48 Hairpins of Glory: Conquering the Stelvio Pass on a BMW GS

They number them. That’s the first thing you notice. Every hairpin bend on the climb to the Stelvio Pass is marked with a stone block bearing a number, and as you work your way up the eastern approach from Prato allo Stelvio, the numbers count down from 48 toward 1, each one representing another tight corner conquered, another hundred metres of altitude gained. By the time you reach hairpin number 1 and the pass opens up before you at 2,758 metres above sea level, you understand why Top Gear called this the greatest driving road in the world. And you’re on a motorcycle, which makes it better.

The Stelvio Pass — Passo dello Stelvio in Italian, Stilfserjoch in German — connects the South Tyrolean valley of the Adige with the Valtellina in Lombardy. It is the second highest paved mountain pass in the Alps, and the highest in the eastern Alps. When it was built between 1820 and 1825 by order of the Austrian Empire, it was an engineering feat comparable to the great cathedrals: 48 hairpin bends carved into the face of a mountain, with precision and stubbornness, over five years of brutal alpine construction.

The Rhythm of the Road

There is a particular rhythm to riding hairpin mountain roads that you either discover or you don’t. The Stelvio teaches it to you quickly. Approach wide on the outside. Brake firmly but smoothly well before the apex. Downshift — one gear, sometimes two — feeling the engine slow you further. Turn in late, hugging the inside. Find the apex. As the road opens, let the throttle come in gently, progressively, feeling the rear tyre find its grip as the bike stands up. Roll on. Accelerate hard toward the next bend. Brake. Repeat.

On a BMW GS, this process has a particular quality — the long-travel suspension absorbs the rougher patches of tarmac, the torque delivery is linear and predictable, and the upright riding position gives you a clear view into each approaching corner. Forty-eight times we went through this sequence. We lost count of how many times we grinned inside our helmets.

The First Snow of the Summer

We had been warned, but warnings and experience are different things. At around 2,400 metres, we came around a hairpin and there it was: snow. Not old snow pushed to the roadside, but fresh overnight snow still lying on the tarmac at the edges of the lane, the kind of snow that looks innocent but is not. We slowed immediately. Above us, the switchbacks disappeared into a landscape that looked like February rather than July.

The Stelvio can receive snow in any month of the year. The pass road is only reliably clear from June to October, and even in high summer, a cold front can dust the summit with fresh white overnight. We threaded through carefully, our tyres finding the dry strips in the centre of each lane, until we climbed above the snow line and the road cleared again. It was a reminder that mountains operate on their own schedule, and that respect for the conditions is not optional.

The Summit: Rifugio Garibaldi and the Sign Forest

The summit area of the Stelvio is chaotic in the best possible way. Dozens of motorcycles and cars are parked at various angles. Cyclists, who have earned their place here more than any of us, sit recovering at outdoor tables. There are souvenir shops, a hotel, and the famous Rifugio Garibaldi — the mountain hut whose exterior is covered with hundreds of stickers from motorcycle clubs, touring groups, and adventurers from every corner of the world.

We added ours. Every traveller adds theirs. The building has become a kind of guest book in sticker form, a record of every two-wheeled pilgrim who has made the climb. Finding our own sticker on the wall after placing it felt oddly ceremonial — we were part of the long history of people who had come here under their own power and wanted to mark the fact of it.

The view from the summit repays the climb. In clear conditions you can see into three countries: Italy to the south and west, Switzerland to the north, and Austria to the north-east. The Ortler group fills the southern horizon. Below you on both sides, the white lines of the hairpin roads coil down into their respective valleys like brushstrokes on a relief map.

The Western Descent to Bormio

The western approach to the Stelvio, descending toward Bormio in the Valtellina, is different in character from the numbered eastern hairpins. It is steeper, faster, more dramatic in its drops. The road here feels more like a mountain bike trail that has been paved and widened just enough for cars — long straight sections interrupted by sudden tight bends over drops that make your stomach tighten.

Bormio below is an ancient spa town that has been used for thermal bathing since Roman times, and after the Stelvio, the idea of a hot spring is extremely appealing. We rode down in a loose group, each of us finding our own pace, the valley opening gradually ahead until the pines gave way to the lower alpine meadows and the town appeared, the tension in our forearms slowly releasing as the gradient eased.

Why the Stelvio Matters

There are hundreds of mountain passes in the Alps. Many are beautiful. Several are technically demanding. A few are genuinely high. The Stelvio manages to be all of these things simultaneously, and to do so with a particular character — dramatic, historic, accessible enough to be achievable but demanding enough to feel earned — that puts it in a category of its own.

If you ride motorcycles and you come to this part of Europe, the Stelvio is not optional. It is the reason you came. The 48 hairpins, the snow in July, the sticker-covered hut at the top, the long view into three countries — this is what the Alps were made for, and the BMW GS, growling and dependable on every one of those numbered bends, was made for this.

Written from the road — Tripcareadventures, Europe BMW Bike Tour