{"id":100633,"date":"2026-07-29T05:16:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T05:16:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.s1trail.com\/roadbook-s1-bora-ultra\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T06:09:25","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T06:09:25","slug":"roadbook-s1-bora-ultra","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.s1trail.com\/en\/roadbook-s1-bora-ultra\/","title":{"rendered":"Roadbook S1 Bora Ultra \u2014 the course, trail by trail"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"S1<\/span>
\n

ROADBOOK<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Roadbook S1 Bora Ultra \u2014 the course, trail by trail<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

116.2 km in two acts \u2013 the night from Trieste, the day in the Slovenian Karst: every CAI trail and every connecting section of the race, in the order you come to them.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

The S1 Bora Ultra is a journey in two acts: the night from Trieste to PortoPiccolo, then the day from PortoPiccolo across the Slovenian Karst and back. Its 116.2 km are exactly two courses joined end to end: the first half is the same as the S1 Trieste Ultra, the second the same as the S1 TransKarst Ultra. This page describes them in the order you come to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part 1 \u2014 The night, from Trieste to PortoPiccolo<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The urban prologue<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It all begins in the heart of Trieste\/Trst in the early evening, while the city is still buzzing with life: a crossroads of Italian, Slavic, Germanic, Jewish and Greek cultures, where Joyce wrote Ulysses, Svevo dreamt up Zeno\u2019s Conscience and Saba kept his bookshop in Via San Nicol\u00f2. The first kilometre crosses Piazza Unit\u00e0 d\u2019Italia and the old town at a controlled pace: an urban prologue no other trail race can boast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The night climb and the Val Rosandra<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Once out of the centre, the course climbs through Trieste\u2019s city parks, from the Parco del Ferdinandeo up towards the hills that form the natural amphitheatre in which the city sits, with the lights reflected in the sea as a backdrop. The first CAI trail you come to is CAI 015, at Hervati\/Hrvati: from here the course enters the upper Val Rosandra\/Dolina Glin\u0161\u010dice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After CAI 015, the course uses a few connecting sections of the Vertikala SPDT and reaches CAI 046, which it follows down towards Bagnoli della Rosandra\/Boljunec, at around km 13. The Val Rosandra is the only valley on the Italian Karst where a stream flows above ground: its sheer white limestone walls, up to three hundred metres high, were Emilio Comici\u2019s training ground in the 1930s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Bagnoli to Bottazzo<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From Bagnoli the course continues on CAI 046 towards Crogole\/Kroglje and the Crogole lookout, briefly overlapping with the Alpe Adria Trail and CAI 001. It then joins CAI 001, passes by the Cave of the Ancient Inscriptions and drops to the valley floor; after a climb on an unnumbered track it takes CAI 039 and rejoins CAI 001, reaching Bottazzo\/Bota\u010d with some stretches shared with the Vertikala SPDT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basovizza, San Lorenzo and the Obelisk<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From Bottazzo the course climbs on forest tracks towards Basovizza\/Bazovica, where it takes CAI 044 \u2014 Sentiero Ressel, returns to CAI 001, passes San Lorenzo\/Jezero and continues to the Obelisk of Opicina\/Op\u010dine. This is the stretch of CAI 001 towards Sistiana that the very first editions of the Corsa della Bora followed, with Trieste at your feet like a carpet of lights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the Obelisk to Barcola and Miramare<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

