Sellaronda and More - Mountain Biking in South Tyrol's Val Gardena

Mud?' With a thoughtfully furrowed brow, Manuel repeats the last word I inquired and looks at me a bit bewildered.
'Dirt, mud,' Michi jumps in with mental agility. The managing director of the BikeHotels SĂĽdtirol is obviously practiced in translating between Austrian and German. But Manuel's expression remains pensive, stirring his espresso with a small spoon; as if he really didn't know what wet, squelchy earth was. Or as if there's no word for it in Ladin.
Yesterday at the same time, on the dust-dry paths between Col Raiser and the Grödnerjoch, I might have believed him. But after last night's downpour, which has already thrown a lot of dirt at us this morning, that seems unlikely.
'Mauta!' It finally occurs to our guide.

Mauta. Another vocabulary word for my imaginary German-Ladin dictionary. And a very essential one, as I will find out over the course of today's tour.
Mentally, I try to place it right next to Tiëra, earth, and Giara, gravel. But this ancient language proves to be resistant, fleeing from my brain's convolutions faster than the marmots on the Seceda into their burrow.
Time to write down what I've learned. Time to capture the experiences.

Said and done. We set off, about five kilometers down the valley to the first main town of the Val Gardena, St. Ulrich or Ortisei/Urtijëi. For this part, we used the flat track of the former Ferata de Gherdëina.
Built in the midst of the chaos of World War I by 6,000 Russian prisoners of war under inhumane conditions in just five months, the narrow-gauge railway originally served to supply the Dolomite front with war materials. Once transformed into a passenger train but decommissioned in 1960, this connection today serves a new, especially convenient purpose for us as a noble footpath and partly bike path.

It became even more comfortable thanks to the Furnes and Seceda cable cars, which whisked us from just under 1,300 to over 2,400 meters in no time at all. And in the case of the large cabin, even spectacularly so, as it passes hair-raisingly close to the impressive western walls of the popular photo hotspot in the uppermost section.
The air was thin up there, and the magnificent panorama was clouded. "Nibles," the eager-to-learn brain hastily noted in the imaginary vocabulary notebook.
Raschötz, Seceda, and the Geisler peaks almost completely hid behind swiftly moving, gray veils, and even out front, towards the Sella Group, Langkofel, Rosengarten, and Alpe di Siusi, the real distant view for which this prime Dolomites spot is so famous, was denied to us. The scenery was all the more dramatic when the clouds briefly lifted and revealed steep walls, wild cliffs, and endlessly impressive basins for a few seconds.

Actually, the Tourism Association has been trying to scale back mountain biking on the Seceda. The paths are too heavily trafficked, and the photo motif, made famous by a Windows screensaver, is too sought after to comfortably accommodate the many Asians and Insta-disciples on beautiful days.
But the wider gravel paths below the distinctive Pieralongia stone have not yet been closed, so we made our way across the magnificent alpine pastures of the ski and hiking area Col Raiser and the huts Sofie, Daniel, and Odles over towards the Stevia massif. The further down and to the east we went, the lonelier it became again; although at rest stops like the "Utia de Ncisles," where we took a short break, or the "Juac," where we admired the meadows softly billowing with clouds, one is never really alone.

So why even go up there when there is truly no shortage of worthy and unrestricted alternatives? Because in light of all the rocky splendor and alpine magnificence, it would really be a shame to miss out on it.
Especially after the Regensburg hut, when the spire-like towers of the Stevia come closer, a forest path along with a stream provides variety, and finally, the gate to Vallungo opens up, stony and mighty and mystical and tall – on the left the walls of the Puez group, on the right the Chedul mountains (by the way, the namesake of our accommodation) and the Col Turond, and in the center now the juiciest green larch forests, which will certainly become kitschily colorful and beautiful in autumn.
Indeed, Daniel also recommends visiting Val Gardena either right in June, at the start of the season, or not until autumn, when the discoloration of the already grandiose landscape stamps its own special mark. "From September, the paths and huts belong to the bikers alone again, and the weather is also always very stable," our guide knows.

Speaking of weather: It was once darker and wetter on this first day. Reinvigorated by bacon snacks, penne, and gnocchi, we headed off after a late lunch break at the Ciampac hut at the foot of the Stevia, continuing towards the Gardena Pass. The Dantercepies cable car thankfully took over the 646 m ascent to this pass height between Cir peaks and Sella massif.
With Cir Tiëra and Cir Giara, we had the choice between two built MTB trails for the first time. To reach the subsequent Plans de Frea, we opted for the gravel variant, that is Cir Giara - and indeed: Especially at the beginning, the trail lived up to its name and zigzagged in somewhat slippery, loose ground conditions towards Passo Gardena. Always spectacular and within reach before our eyes: the Sella massif.
What a feeling of floating and reveling, a wonder and gaze! In the face of this incredible backdrop, it was a little hard for me to concentrate on the trail, although it would have deserved attention due to some jumps and small steps, berms and finally even wooden obstacles!

