Each winter the world’s most famous mountain pass is closed. Someone’s got to be the one to open it

WORDS OLLIE MARRIAGE

PHOTOGRAPHY MARK RICCIONI

“YOU DON’T CLICK YOUR FINGERS AND THE PASS IS OPEN.”

The voice is weary, but also full of wonder. “But look at this place, the mountains, the road. It is hard work, but a privilege to have this as my office.” We’re standing, somewhat incongruously, on an old tennis court halfway up the Stelvio Pass. It’s the biggest bit of level ground I’ve seen in the past two days. The conversation lulls, as it inevitably does in the face of such scenic magnificence, and our eyes are drawn up again. Up and up the bare cliff face and the impossible strand of engineering tacked on to it.

Then down, to linger on an exotic wedge of supercar. The wind has picked up again, the cloud is closing in. The weather changes 20 times a day up here. Earlier, when the rain lashed down and there was no shelter, we took refuge in the Berghotel Franzenshöhe behind us. We were lucky someone was in. A chubby marmot (maybe it’s just the fur rippling) scampers across the rocks just above us, breaking our reverie. “I must get back,” Stephan Bauer, director of the Stelvio Pass, says. “Remember we are doing some resurfacing between 32 and 31.” I tell him that’s fine, we’re mainly going to be working upwards, into the lower numbers. He heads to his Jeep Renegade, I wander over to the wedge.

Lamborghini’s new Countach. I swing the door up, slide down into the tiny blood red cabin and just sit there, looking out, taking in the same view of painted peaks, dark rock, snow and the faint zigzag evidence of human activity through a windscreen so flattened it’s more a skylight. The fr aming is important. It restricts your view and yet enriches it, offering tantalising glimpses at the edges, enhancing the drama. Driving up here earlier I put Matt Monro on and the anticipation of what lay ahead was so intense I choked up.

As Confucius may have said: gates are only locked if you don’t have a key

Because the Stelvio Pass is closed. There’s just us, me and the cocaine white wedge, and we’ve got one of the most remarkable, unlikely roads on the planet to call our own. On days like these indeed. So in the car I shake my head once again, marvelling at the situation I’m in and thumb the starter button.

A brief screech from the starter and 12 cylinders yelp rowdily into life. I imagine each like a beak in a nest, popping up and down hungrily. The air’s already thin here, up at 2,188 metres, so the naturally aspirated 6.5-litre gasper isn’t going to be developing the full 770bhp. The e-motor won’t be impeded at all, but that’s a mere 33bhp, used to smooth out the gearshifts. In my experience of it so far, smooth is not the word I’d use to describe the sequential manual gearbox.