Bikepacking the Caucasus (Off-road): Atsunta Pass Adventure
last summer I set out on one of my test Adventures yet cycling the Caucasus crossing - a traverse of Europe's highest mountain range over brutally high mountain passes and through lush, green valleys the route was challenging, but also brought me through some of the most beautiful landscapes I'd ever seen the route includes the Atsunta pass, which is a hiking trail connecting two regions over 3,500 meters high pass where we had to push our bikes up during this month in Georgia I also got to know its nature, people and culture, and fell in love with this country all right I made my way to Tbilisi that was very stressful it's like big contrast between newly renovated houses um and old places after a few relaxing days In the heat of Tblisi my legs were itching and so I headed out towards the high Caucasus Mountains the road led me out of the crazy and overwhelming City traffic into the countryside and for the next 2 days I got into a rhythm and got used to living on the bike again then it was time for the real route to start the Caucasus Crossing begins with entering the mountainous Tusheti region Which for car is only accessible by an almost 3,000 meters high, badly maintained mountain pass which is one of the most dangerous roads in the world and it's called Abano Pass The asphalt road just ended now it's gravel and I have a feeling that for the next few days in Tusheti I'm not going to see much asphalt oh man after a long day in the saddle in like 30-35° weather there's just nothing more refreshing than a bath and an ice cold mountain river that was beautiful I needed that okay so I just started my ride now it's only uphill up to Abano pass I'm already on the lower slopes it's 32 km long um with 2,200 meters of ascent that's an insane climb, and it's on a gravel road oh man I've got the second flat tire on the third day my back tire is flat the road is so steep and it's so hard to get up I've only managed like 8 km so far at 10am the temperature was already over 30° and even above 1000M it didn't cool down much to call the road to gravel road would be an exaggeration uh these were loose stones on raw rock surface and with almost 40 kg of baggage I was really struggling and thought about all the things that I could have left at home Jesus man look at this road I think like after 1 and a half hours of cycling I managed to do about 6 km it's insane - it's very encouraging though, like a lot of people that are waving for the first time I can see the pass up there it doesn't look so far away but I think it is pretty far away I started at 10:00 a.m., now it's 4 p.m. I made it up I just had to cry a lot that was so tough the entire f*ing day day the last few kilometers were so hard but I made it I'm cookig on top of the Abano pass at 2,900 meters beautiful good morning I camped up there on the top of Abano pass which was beautiful and this descend - you can probably see the turns back there I have to be careful I've been warned yeah the road is not that good so I have to just take it slow a fast and furious downhill ride led me into the region of Tusheti suddenly I was surrounded by green grasslands and beautiful horses and felt like I had entered a new world wow so this is Tusheti it's like this green oasis that is only accessible by one single huge mountain pass everything here is so green and beautiful forests and hills and grass it's amazing the next morning I woke up on my cozy bed on the balcony I met some other travelers and Gianluca, a fellow bike packer initially I just wanted to go in and out of Tusheti via the main road, the Abano pass but there's an alternative: over the mighty Atsunta pass a hiking trail which some people dare to do with their bikes and Gianluca convinced me to come with him but for that I had to repack and give a lot of my baggage to other people who would bring it back to Tbilisi in their cars for me so that my bike would be light enough to push it for several days and after a few hours of packing we were ready hello people I'm Gianluca the new addition to the team he convinced me to actually do the route up to the Atsunta pass It's a 3,400 meter pass which is actually for hiking but uh we will try to to do it by bike we're going to spend the next week together riding over the Atsunta pass from Omalo to Shatili which is uh yeah insanely hard and today is the first day and we're taking the afternoon to explore a mountain ridge so we're hiking up We are now in the medieval village of Dartlo which is really cool all these old houses lots of little paths okay we've left Dartlo behind us so from now on it's getting a little more wild We're now in the last village along this kind of dirt road and we're having some lunch some Khachapuri and soup and salad and a beer which is really nice let's see how far we get today, from now on it's going to be a hiking path so it's going to be exciting how it's yeah how we get along with that Now we're trying to get our pass papers because it passes close to the border of Chechnya we have to get some papers at this military checkpoint This is what is left of Gian's derailleur it's like completely bent I don't know how happened honestly I mean this morning there was a problem, but I never imagined it would have turned out like this this this is the current state of affairs so we tried our best few hours and uh we kind of came up with a single speed solution but as soon as you put pressure on it it doesn't work anymore we're going to go back to into the village to sleep in a guest house and see if we can find a solution tomorrow morning we found a lovely guest house got some very tasty dinner and spent the rest of the evening sitting by a campfire and talk with the daughter of the guest house owner who played us this beautiful song okay so this is the fix, there's no derailer it's a single speed and uh it goes through this piece of pipe there is a risk of - we did all of these because otherwise the single speed would would fall down or up so hopefully this way it will stay in the position the third smallest gear I mean it's not perfect but uh should do it I think the apples are fine and so we were finally on the way towards Atsunta pass from here on it was a real hiking trail this meant lots of pushing but also very fun single trail descents we're like two hours, 2-3 hours in uh we've covered 6 kilometers so far because the trail is often like this we have to push a lot but it's quite nice, sometimes it's really cool single trail that we can ride although it's not really made for bikes so we're having to push quite a lot but it's really fun we're near 2,600 M and this trail is pretty rough it's along the edge of this hill, or mountain and we're having to push a lot and also have to very careful that we don't fall down sick! That was fun And for the first time we can actually see it up there at the very top at 3,400 M we're now at like 2,700 and have about 2 hours of sunlight left so we're going to try to go as far as possible this river is pretty rowdy I'm glad we don't have to cross it We have to cross this River and it rained last night so it's pretty big last like 100 M of altitude gain pretty tired so going to set up set up camp soon it's a pretty pretty sick place to be pushing a bike so this is our dinner some nice pasta with mushrooms how is it? German cooks are the best hello and good morning from our beautiful Camp spot at 2,900 M we're going to go up today the pass is just up there 700 M higher than we are currently and only 3 km away first some breakfast and enjoying the sunrise this was our breakfast or this is our breakfast: oats with, Apple and chocolate uh how do you rate it? I recommend it, must try go we just started today's hike it's going to be a tough one we're almost there you see the pass up there somewhere in the back here I mean still a bit to go but Jesus look at that behind us Good job man I love you! yeah I love you too man! That must be mount Kazbek It's been beautiful! Don't know how long Gian and I have probably been thinking about it... it's amazing, that was pretty hard In the back you can see Mount Kazbek, in the back is the region of Tusheti over there is Russia, Chechnya 3,500 meters, we did it!! in the second part of the Caucasus Crossing we met up with two friends of Gianluca: Carlo and Lorenzo Together we conquered the Swanetian Caucasus over some crazy Mountain Roads, fueled by the Georgian food specialty Khachapuri it was a fun and wild ride so stay tuned!
2024-05-06 10:24
