Pic Spocket

My first ride was on the Tuesday (see previous article). One route I had the intention to ride during the trip was the “Col de l’Iseran“. This is the highest paved mountain pass in the Alps. From our ‘home base’, it meant riding to Val d’Isere first from Seez. Problem is that according to our hosts, this route was not the safest: more traffic at high speed, narrow roads with blind curves and pretty dark tunnels.The Wednesday, we actually went by car to Val d’Isere and I carefully surveyed the route. It actually did not seem that bad for the most part. Tunnels would be the most dangerous part. The landscape was so nice on this part of the car ride that I decided I had to go for it anyway. So I asked the team to stop at a bike store on the way back, so I could buy a flashing tail light to make myself more visible the following day. My concern was mostly the tunnels at this point.

Thursday morning, I hit the road even earlier than Tuesday after a night of complete heavy rain fall. I was lucky: it stopped early in the morning. I started a bit after 8 am, with very little day light due to the mountains and the cloud cover. There was a lot of fog in the air.

Still, the road was beautiful even in mixed weather conditions. I had to be careful though because the road was still wet and I had an early warning. I had to go down to town before turning in the direction of Val d’Isere and in one of the switchbacks, I actually locked the rear wheel sending me in a small drifting motion just because I put a bit much pressure on the break. That woke me up… and made me more cautious for the rest of the ride regarding the use of the brakes.

Before long, I was done with the descent and started tackling the climbing part of the ride. That would be another ‘climb for half the ride, descent for half the ride’ type route once again. While I was impressed by the continuous climbing of Tuesday, it was worse this time with the average grade being higher (6-11% almost non-stop) and my bike did not seem to be geared for a spinner like me. So I used a LOT of the bigger gear. I also had to resort to a standing climb position for most of the first half of the ride.

Soon, I was hitting the smaller tunnels and ‘avalanche shelters’.

There was a sign a bit before Tignes giving timing of the Tour de France riders for the ‘Climb of Tignes’. They also had the now familiar kilometer-markers for the various climbs. Nice.

I started the timer, but it turns out the route I was following was not the same. They had to turn at the dam, and I did not. A bit later, I was at the Tignes Dam. The original village of Tignes is actually now in the bottom of the water, in the valley. They flooded it when they built the dam. The area is superb and the water has that blue-green color.

I stopped there and made several more pictures. Then I was off the Val d’Isere, the ski resort that sits at 1850m. Just before arriving though, there was a couple of longer tunnels, one as long as 800m without any lights in it. I really wish I had a headlight because I was feeling a bit uneasy in pitch black. I could not even see the road for craks or pot holes. But everything went OK and I arrived in Val soon after. Very nice village. At that point, I already had about 1000m of elevation gain done.

They had the pure water from the mountain flowing in fountains near the road, pretty useful to fill water bottles.

Then I was off to the Col, still 15-20km away. A bit out of the village, I passed near this awesome field in a hill, full of sheep. Then, I crossed this beautiful stream before hitting the serious climbing section, back to switchbaks turns on the side of an abrupt cliff.

I told the family I would be back around noon, and to make that happen I had to turn around at 10h45 max to make it. When the time came, I was still 10km away from the summit. I thought it would be stupid to go all that way and turn around so close to the top, so I continued, knowing that I could be in trouble. Lucky enough, they all understood. In the middle of that climb, I could see Val d’Isere already very small in the bottom of the valley.

The last 2 km were particularly tough. Temperature was colder and I do not know if it’s fatigue or the oxygen in the air getting rare at this altitude, but I started breathing pretty hard under the effort. Just when I was about to reach the top and feel proud of myself, I see this group of girl teenagers climbing in roller-skis (skis with wheels for summer training) about to reach the same summit?! Turns out it was the French Junior Cross Country Ski Team or something training in altitude. Their coach was waiting on the top.
Still, an awesome feeling to reach the top.

I got cold on the top of the pass, even after I put back all the layers I had with me. It was now time to hit the descent. To be honest, I was really not big in my shoes.. a bit scared actually, descending. The route was very technical with crazy curves flanked by a cliff, bike accelerating naturally due to the slope and I had to be careful on how I modulated the brakes to avoid locking the wheels on the humid asphalt. Not helping matters, I got so cold at speed that I started shivering with my whole body and teeth chattering (really!). Not easy to negotiate the technical route in this condition! When I got back to the outskirt of Val d’Isere, I actually went in a trash can to find a newspaper that I used under my jacket as an additional layer for the rest of the descent. It actually worked great to cut the wind and retain body heat.

I stopped one last time at the Dam of Tignes to take a few pictures under the better light.

Then it was time to enjoy the more gentle downhill route back to my home base.

Click the link below to see the map and all the data recorded during the ride.

Total elevation gain for the ride: over 2200m.

As usual, more pictures (and larger versions) in the album below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2011 at 6:56 am and is filed under Sport and Races, Travel, Album update, Our news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.