At some point in life, some people hear a calling.
It comes down from the mountains and forces you to lift your head and look up. It whispers the names of peaks and urges you to start dreaming.
A blessing and a curse, it’s a vibration that, once felt, can never be ignored.
Sometimes that call travels far, reaching the ears of two mountain bikers at the foot of the Dolomites. It speaks of a dream, enclosed on one of the highest summits of the Andes.
Those two riders are Giovanni Mattiello and Andreas Tonelli, and they’ve just rewritten the rules of Andean mountaineering, descending from the summit of Cerro Mercedario (6,770 m) on two wheels.
Setting off from Santiago, they kept their heads held high, focused on the mountain they had studied and dreamt of: one of the longest and wildest descents on Earth.
Nearly 4000 meters of trail offered as a gift only to those capable of reaching the summit while carrying their own bike on their shoulders.
A fusion of mountaineering and MTB, taking shape little by little as the mountain draws nearer: from the stop in Barreal to the passage at Laguna Blanca, framed by the colors and shades of the Andean landscape shaping their ascent.
Then came the summit push, camp by camp, all the way to Hoyada, the final outpost at 5,700 meters. Twelve hours of exertion is the ticket to the top.
Twelve hours of cold and suffering, in a silence broken only by the sounds of effort and wind.
The summit has the power to turn struggle into fulfillment, and the descent to give meaning to the harsh taste of the climb. Giovanni and Andreas knew this well when, after eight days, for the first time since setting out, they finally looked down.
Their feat is proof that the love for mountain biking goes far beyond technique.
It’s the art of embracing adventure, of challenging the unknown, where legs often give way to the heart: an invitation to chase your dream.
We at Selle San Marco are proud to have been there while Giovanni and Andreas lived theirs, when, for a moment, the call of the mountains became a roar.
The roar of those who, for the first time in history, descended the fourth highest mountain in America on their MTB.
