Coming down from a high

Words and photos by Rich Rothwell

Coming down from a high.

It hit me quickly and hard.

Seemingly from nowhere, I felt intensely and overwhelmingly depressed.

The emotional spiral caught me completely unawares. Perhaps naively, I initially refuted the idea that I could be feeling this way; this was a pleasurable tour after all. A short holiday even.

But as I descended from Gardetta, and hit the wall of freezing, damp, and bone chilling mist, there was no denying it; I was going down, in more ways than one.

Four days earlier, I rode out from the architecturally and culturally unique city of Turin to bikepack a bucket list route; the Turin Nice Rally. The TNR meanders over 700k and climbs 20,000m through the western Italian and French Alps and includes road cols steeped in racing mythology and off road sections through dramatic and stunning landscapes.

It was late September. I knew that I was pushing the weather window and packed for winter conditions. This was definitely a good move. After leaving Turin on a warm but muggy late afternoon, I reached the foothills of the Alps just as the weather broke. Thoughts of riding deep into the night were quickly revised and I hurriedly pitched my tent; lightning cracked off the peaks above me and pea size hail tested the fabric of my tent.

The next day followed a similar pattern; moody skies gathered up high and as I climbed ever upwards, the persistent rain turned to sleet and snow. The lightning started again, and feeling very vulnerable on a plateau, I hid in the annex of a closed refuge till the storm once again passed.

And so it continued. Three days of sometimes hiding from the weather, sometimes jumping to the next safe haven. And always looking for food; with the weather breaking and the season ending, pickings were very slim indeed.

On night two I camped high up on Finistere. My tent froze solid overnight. The mountains when I awoke were stunning. The riding was hard but exhilarating. However, being persistently cold and wet was draining. Day three was heavy and persistent rain and visibility on Sampeyre was virtually zero. I loved being in the mountains in these conditions, and those fleeting breaks in the heavy sky produced stunning vistas, but I yearned for a break in the weather.

On day four I got that weather window. After replenishing diminished calories in Dronero, I began the long and increasingly steep climb to the Gardetta Plateau, or Little Peru as it is sometimes referred to.

The morning provided a very welcome and significant change in the weather. The air was still in the high sided valley through which I now climbed. The sky was clear blue. The sun's warmth began to build and this made me acutely aware of how persistently cold the previous days had been. The relief elevated my mood dramatically.

Sheer rock crags erupted out of steep slopes of scree that had crumbled over the millennia. The final steep hairpins out of the valley head provided a new angle on the incredible scenery at every turn. I was dizzied by the continual twists and turns of the road as I continually craned my neck to catch yet another jaw dropping glimpse around the next corner.

The road ended, turned to a trail and led me to the gateway of the plateau. I could barely believe the landscape that surrounded me. Rocca la Meja stood like a surreal Cathedral of geology to my left. Sheer cliffs with dramatic striations arose to my right. Dustings of snow picked out the fissures and texture of the jagged and sheer peaks in front of me. Marmots scampered in and out of their warrens and the distant mellow ding of cow bells drifted across the plateau.

It was a spectacular, surreal, and an overwhelming bombardment of my senses.

The trail wrapped around this unique amphitheatre and once again, every new angle brought me to a stop. I had virtually given up riding by this point. Some strange gravity was holding me in this special place. I sat on the track and ate a little. I travelled a few hundred more meters and stopped again to just sit on a rock and stare at the patterns in the cliffs.

I just didn’t want to leave.

Why would I?

It cannot get any better than this. A dreamlike state of euphoria.

A bank of mist rose to my left. Atmospherics momentarily tore a hole in the cloud and a cliff face hovered magically in the sky. Mesmerised, I took a picture just before the hole closed up. I’m glad I did. With my mental state at this point, I needed physical evidence that these visions were real.

Starting to level off and descend now. Begrudgingly, I accepted that I had to leave. As beautiful as it was, I was at 2,500m here and another night in sub zero temperatures did not appeal.

Eventually joining a road, the fast descent began.

That’s when it hit me.

Within the seconds the clear blue sky was snuffed out by a grey and freezing sea of mist. I immediately stopped to put all my clothes back on. Mentally, it was like a punch in the face. I heard myself groan as if listening to another. I mumbled. I protested. I got angry. I felt like screaming at the penetrating fog that robbed my temperature and the ecstasy of only moments ago.

I felt completely, overwhelmingly, and deeply low.

It was shocking and confusing. It left me hollow and mentally exhausted. Up to this point on the trip, I had felt at peace with my own company. Now, as I cruised along the valley floor, I felt lonely and isolated. The trip seemed pointless.

Later that evening, I pitched up beside the road. Exhausted mentally, rather than physically, I made sure I ate and fell into a long and deep sleep.

As long distance riders we of course focus on the positives of our adventures. After all, there are so many. However, emotional highs of the type I experienced on that stunning day on Gardetta require a mental rebalance. The redress of the balance had been so sudden and dramatic that it literally physically hurt me and it left me reeling.

We cannot stay that high forever.