La Barillette (La Dôle)

As you likely know, it’s currently crazy warm in the Alps/Juras. We had planned / hoped to cross-country/alpine ski this holiday week. But every melted cloud has a silver lining. There are plenty of high cycling climbs that are completely clear. 🙂

I met friends Mathias and Markus in Crassier at the base of the fabulous climb up to La Dôle / La Barillette, north of Geneva. I cheated, driving to near the bottom. Markus rode from his relatively nearby home, and Mathias from Genève. Chapeau.

It was so warm that neither Mathias or I brought hair.

Here’s my standard rant: Why is nearby Col de la Faucille so popular with cyclists? Filled with tourist car traffic on weekends, loads of trucks on weekdays. While there are several well paved deserted climbs nearby?

The road goes to the air-traffic-radar-tower atop La Dôle, and a touch higher, to the Swisscom tower, at La Barillette. It is super quiet. And in fact, closed to cars today.

It’s a challenging, lovely climb – in the Swiss Jura mountains – with the reward at the summit of great views of the Alps, and Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) below. Today, we all brought wide tires, and took our time climbing, chatting away. Much fun.

Ich lerne Deutsch sprechen und Markus war ein Lehrer begeistern.

Approaching the summit at La Barillette, we first visited La Dôle – a very short detour off the main road. But nice views. Below is a photo of Markus from today, and then a photo of me from the spring (the white dome is the air-radar thing). I told you it is warm.

La Barillette is the 3rd highest paved climb in the Jura mountains. See here for details of the ten highest.

Next we headed up to La Barillette, the end of the paved road. This was our simple goal for the day, so we acted like fools: taking a bunch of photos of the wonderful view of the distant Alps and the lake below. A very fun day.

A simple plan, well executed. Very enjoyable.

Note, on the map below, we descended on the “UP” road to avoid the possibly slippery, uncleared, leafy, descent road. But if using my gpx route from the map, instead follow this one.