Today my bike GPS was worth its weight in gold.
The plan was to ride a hilly loop in Les Bornes region on the other side of le Salève – the mountain behind home. I wanted to hit three small Cols but I didn’t know the area. But I was able to construct a complicated, winding course on tiny roads and upload it to my GPS.
The result? A great ride on quiet country roads – without getting lost. And three new little Cols to the list: Col d’Evires, Pas de Cheval, and Col le Parc.
Without the GPS – the ride would have been impossible – or on much busier roads.
Update: My wife read this post and laughed at me: “Those Cols are tiny!” Harsh.
7 Comments
Cool idea to discover this region. I have logged the cols on MM and ViaMichelin shows them too.
Si je ne connaissais pas les cols du cheval et du parc (merci :wink:). Celui d’Evires, je l’ai grimpé sans trop de difficulté le fameux 14 juillet 2007… en voiture 🙂
Salut Bastien
Oui, le 14 juillet …. quelle jounée pour nous.
haha
oui tu as raison, il y a un panneau sur l’autoroute. Je l’ai vu plusiurs fois en voiture en pensant qu”il n’est pas possible en vélo..
Mais on peut trouver un autre panneau sur la route à côté de l’autoroute. woohooo!
I stumbled across your web site in April last year when I did an internet search on the col des Contrabandiers and have followed your progress with interest ever since. At last, a ride that I might be capable of doing!
If you reach 99 cols and need an easy one to attain your target of 100, there is a small col (nevertheless signposted) near St Martin Bellevue, the col de la Frétallaz at 670m. The best ascents are from Mercier on the N203 or up through the woods from Argonay You could add this to a return ride from Annecy as a bonus col.
Hi David,
Thanks for the kind message.
And especially thanks for the Col suggestion. There are a couple of other small Cols near there and i will try and construct a ride. I will happily add Frétallaz to my “to-do” list!
Contrebandiers is a very nice ride isn’t it?
Hi Will.
I did these three cols two years ago, as part of a wider tour that did also include Col de Fleuries, Col de Frétallaz, Col de Mallebranche, Col de Mont de Sion and Col de la Croix-Biche, at the end of the season. It is indeed very difficult to find some of them and the GPS would certainly have been a big “plus” (I had only extracts of the Via Michelin maps I usually print when preparing for my tours). Hopefully the snow will melt one of these days, so that we can take the racing bikes out of the garage! Cheers,
Nicholas
PS: contrebandiers and Pré-Vernet are indeed very nice! Did them at the end of 08 as part of the final push to enter the 100 Cols Club.
That looks like a really great ride.