniera near Umbrail, the road eases just enough to remind you how hard it was, and then — Passo dello Stelvio, 2,758m, for the first time. It's cycling's most legendary summit, the spot where Fausto Coppi rode into legend on June 1st, 1953, distancing Hugo Koblet by over four minutes to seal his fifth Giro d'Italia title. That ride is why every Grand Tour still crowns its highest point the "Cima Coppi."

But there's no finish line here today. I backtrack to the Umbrail Pass — at 2,501m, the highest paved road in Switzerland, opened in 1901 not for cyclists but for the Swiss army, who spent World War I dug into trenches along this exact ridge, defending neutral territory in what's remembered as the "White War." The descent drops into Val Müstair, Switzerland, a valley Napoleon's own troops marched through, where salt and wine once crossed the Alps by mule train centuries before tarmac existed.

Then back into Italy, through Prato allo Stelvio, for the climb that actually breaks you: the eastern side, 48 numbered hairpins stacked up a wall of a mountain, the same ramps where Coppi's teammate Sandro Carrea lit the fuse that turned the 1953 Giro into history. Legs empty, lungs burning, I reach the Stelvio a second time — over 3,500 meters of elevation gained in a single ride, one mountain, two countries, two ascents.

The reward is the descent back to Bormio — fast, cold, and completely earned.

This is one of the toughest days Tour de Pasta has thrown at me yet, and one of the most beautiful roads on Earth to suffer on. If you've ever wondered what the Stelvio actually feels like from both sides in one day — this is it.

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