Path, direction, suggestion

Description

This is a good winter two days mtb track, with a nice landscape, a road that you'll never forget and a cabin which provides a lot of comforts. The cabin is at 1168m height, South-East exposed, with a front good area: it's suitable for winter overnight, giving also the opportunity to rise up to 1400m on the neighboring road.

Note: the presentation of the track depends on the environmental conditions that we found! We suggest to evaluate the weather and snow conditions for this kind of track.

EQUIPMENT

As you can see in this page pictures, this cabin makes available a lot of things: wood, brazier, water (we found the fountain open, but 2014 winter was not so cold), open cabin with table, chairs, stove, two equipped bads and two bads with mesh only.

Anyway, we brought all of the equipment. What is the equipment? Watch the equipment page.

DAY 1: UPHILL

The Moggio Udinese village, where the path starts, has a lot of car parks. The tracks begins on a country road, but don't worry, there's a few traffic in that zone.

After a couple of kilometres, you turn right and take the road that passes through the Pradis village and guides to the refuge. The whole road has a tarmac bottom, uphill has a significant slope, not too high. There are some short plain parts sometimes: you can stop there.

The road climbs into the East side of Aupa valley up, to pass after to the West side of Alba valley. You'll change valley and slope, it gets from 13% to 15%.

Going ahead you'll reach the 1040m height; you'll see a park beside the road, where all the cars must stop. A trail to Vualt cabin starts from there (20 minutes walking). A signal indicates also that, proceeding on the road; the time to reach the cabin is 30 minutes walking. The most interesting thing for bike riders is that you could have 2 minutes to take a break in the park, there's a very nice landscape there, it's just a few metres out of the wood. The road to the cabin slope weakes some hundreds of metres after the park.

Soon you'll reach the refuge. The navigator track goes on, this is due to the no snow close to the cabin when we did the route: after having climped up for two hours, you must find the snow, is it true?

The navi track goes ahead up to the ruins of an old house, very close to the end of the road, coming back after to the Vualt refuge.

As for each "two days" track, we suggest to prepare all of the necessary before the sunset. We advise to build and light the fire in advance, often happens that the wood is too moist and hard to burn.

A small walk close to the cabin could let you see some deers or roe deers in the wood, a suggested walk is the 425 trail which goes from the cabin to the Vualt saddle.

DAY 2: DESCENT

Descent starts from the cabin area, driving for some hundreds of metres alogn a trail. The only trouble of riding on the trail is that, at a certain point, you'll have to cross a rivulet; anyway, you can easily avoid it leaving the cabin on the same rise road.

You'll proceed on the tarmac road, the same road of the uphill, that has a lot of straight parts. In a few minutes you'll reach the saddle between Aupa and Alba valleys. Turn left and take the dirt road.

The slope is strong, a lot of curves with heavy exposure and two metal-bottom bridges, where is so easy to slide in case of rain. In a few time you arrive to Moggio village, that you left the day before, getting quicky to the park.

This route has a lot of benefits, such as the refuge, and some disadvantages, as the slope. At all, the length of the track is 22km with a 1100m altitude gain.

Track's picture and video

Gallery