TU4EVER

July 7th, 2022 : A whole day in Italy for the second to last Alpinaraid day

Colle di Sampeyre - Colle del Preit - Lago della Meja - Colle Valcavera - Colle Fauniera - Colle Esischie - Col de Tende

📏 Distance : 167 km
⛰️ Positive elevation : 5215 m

The night at Agriturismo Lou Chirun was very relaxing, which was a very good thing for the day that was coming up. Like every other mornings, we started off with breakfast and coffee, before going to the usual morning briefing. Then, we went on our technical inspection of the car before starting to drive.
That morning, everything did not go as planned. When we opened up the hood, we discovered that the air intake after the filter was pulled away from its original place, even though the hose clamp was still there. Hopefully, when we remembered the last stretch of track to get to the Agriturismo the night before (full of bumps and holes), we should not have driven like that for too long. That’s a good thing, because at this time of the year, the tracks are extremely dusty, and the air intake must be clean at all costs. This famous TU engine is definitely unbreakable !

We quickly got to cleaning up the air intake and placing it back, while most of other crews already left the Agriturismo. While we were at it, we also filled up the engine oil.

Here we were, ready to kick off the day’s journey, and catch up the other crews. One last picture of this beautiful place and off we went !

We immediately started by the climb of the Colle di Sampeyre (2284 m). A large portion was in a forest, so we didn’t stop for pictures, and we quickly caught up our lateness. We got to the top for a small break with other crews.

Day five roads were very enjoyable and we went through several beautiful italian mountain villages.

We took a half-asphalt road, sometimes carved into the mountain, to get to Canosio village. Afterwards, we went up again on the other side of the valley, upwards Colle del Preit (2083 m). This is a jawdropping and still wild valley.

On the other side of the mountain pass, we kept on driving accross nature on a track called Strade della Gardetta. The scenery almost made us forget that we discovered the second issue of the day. With all the bumps and holes, we lost our exhaust line that we attached back, MacGuyver-way, the day before. We did not notice any change of sound as the exhaust sealing was already not sufficient and the road did a lot of noise inside the car. We turned back on the track looking for it.

The fact that we caught up earlier with other crews did us good : other crews behind us found it and gave it back to us. We decided to fasten it on our roofrack and to attach it back to the catalytic converted later, once on a paved road.

We had a lunch break on the shore of Lago della Meja, then we kept on driving on the track towards Caserme della Bandia. These abandonned ruins in the middle of the mountains are making the landscape very interesting, so we decided to stop for a while to explore and take pictures.

Finally, we took the road again to get to Borgo San Dalmazzo where we could fill up with gas and use a parking spot to lift the car and attach back the exhaust line correctly (with iron wire and duct tape for the sealing). It was way better to finish the day’s itinerary without going deaf. We passed by Limone, drove uphill to Col de Tende (1871 m), then we reached Forte Colle Alto where we set up camp for the night.

We had aperitif with another crew, then we joined all crews and the organizing committee for a meal and drinks for the last night together.