Author: Will

It’s been a bad holiday season for skiing but at least I have got out cycling fairly often. Global Warming’s Silver Lining?

Nice ride along and over the French/Swiss border. Map and Elevation: Click to enlarge

A heavy frost last night led to very slippery roads but lots if sunshine. So I took a mountain bike on quiet hilly roads near home.

I haven’t posted for a while and have only ridden sporadically over the last month. But today and yesterday, two nice local rides in cold sunshine. Today I did some exploring, in the slopes to the east of us. Very steep, with views of Geneva and the lake. Elevation chart:

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You know it must be a good route if when the signs say this way to Paradise Col de Cenise was the last unclimbed route in my cycling bible that is fairly close to me. About 40 kilometres away but half that as the crow flies. Why haven’t I done it before? One reason is it is nasty. 9.7 kilometres averaging over 10% sounds bad enough, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. A 4 kilometre stretch averaging 12% with 3 long stretches significantly steeper. 16%, 17% maybe more. It is hard to explain how hard this is. The last…

A beautiful, quiet road in the pictoresque Vallée Verte (only about 20 miles from us). Quite steep in parts, the route ends at a little plateau with a farm at the foot of the highest point in the area. I got off the bike and hiked the last steep kilometre to a beautiful look-out adorned with various religious statues dating from just after the French Revolution. Route 2,628,256 – powered by www.bikemap.net

Le Mole is a disctinctive, solitary mountain about 30 kilometres from us on the way to Mont Blanc. It’s about 1,850 metres high, there is a beautiful little road that goes to just over 1,300 metres and then you have to hike. The cycle up is at places extremely steep with one kilometre averaging 12% and another at 11%. Today was a perfect autumn day …. but leaves on the route made the descent a little tricky. Bike route 1693552 – powered by Bikemap

We drove to Courmayeur ski resort in Italy, just the other side of Mont Blanc, just over an hour from home. Great hiking in high alpine valleys, littered with huge glaciers. The photo is of Lake Miage. Touching the back of the lake is the tip of the Miage glacier ( hidden a bit by dirt) – the biggest glacier on the south side of Mont Blanc. We could hear the ice melting and dropping into the lake. Pretty cool.

Col de la Biche (Biche = Doe, a deer, a female deer) is in the Jura mountains on the same stretch as the Grand Colombier. My cycling bible: “With more than 1,000 metres of climb and its slopes averaging more than 10% for some kilometres, The Col de la Biche is the crazy cousin of the Col du Grand Colombier.” Yes, this is a steep climb – known for its wide, clear views of the French Alps. If only I could get above the clouds……. Often when it is overcast in Geneva, if you go high enough in the nearby…