Tuesday, July 20, 1954. 10 o'clock in the morning. A Fiat 639 truck tackles the mule track climbing from the Ponte di Legno side towards the 2,612 meters of Passo del Gavia. At km 29, about three kilometers from the pass, in the Roccette locality, the road gives way. The truck—two axles, rear-wheel drive, cargo bed: too heavy—plummets. A vertical drop of 150 meters. Eighteen Alpine soldiers from the sixth regiment of the Bolzano battalion die almost instantly. Another dies the following day. Only two survive, including the driver. A tragedy. "La Domenica del Corriere" would have dedicated its front cover to it. When a tunnel is later excavated, called Rocce nere, to bypass those hairpin curves hanging over the abyss (400 meters of darkness—a light installed only sporadically—, dark and oblique), the dirt road becomes a destination only for Alpine soldiers and families, for anniversaries and commemorations.

Today that stretch overlooking the Frigidolfo river comes back to life. Completely rebuilt: reinforced, protected, asphalted. Renamed the Tridentine variant of state road 300. Historic, spectacular, breathtaking not only for the gradient (400 meters around 15 percent) and the altitude (between 2,300 and 2,400 meters), but for the scenery, majestic: alpine cathedrals. A project financed by the Stelvio Park and the Municipality of Ponte di Legno: the inauguration today with a bike ride, starting at 1 p.m. from the center of Ponte di Legno, with speeches and blessings. The presence of Eugenio Berzin is announced, among others.

The Gavia is a sixth-category climb in cycling terms. Two sides, from the Valcamonica and from the Valtellina (or rather, from the Valfurva). The noble one, the hardest, from the Valcamonica. And its stories. The first man on the Gavia (by bike), Imerio Massignan: three punctures robbed him of the stage victory (at Bormio: first Charlie Gaul, Giro d'Italia 1960). Since then, another 13 times in the route, heavenly seat and thin air, of the Giro. Unforgettable the 1988 edition, tormented by snow, handed down by chronicles, mythologized by testimonies. Then the Gavia of gran fondos, the Gavia of traversals, the Gavia of challenges that everyone launches against themselves. Up to the 300 (and more) Gavias of Tarcisio Persegona: a tribute, almost an obsession.

The return of the Gavia to the Alpine soldiers' road is a historical and geological lesson, perhaps religious but certainly spiritual, human and sporting. The bicycle is always the lightest and most silent instrument, the most respectful, to begin again.