Hors Category Climbs

The French Alpes and the Pyrenees are featured each year in the Tour de France and are usually the areas where the Tour is won or lost. Since 1910 when the first high mountain stage was added, it has been a case of needing to be a good climber in order to win the race. We are not racing however we are heading into the the Alps and the Pyrenees in search of the mountains that have become legendary in the sport of cycling.

Robert Miller was a notable climber winning 3 mountain finish stages in the Pyrenees. Here are his thoughts about some differences between the Pyrenees and the Alps:

"I actually didn't especially prefer the Pyrenees to the Alps. The Pyrenean climbs also tend to start more abruptly so there is less transition into the climb from the flatter approach roads, that didn't seem to affect me as much as other riders.

The surfaces used to be rougher, maybe not so much now, but it did make the climbs stickier. By that I mean you seemed to be going slower for the same amount of effort, the Pyrenees seemed to be more about groveling uphill and I was quite good at groveling."

We are also heading to the Province Region to take up the challenge of the extraordinarty Mount Ventoux. It was on this Mount in 1966 that Englishmen Tom Simpson collapsed and died. This is one serious mountain, but a cyling essential.

Following is a summary of and introduction to the major climbs we are taking on during our Tour.

Col de la Madeleine - 24 September

After 5 days riding, we should be starting to feel comfortable on the road and with our machines. We will  need to be we enter our first day of serious climbing with the Col de la Madeleine.

THE ride to the top of the Col de la Madeleine today is one hell of a climb and arguably the hardest and toughest in the Alps

It is a punishing and totally unforgiving 2000 elevation covering 25 kilometres.

Col de la Madeleine rises out of the valley and winds its way up to the high alpine pass like tiers on a wedding cake.

Some of the pitches are perilous, with only an eighteen inch wall separating the riders from a 1000' free fall into oblivion

The climb starts with some hairpins not too hard (7-8%); just after, the percentage vary from 8 to 10% until you reach St-François-Longchamp (1450m). Then the slope is very regular (8%). The last kilometers seem to never finish, and the wind is often an enemy near the top. The road is perfecly surfaced.

This will be an epic day of the Tour and our first major climb.

Alpe d’Huez – 25 September 2010
It is said you cannot call yourself a cyclist until you have fallen off your bike and got back on again. Many will argue that you are also not a true cyclist until you have climbed the famous Alpe d’Huez.

The Alpe d'Huez is one of the great climbs of the Alps, and has been climbed 24 times by the Tour de France since first used in 1952 when Fausto Coppi won the stage. The climb to the ski resort has 21 marked hairpins Each one records the exploits of a legendary rider: Hinault, Pantani, Armstrong, Hampsten, Coppi.

13.9km long, average gradient of 7.9% with sections over 10%, 1100m of climbing to the finish at 1860m. L’Alpe d’Huez may not be the highest, steepest or longest climb in cycling, but it is certainly the most famous

In the words of former US pro and Giro winner Andy Hampsten

“As far as prestige is concerned, nothing is better than Alpe d’Huez. It is the most incredible sensation riding up there, half a million people screaming for you to win.” –

The climb can be broken down into four stages.

It starts with a steep ramp that rears up in front of you as you turn left onto the climb. The drag to turn one is almost a kilometre at over 10%!

The steep gradient continues until turn 16.

Stage 2

Stage two commences after turn 16 as the climb eases past the church at La Garde. This was where Armstrong gave Ullrich ‘the look’. There will be no such look on 25 September 2010.

Stage 3

From turn 13 to 7 marks stage 3 as the climb gets steeper again and we pass up through trees with the gradient changing often.

Stage 4

Stage 4 is at turn 7 where there is a great view down the climb to the valley floor. A look up to the left with reveal the first view of the finish village, however there is still a few hundred vertical metres to go.

The last few corners are through open ground, with the village always in sight however there is a ramp after the last turn, corner 1, where the road gets alarmingly steep for 50m or so. It is then relatively flat for the final metres past the Village to the end of the climb.

Mont Ventoux - 27 September 2010

At 1912 metres, Mt Ventoux is affectionately known as The Giant of Provence, The Bald Mountain, nicknamed ‘Domaine des Anges’ (Domain of the Angels), Mont Ventoux was known to the Gauls as Vintur after an obscure local god reckoned to live up there, presumably because he liked the ferocious gales of the col des Tempêtes blasting through his frost-gelled hair. Ventoureso is the Provençal word for the north-east wind. There is also a claim for Ven-Top, ‘snowy peak’ in ancient Gallic. Mediaeval Latin records it as Mons Ventosus and Mons Ventorius. Ventosus (windy) transmutes into the French word.

The lower slopes of Ventoux, today, are thickly wooded but at the end of the 18th century they had been denuded by centuries of depredation, the constant attritional passage of men and animals and over-grazing. Flocks were driven up on all sides for the summer transhumance, trampling or cropping any burgeoning tree shoots.

