Monte San Bernardo

Scenic route that can be broken up into individual shorter trails or joined as a whole for a full-day tour. Central point is Mount San Bernardo which can be accessed from several points. My starting point is located in Villar San Costanzo.

The ascent is on asphalt but also on comfortable forest roads and you will soon reach the Valmala pass (named for the presence of the shrine just below) and just beyond there is the summit of the mountain. I opted to neglect the mountain and descend into the valley alongside until I almost reached the village of Roccabruna with the Castlass dh trail. Easy, rocky, fun. Pay attention to people because you will often find someone, but that applies to most of the descents. I repeated the descent a second time (about 800 meters). For the ascent, start on asphalt to Bergata Centro and then continue on a nice forest road back to the col. From the pass you climb up some by saddle and some by bike to the top of the mountain: wide and rewarding 365-degree views!

For the descent you can take a convenient trail that leads to Pian Pietro, but in my itinerary I opted for KV1 (short for vertical kilometer), and it already says a lot, which then is not really vertical, but in the meantime it is also used by runners for training. Some steep parts, stone jumps, delicate passages: in the technical department this trail is not for everyone and some passages for me still remain an unknown, but the fact remains that it is a nice trail and I keep going to do it a few times a year. You arrive again at the asphalt of Villar but with about 200 meters of elevation gain to descend and therefore better not to waste them: you take via Liretta that brings you back to the ononymous hill where there is the departure for paragliding. From here one could descend on Mortal Kombat, but since last year (fall 2024) the trail is unusable due to falling trees. Instead, one can follow the ridge trail going in the direction of upper Rivoira to connect to the Xc trail, which is fun with jumps and slightly banked turns. You thus return to the parking lot having used all the elevation gained on the ascent.