At the Obelisk the course leaves CAI 001 and takes CAI 012 \u2014 Sentiero Nicol\u00f2 Cobolli, passing close to Monte Gurca and the cave of the same name; in this sector it also uses a short stretch of the Strada Napoleonica (1821). After briefly crossing CAI 001, the Alpe Adria Trail and the Vertikala SPDT, it drops through the Bosco del Bovedo to the Barcola\/Barkovlje seafront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Barcola the course follows Viale Miramare and the coastal stretch of the Topolini, climbs back up towards Miramare Castle via the Scalinata di Sissi and heads uphill on CAI 009, the route between Miramare and Contovello whose upper section overlaps with the Sentiero dei Pescatori\/Ribi\u0161ka pot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Contovello to PortoPiccolo<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From Contovello\/Kontovel, a village of stone houses among terraced vineyards of Vitovska and Malvasia Istriana, the course alternates stretches of CAI 001 with connecting sections along the ridge; it crosses the Strada della Salvia\/\u017dajbljeva pot, shares part of the Aurisina educational trail\/U\u010dna pot Nabre\u017eina and leaves CAI 001 at the Aurisina Cave industrial estate, near the BRT\/Bartolini depot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It reaches Borgo San Mauro on local roads, follows a short stretch of CAI 023 \u2014 Sentiero Tiziana Weiss and ends the first half on the final stretch shared by the four longest races: the Vedetta Weiss, 159 metres above sea level, with a Gladio network bunker at its foot, and the Costa dei Barbari, run in the dark with only the sound of the sea for a compass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The junction: the PortoPiccolo life base, km 61.2<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At PortoPiccolo the race changes character. This is where the S1 Trieste Ultra track ends and the S1 TransKarst Ultra track begins: on the official track the junction is at coordinates 45.76352, 13.63751. Runners on the S1 Bora Ultra can choose to stop here and be ranked in the S1 Trieste Ultra, because the two races have followed the same course up to this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part 2 \u2014 The day, from PortoPiccolo into the Slovenian Karst and back<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The second half follows the S1 TransKarst Ultra course in full, but you run it in daylight, on legs that have already been through the night: the climb from the White Cliffs and the Sentiero Rilke are now revealed in the contrast between the white rock and the blue of the Adriatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the White Cliffs to Duino<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The course climbs from the Sistiana quarry, crosses the woods above the bay and reaches CAI 001, partly shared with the Alpe Adria Trail and, along the cliffs, with the Sentiero Rilke. It follows this to Duino\/Devin, running through the village past Duino Castle and the White Lady. From Duino it picks up CAI 001a \u2014 Sentiero del Mitreo and, at the Mithraeum Cave, leaves it for CAI 033.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medeazza and the long branch<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The course switches from CAI 033 to CAI 003a, which leads to Medeazza\/Medja vas. Here, where the S1 Half Trail and the S1 Borderless Trail bear towards Monte Ermada, the S1 Bora Ultra takes the long branch towards Jamiano together with the S1 TransKarst Ultra: it follows CAI 003 \u2014 Alta Via del Carso at several points, with stretches shared with the Vertikala SPDT, crosses the Bosco Flondar and passes close to the ruins of the Casali Flondar on its way to Jamiano\/Jamlje.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Jamiano area it briefly follows the SR 519 Jamiano road and then uses CAI 075 at several points, alternating it with short race-specific deviations; it does not reach the SR 55, the formal end point of CAI 075, because the race track leaves the trail before that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonetti, Hill 208 South and the border<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The course enters the Bonetti\/Boneti and Hill 208 South sector, skirting the Abisso Bonetti, the Grotta dell\u2019Artiglieria, the Grotta 2\u00aa di Bonetti and the cave emplacement bearing the plaque of the 2nd Engineer Sappers Regiment, 190th Company \u2014 a 1917 concrete slab documented in the Pro Hereditate register<\/a>. The course passes close to these structures but does not go through them. This whole sector lay on the Isonzo front, whose sites lie along the Walk of Peace\/Pot miru<\/a>, the cross-border remembrance trail linking more than three hundred First World War sites across Italy and Slovenia, from the Alps to the Adriatic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Near Issari\/Hi\u0161arji, after leaving CAI 075, it follows a short connecting section of the Valichi del Carso and takes CAI 079 \u2014 Sentiero Abramo Schmid, named after the colonel and Karst scholar: the trail<\/a> grew out of border patrols in the years after the Second World War and was called the \u2018kerb path\u2019. It follows the border zone to Monte Kremenjak, 235\u2013236 metres, and on to Hill 219\/\u0160pik<\/a>, from where you can see the Adriatic, the port and the shipyard of Monfalcone\/Tr\u017ei\u010d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Slovenian Karst and the way back<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A steep zigzag descent follows the border line; on the Slovenian side the course uses a stretch associated with the grani\u010dari\/grani\u010darji, the Yugoslav border guards, and climbs back on a gentler gradient towards Sela na Krasu, in the municipality of Miren-Kostanjevica. It then heads towards Vale and re-enters Italy through the border woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in Italy, it meets CAI 003 again and follows it as far as CAI 032, which leads through the Precenico area to San Pelagio\/\u0160empolaj. Between San Pelagio, Prepotto\/Praprot and the Fornace di Aurisina the course alternates between local connecting sections, a short stretch of CAI 010, the non-CAI section through the Lupinc Park, a stretch of CAI 035 and a connecting section near the Fornace and the SP 5, before picking up CAI 010 again towards Santa Croce\/Kri\u017e.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lupinc Great War Park is an open-air museum created by Danilo Lupinc on his own land: trenches dug into the limestone by Russian prisoners of war in the service of the Austro-Hungarian army, a plaque dedicated to his grandfather Anton Ter\u010don, who fell in 1916, and the Grotta Lesa, a natural doline with a collapsed roof reached through a stone arch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The finale, second time round<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