Because on the program of our tour menu, the Sellaronda was not just the flagship of the region, which can also be conquered as an alpine carousel, motorcycle tour, ski tour, or classic road bike route. According to the weather forecast, after the last morning rain showers, we were also promised dream conditions to capture and absorb what this round tour around the Sella massif and through four Dolomite valleys - Val Gardena, Alta Badia, Val di Fassa, Val Fodom - is so famous for in all its variations: the breathtaking view of everything that has status and name in the Dolomites.

And here we are now, sitting in the hut at the mountain station of the Braia Fraida chairlift, seeing: little to nothing.
Grey, rain-heavy clouds or dense fog from which moisture drizzles out have accompanied us since our departure and have clouded the panorama or made it completely disappear. Where just the day before we would have almost bumped our noses against the north faces of the Sella massif and couldn't get enough of the rocky dialogue between the Cir peaks and the towers of the almost-three-thousanders, today there was only trickling, cotton-white infinity. And where yesterday there was dust and loose, sandy trickling, today ruled greasy soil and moist clay.

This has its own charm, too. However, it's not the ideal weather for photography. So we stopped by the Ăśtia i Tabla to wait for the predicted improvement over a Cappuccino or Espresso, and took the opportunity to learn a few words from the oldest language of South Tyrol.
Railway? Ferata.
Cable car? Condla.
Alpine pasture? Mont.
And by the way: The fact that Utia, the word for hut, is written without dots over the initial letter in Gherdëina, but with them here up in the southern Val Gardena, is not a spelling mistake. Val Gardena is one of five Dolomite valleys around the Sella massif, where Ladin has been preserved due to the former isolation of these regions – but each valley has developed its own peculiarities, even down to completely different words.
Marmot? Muntaniola.
Hello? Hoi.
Manuel proves to be a very patient teacher, especially when it comes to the sometimes very difficult pronunciation. And after all, he's not missing out on anything. Outside, the clouds still hang so low that it's hard to make out the opposite mountainside.

But hardly having emerged from the gigantic cabin of the cable car from the upper Fassa Valley to the Sella Pass, we are greeted by radiant lum del soreie – sunshine.
The same group of travelers, who had just shared a few cookies with water-soaked hands and were staring a bit grumpily into the rain veils in front of the cabin window, now steps out onto the forecourt of the Rodella mountain station and can hardly believe what they see on the other side of the mountain, in the Gardena Valley:

The Langkofel, as it slowly and thoughtfully peels itself out of the clutches of the clouds. The Sella, as it lifts its grey hat piece by piece, until it finally clears completely. The Marmolada, as it flashes more and more frequently from the sea of clouds, until just before we reach the Sella Pass, it truly stands before us in all its glory.
And suddenly even a rainbow, spanning over and between and beside all this, in a double arrangement and shimmering with the joy of life in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.

It's almost too kitschy to be true. We revel in our happiness on charming alpine meadows basking in the sun and through a true carpet of intensely pink blooming rhododendrons.
We smile at the absurdly tiny standing gondolas of the legendary Sassolungo basket lift, a tourist original from the 1950s, and admire how differently the same mountain massif can look when you just travel a few meters further. We discover a mysteriously appealing rock formation, whose blocks of various sizes arranged like a stone city may serve as a climbing garden for humans; but for elves, dwarfs, and other mythical creatures, it's certain, as an ideal living space and playground.
We eavesdrop on marmots and admire birds of prey. And as we finally pass the mountain station of the Gran Paradiso chairlift, we begin the last descent of our four-and-a-half-thousand-meter-vertical battle.

I want to be honest: I'm not a fan of overly groomed flow trails. But the Paravis-Line is really something else. And that's not just because of its wide berms and high rollers that create a real rollercoaster feeling, which can also be enjoyed quickly thanks to the wide, grippy track.
It's also, and above all, the skillful integration into the wide meadows between Langkofel and Sella that makes this trail, as the Ladin name suggests, paradisiacal. Where else does one curve exit stand next to nearly a 1,000-meter towering climbing wall, and at the next a more than seven-kilometer-wide rock terrace? When else, emerging from the compression with momentum, does one get the impression of jumping straight onto an oversized mountain plateau?