Monte Jouf da Pala Barzana MTB

A couple of years ago I was riding to Pala Barzana and met Erminio, a mountain biker headed toward Monte Jouf.  I've been wanting to try it ever since and today's the day.  The road above Bosplans had its giant fallen boulders removed and the landslide patched up since last time I visited.  At Pala Barzana (840 meters) I turned left onto the gravel road and began ascending through thick beech forest, nice and cool.  The road is in pretty good shape and eventually exits the forest into the beautiful grassy meadows atop Monte Jouf.  The road reaches 1132 meters and begins descending toward Maniago.  

You descend on an excellent wide dirt road with drainage channels every 100 meters or so.  The older concrete ones are fine because the channel is rounder, but the newer ones have a galvanized gutter down the middle with squared off edges.  This was no problem for the suspension fork but the rear wheel took a pounding.  If I had click-in pedals I would bunny hop over them, but I'm still using straps. Anyway one of these bounced my water bottle out of its cage and it shot down the steep mountain side.  Luckily a tree stopped it, and I rappelled down using some saplings as a rope.  Fun mountain bike ride very close to home.

Looking down at Pala Barzana from road to Monte Jouf

Gorgeous rolling meadows of Monte Jouf

Malga Monte Jouf, deserted except for
a couple of goats practicing butting heads

The high point of Monte Jouf, 1203 meters