Eisjöchl-Tour

Naturno - Senales - Val Senales - Certosa - Plan - Plan - San Leonardo - San Martino - Merano - Lagundo - Plars - Tel - Plaus - Naturno
Length: 85 km; Time: 8 hours
Physical exertion: Extremely difficult

Ancient farmhouses, which do not hide their many years of life through the notches in the sun-tanned wood, paint the picture of a rural idyll. This circular bike tour is aimed at professionals with a lot of endurance. After all, the altitude difference is more than 2,500 meters and many trails require a strong pedal stroke. The expedition takes place in and around the Texel Group Nature Park, which has completely earned the predicate "challenging".

Asphalt roads, forest roads, and natural trails provide varied ground conditions, and those who have mastered the Eisjöchl can confidently count themselves among the tougher ones.

The starting shot is fired in Naturno, where you first head north on the Roman Alpine road Via Claudia Augusta. At the first bridge, turn onto the state road, from where you continue to the junction towards Val Senales. This is taken. The direction is oriented towards Certosa and Val di Fosse. Finally, you reach the Vorderkaser hamlet and the Vorderkaserhof.
You continue downhill on the forest road to the Eishof, where you can enjoy a hearty meal for the next climbs. This is quite necessary, because then you go up many hairpin bends to the Eisjöchl and even further up to the Stettiner Hut. This ascent can take several hours.

This is followed by a longer trail descent with the Lazinseralm in the Passeiertal as the destination. However, it is recommended to dismount at some points.
The next points after the Lazinseralm are Plan and Plan. With momentum, we take the next turnoff to Breitleben and reach St. Leonhard in the Passeier via a paved road. Along the river, the Passer, there is a beautiful cycle path to Merano. And our journey is not over yet - we continue along the state road to Lagundo, to Plars, to Tel, and on the predominantly asphalted Vinschgau cycle path back to Naturno.

If you can't make the last stretch from Merano to Naturno, you can cheat a little and take the Vinschgau train.

Right at the beginning of the tour, you will encounter the Schnalstalwerk - a hydroelectric power plant that was built at the beginning of the 20th century and was of great importance during its active time. Later it was replaced by the Naturnserwerk and now slumbers abandoned but as a protected industrial monument.

In Juval, above Naturno, the Messner Museum perches like an eyrie on a rocky peak. Since the 1980s, the late medieval castle has been privately owned by extreme mountain climber Reinhold Messner and is now dedicated to the "Myth of the Mountain". In addition to a gallery with pictures of the sacred mountains of the world, a mask collection with exhibits from five continents, and a Tantra room, the Tibet exhibition, which can also be visited, bears witness to Messner's respect for foreign cultures, which always fascinated him.

On the paths through the Texel Group Nature Park, the largest nature park in South Tyrol, you will find a variety of Mediterranean forests, steppe-like slopes, alpine meadows, and barren, high-alpine rock formations. Around 20 lakes together form the largest high-alpine lake plateau in South Tyrol, and prehistoric settlements tell mystical stories of the first people in this area. In another part of the park, the Partschinser Waterfall thunders an impressive 97 meters into the depths. Towering high, on the other hand, are the "Roteck", the "Texelspitze", the "Hohe Weiße", and the "Trübwand" - all impressive mountains that exceed the 3,000-meter mark.

Finally, the glacial mills of Plan underline the strong connection to long gone times. 15 mysterious holes with a diameter of a few centimeters up to 7 meters are located in the ground. Responsible for this is a miraculous natural wonder: about 22,000 years ago, during the Würm Ice Age, small glacial eddies formed by glacier water and grinding stones drilled the holes visible today into the rocky subsoil.

The spirit of the past is omnipresent and makes the Eisjöchltour a mystical sports highlight with cult status.