Grand Alps Traverse - 14 day bike tour

[Margareth Demery]

WoW! Karl... What a lovely adventure - Thanks so much for sharing and giving us a snap shot of your wonderful vacation.... Congratulations!!! ~Peg

[karlos]

Awesome to watch Stage 19 TDF 2024 today, where the first ~53 miles was exactly what we rode on day 13 in 2016. I remember the route so well, one ride to tell my grandkids about.

Day 13. On our next to the last day, we concenrated on some major climbs - two of them "beyond category". We started out the gate with the 20 km climb to Col de Vars, a 3600 ft climb. We had great weather and I decided to lift the pace a bit as there were no worries about day 14. That was a pretty good climb, followed by a 22km descent to start the climb of Col de Benette where we climbed to 2802 m, the highest paved road in Europe. That was a 5,000 ft climb. I had to slow down a bit, but kept ahead of the grandpa pace which I've perfected to survive this tour. It was a beautiful climb. The terrain at the top was closer to Colorado. We had no shade on this climb and I went through two full water bottles and stopped for extra fluids at a couple of van stops, in addition stopping beside a stream of snow runoff to try and cool down. The most annoying thing was that we were all covered by flies up until about 2400 m alt. They seemed to especially love my merino wool jersey. Some of the guys claimed that the flies would stay off you if you could keep your speed above 12.5 km/hr - no relief for me. The view at the highest point of the road was like sitting on top of the world. The 24 km descent down to the village of St Etienne was welcome, but it got hot at the bottom where at least a dozen of us stopped for cokes and water at a cafe. From there we only had 7 km to our hotel in Auron. The problem was that it averaged 8-9% and climbed an additional 1500 ft. This was mostly mentally tough as we had the two HC climbs behind us and we all were "done." Although this was short, it was the last real climb of the tour and, with the high heat, I found it quite difficult - definitely settled back into grandpa survival pace. At the top, 8 of us sat down at a restaurant and had burgers, potatoes, beers and cokes. Very welcome after a relatively short 62 mi ride, but loaded with 10,300 ft of elevation gain.

Click here for photos - more will be added later.