| The shelter, the only one at Gavia Pass (2652 mts s.l.), has been built in 1959 by Duilio and Vittorina Bonetta. The shelter, present in the Italian mountain outline for more than 40 years, today is still managed by the family Bonetta and it offers the advantages and the genuineness of a family management. It has 37 spare beds, a warm and pleasant dining room, a cafè to welcome tired climbers and tourists. You'll be caught by the beauty of the landscape that we can still define splendidly wild, entirely surrounded by some of the most beautiful tops of the Ortles-Cevedale group and by the Adamello group. In the heart of the Stelvio National Park , every year it is destination of hundreds of impassioned of mountains, mountaineering ski, cycling, of motorbikers and whoever loves a true contact with the nature. For its pure air it is ideal for children of every age, it has been selected for 6 times for big prize of the mountain in the Giro D'Italia ( 1960 – 1988 – 1996 – 1999 – 2000 – 2004 )gathering a considerable number of impassioned cyclists of all levels. |
The Gavia Pass is an alpine pass of the Retiche Alps (Central Alps) and it puts in communication the Gavia Valley (Valfurva) and the high Camonica Valley, and it borders with the districts of Sondrio and Brescia. It is crossed by a road (SS 300 of the Gavia Pass ) that from Santa Caterina Valfurva brings to Ponte di Legno. |
The Gavia Pass has been made famous by the cycling competition Giro D'Italia, as it represents one of the mythical slopes, although it is a secondary road slightly frequented by the traffic. The first ascent goes up to 1960, with the famous enterprise of Imerio Massignan. He passed alone at the Gavia pass but then he has to surrender to Charly Gaul owing to a puncture. Massignan reached the finishing line with 14 seconds of delay. Only in 1988 the Giro D'Italia returned to the Gavia Pass with another mythical lap from Ponte di Legno, raced under a snow storm. The second part of the slope from Ponte di Legno has been asphalted during the years '90 because of the passage of the cycling competition. Nowdays, togheter with the Mortirolo Pass , that can be crossed once gone down in Valtellina, it represents one of the most desidered destinations by the cyclists. |