Kevin E. and I decided to ride on our own today. Kevin didn't get to do the Galibier yesterday, and he wanted to get a good amount of climbing. So we started off the day by cruising up Alpe d'Huez - probably the most famous of the big climbs. That was a bitch. It started off steep - and by the time it eased up just a bit, I was too tired to "go easy". I still went slow, but it hurt. Alpe d'Huez has 21 switchbacks 

all the way up, and they are all marked -which can be a little discouraging now and then. I stopped once or twice for some pictures. The Tour de France is climbing this on Wednesday, and people have already been setting up camp for the last few days on the side of the road, which can make for some great entertainment. Today, about half way up, some guy was jamming on his electric guitar just encouraging riders as they climbed. There had to be thousands of riders that road up it today. It is pretty crazy.

When we got to the top, we decided to sit down and have some lunch - jambon buerre & Coke! It was good, then, instead of heading down, we decided to keep on climbing and ride the Col de Sarenne. This was a really beautiful climb, but the road was definitely rough (which I really like). Lots of gravel, rocks, pot holes, etc. This thing climbed another 1000ft or so, past the goats pictured below. When we got to the top, we had a rough, yet very fun descent for about 6-8km, then the rad turned to fresh pavement and was super sweet for the rest of the way down. 

We then decided that we would climb a little more, so after dropping down, we took a right which was going to take us to La Garde, about a third of the way up Alpe d'huez. Well, this little climb was steep, almost all oer 10% - mostly 11, 12, and 13% - I would guess it took about 30-35 minutes. Once we got up that, we ran into Larry, Gary, and Toby heading the other way. They told us we were in for a treat as they had just come up the ridge road, which we were about to descend. The ridge road hugs the side of the mountain and is super exposed. It is only about 10-12ft wide or so, so passing cars was tough. How cars passed each other is mind boggling.  

We finally made our way down that, and then down the bottom part of Alpe d'Huez, and back to Au Bon Accueil for a shower and some pasta and an Amstel. 

Great day of climbing once again, and the weather was once again superb. 

Ride Stats

About 75km/48mi

ROughly 7000ft/2200m of climbing.