During the second half of June, we had another expedition to the high mountains: in the French alps, crossing into Italy several times, new cols were conquered during my own “Tour de France 2014”.
We had to abort the planned trip in 2010, when Paula was hospitalized, but for this year’s TDF, I pretty much constructed a similar road book.
With a few additions…
Other than all the climbs/passes for “Le Brevet des 7 Cols d’Ubaye”, I added the triple ascend of the Mont Ventoux for another certificate, the “Cinglé du Mont Ventoux“.
Furthermore, while studying the areas where we would stay, one of them being in the area of our 2012 training for the Alpe d’HuZes, I found a lot of other interesting cols.
As I was determined to take on as much as I could, meaning about twice as much as I would be able to handle, we divided the trip into three parts, with two ‘base camps’ and one ‘there and back’.
The first week, we would stay close to Bourg-Saint-Maurice.
The Iseran, Petit Saint-Bernard and the Cormet de Roselend all start from Bourg-Saint-Maurice, plus La Plagne and Les Arcs. But I also figured it wouldn’t be impossible to construct stages with the Galibier, Croix de Fer, Madeleine and Glandon.
After a transfer to and short (two night) stay in Bédoin, for the Cinglé, we moved to Barcelonnette.
From Barcelonnette, besides the cols for the Brevet, it would be possible to venture to the Angnel and the Izoard and I was determined to get up the Fauniera as well, if only for its other name, ‘Colle dei Morti’…
All in all and not surprisingly, this trip turned out to be the hardest and best one ever – thus far – and the Giro d’Italia 2011 was crushed in terms of kilometers ridden and elevation gain.
However, I once again found out that there are many more cols to conquer and I will get back to the area. But when I do, I will not travel around like a headless chicken and just stay in one place 🙂
General page on my ‘Tour de France’ expeditions here.
Related blog posts
- Recap: the Stats
- Stage Reports:
- Preparation is half the fun:
- Ready or not… (June 11)
- The Road Book with Stages (June 5)
- Countdown (May 20)
- Training in Hochsauerland (March 24 – 28)
- More details in this post from March 8
- First ideas in this post from October last year