From Santa Croce\/Kri\u017e, once a Slovenian fishing village, the course uses stretches of CAI 001 and connecting sections along the coast and on educational trails, then three short sections of CAI 023 \u2014 Sentiero Tiziana Weiss, followed by non-CAI connecting sections to PortoPiccolo. The final kilometres take you back over the Vedetta Weiss and the Costa dei Barbari in broad daylight, after crossing them in the dark a few hours earlier, with views reaching from the Slovenian coast to the Grado lagoon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final plunge down to the Bora Village at PortoPiccolo brings you full circle: you left Trieste in the night, crossed the whole breadth of the Karst \u2014 city, plateau, border, Slovenia and back \u2014 and now you return to the sea with two races in your legs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trail sequence \u2014 first half (km 0\u201361.2)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
CAI 015 \u2192 Vertikala SPDT\/connecting sections \u2192 CAI 046 \u2192 CAI 001 \u2192 non-CAI track \u2192 CAI 039 \u2192 CAI 001 \u2192 forest tracks \u2192 CAI 044 \u2192 CAI 001 \u2192 CAI 012 \u2192 non-CAI descent \u2192 CAI 009 \u2192 CAI 001 and connecting sections \u2192 short stretch of CAI 023 \u2192 PortoPiccolo<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Trail sequence \u2014 second half (km 61.2\u2013116.2)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
CAI 001 \u2192 CAI 001a \u2192 CAI 033 \u2192 CAI 003a \u2192 CAI 003 \u2192 short stretch of SR 519 \u2192 CAI 075 \u2192 connecting section \u2192 CAI 079 (Sentiero Abramo Schmid) \u2192 non-CAI stretch in Slovenia \u2192 CAI 003 \u2192 CAI 032 \u2192 connecting sections \u2192 short stretch of CAI 010 \u2192 Lupinc Park (non-CAI) \u2192 CAI 035 \u2192 Fornace\/SP 5 connecting section \u2192 CAI 010 \u2192 CAI 001 and connecting sections \u2192 short stretches of CAI 023 \u2192 PortoPiccolo<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Where the races split in the second half<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
From the life base onwards, the S1 Bora Ultra shares the opening kilometres of the races that start from PortoPiccolo. The split points have been checked against the official 2027 tracks, and the km figures given are those of the races starting from PortoPiccolo, not the S1 Bora Ultra\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n