The opening salvoes of gradient are harmless, 6 kilometres of nothing more sinister than 5.5%. Then, brace yourself and settle in because from here to the Chalet Reynard, it’s upwards of 10.5% all the way. The sign says ‘15km 9.1% 630m’ but this may or may not help.

The surroundings are very attractive, the multifarious mix of trees is encouraging, a lovely sylvan route, nevertheless overlaid with grim history – the photo of Simpson riding this stretch is grim indeed. Scant hours from his life’s sorry end, he looks horribly gaunt, haggard. From these woods, there is no sight of Ventoux, but it’s up there waiting, the sleepless giant balling up winds in its titanic fists ready to hurl them into the emptiness, ricocheting off you if he has a mind to petulance and wild aim.

At 10.4km, 989m, an abandoned mustard yellow building to the left bears the separatist slogan ‘Prouvenço Libro’ (Free – ie independent - Provence) and the road begins to step clear of older trees into a landscape of stunted scrubbier trees for a short distance. reveals A board reading 12.6km, 1152m, set up in a hêtraie (beech grove or plantation) on either side the road also alerts us to the presence of the pic noir – the black woodpecker.. More boards follow singing the charms of other trees and heralding the cerf hart, the trickiest and most elusive runner of hunted game.

Chalet Reynard

13.5km heralds a big left hand hairpin and a small settlement of wooden chalets with another call for Prouvenço Libro addressed to the Enfants de Bédoin and we are at Chalet Reynard. The Pierre de Champeville commemorated by a plaque, was an artist-painter-poet-engraver, passionate about the mountains, born in Saint-Etienne, 1885, died in Carpentras, 1950. He promoted a ski station on the slopes of Ventoux and described the mountain as ‘une île éblouissante dans un océan d’azur’ . . . a dazzling island in an azure ocean.

Here at Chalet Reynard is the beginning of the bare slopes, the wind-scraped upper heights of Ventoux, the final stretches of road to the col. Those kilometres look fearsome steep and nasty. There is no getting away from it and better to tell it plain: they are horrible, a graceless causeway cut into the rock as it might be the ramp of a Mayan sacrificial pyramid. A narrow cycle path runs up the left-hand side of the road – a dotted white line and pale green cycle symbol.

And there, within immediate view, the radio mast, the observatory and the bleached, sun – and wind-flayed desert of lauzes and the big, hungry bends of the chute pelting you with a hail of gradient percentage. The arithmetic is guardedly mild – most of the way 6–8% and a leg-screw of 9% to the top – not as severe as the other side, but never underestimate the effect of appearance or what the gradients are actually meting out, for all their statistical innocuousness. (Regard such numbers with the sort of scepticism with which you would treat a banker telling you that your money is safe with him. Maybe safe with him, but not for you.) There are no more signs for distance or altitude either, as if such banalities are irrelevant now that you are in the breakthrough either to paradise or perdition.

Sight of the col atop the bare stone slopes comes and goes, your eye diverted, instead, by a rash of dark green trees across the slope below or else the road ahead, curving round the spurs of the mountain like a scar across knuckles.

Tom Simpson Memorial

The memorial to Tom Simpson, (24.1km), adorned with a cluttered heap of brightly-coloured bidons, has a new set of steps up to it, built with donations, particularly from the family of Bob Thom, mechanic for the British Tour team in 1955.

‘A la Mémoire de Tom Simpson, Médaille Olympique, Champion du Monde, Ambassadeur sportif Britannique.’

A short way on stands another memorial: ‘En mémoire du Gaulois P.Kraemer décédé en Ventoux 2.4.1983 Union Audax Français.’

The radio mast towers up, like an early rocket on its boosters.

Just below the final metres, a turn-off and car park entice to a restaurant, Le Vendran, perched on the edge of the cliff, from where the road up is very steep, very bleak and as scary as a wintry squall on the old grey widow-maker, the sea.

It is quite a moment to arrive on the flat ground outside the observatory

On May 16, 2006, Jean-Pascal Roux from Bédoin broke the record of climbs in 24 hours, with eleven climbs, all of them from Bédoin. We will climb the Giant of Prevence from Bédoin but once.

Col du Tourmelet - 30 September 2010

3 time mountain top stage winner in the Pyrenees former Scottish Pro Robert Miller talks about the Col du Tourmalet including which is the hardest accent.

Definitely the side from Luz St Sauveur, not that it is much easier than the other side through La Mongie, but I seemed to find a good rhythm on the western side and I liked that it got steeper for the last couple of kilometres to the top of the climb. The eastern side seemed rougher and more of a fight to get up. The steep section before La Mongie always hurt and put a damper on the final part of the eastern side.