CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
The Galibier is the centrepiece of the Route des Grandes Alpes: a long, exposed climb over 2600 m with the Télégraphe as its warm-up. The surface is good, the gradients are steady, and the traffic is mostly other people who came for the same thing. Snow can keep the top shut into June.
The last of the trees go and the road runs out onto open ground. The summit sits at 2642 m, and what surrounds it is rock, weather and distance — cold comes early up here and stays late. Ride it with something in reserve: the summit is not the end of the work, only the middle of it.
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
50 km that neither climbs nor drops much. The road settles into the ground rather than fighting it. This is where a day makes up time without anyone trying. Third and fourth, and very little else.
Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne is a working town, with no pretensions, in the bottom of the Maurienne valley, and its great virtue for a rider is its position: it is the foot of the road to the Galibier. The town of just over three thousand people lies at around 700 metres on the river Arc, with train tracks, factories and a long industrial history behind it, and the valley walls rise steeply on both sides. Valloire, the nearest village on the climb, is a pleasant mountain resort a little way beyond the first col.
Read the complete Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne is where the day begins. Next is Col du Télégraphe, climbing 854 m.
The Col du Télégraphe is the short, wooded climb that every rider must make before the great ascent of the Galibier, and it is easy to dismiss as a warm-up. At 1,566 metres, it is not high, but it lies in a deep, green valley, the Maurienne, between the town of Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne and the ski village of Valloire, and the road is a steady, enjoyable climb through spruce and beech forest, with a good surface and a regular rhythm of hairpins.
Read the complete Col du Télégraphe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
You top out at 1566 m here. The road climbs 854 m on the way up to it, steadily. Reckon on about 6 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. High enough to hold ice in the shaded corners early and late in the year. Next is Valloire.
Valloire sits in a green bowl at about 1,430 metres, at the foot of the Galibier, and it feels like a proper mountain village rather than a purpose-built resort, which is rarer than it should be in the Alps. The old centre is a mix of stone chalets, small shops, and a church with an interior that is a riot of Baroque painting and gilding, a reminder that the Savoyard valleys were once rich in devotion and craft. In summer, cyclists and walkers fill the cafes, and in winter, the village becomes a ski resort.
Read the complete Near Valloire write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
A break here. Reckon on about 5 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Next is Col du Galibier, climbing 1212 m.
The Galibier is the big one, and it knows it. At 2,642 metres this is one of the high gates of the French Alps, the saddle where the Maurienne valley to the north hands you over to the Guisane and the Briançonnais to the south, and the road crosses it by way of a short tunnel under the actual crest, or, for those who want the proper view, by the final few hundred metres of open hairpin that go over the top. The summit marker stands on the old crest, with a monument to Henri Desgrange, the founder of the Tour de France, who first sent the race over this pass in 1911. Cyclists still turn up in swarms to touch the sign, so expect lycra and an unhurried pace.
Read the complete Col du Galibier write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The high point of this section, 2642 m up. The road climbs 1212 m on the way up to it, hard. Reckon on about 13 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Nothing on this route is higher. At this height the road is a summer one: snow gates can stay shut into June and shut again in October. Next is Col du Lautaret, mostly downhill.
Lautaret is the wide, grassy shoulder of mountains that sits just below the better-known Galibier, and it is a rather different kind of pass. At 2,058 metres, it is gentle in shape, with rolling alpine meadows and a long view across to one of the most dramatic peaks in the French Alps, La Meije, whose glacier-covered summit rises to nearly 4,000 metres above the valley of La Grave. On a clear morning, the view is so good that people simply stand in the car park and stare.
Read the complete Col du Lautaret write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Col du Lautaret tops the climb at 2058 m. You lose 584 m on the way down to it, steadily. Reckon on about 9 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Next is Briançon, mostly downhill.
Briançon calls itself the highest city in France, and at around 1,326 metres, it has a good case. It sits in the upper Durance valley in the Hautes-Alpes, where several rivers and several passes meet, and for centuries that made it both a trading post and a fortress. Roads climb from here to the Col du Galibier and the Lautaret in one direction, to the Col d'Izoard and the Queyras in another, and to Montgenèvre and Italy in a third. A rider arrives from any of them in much the same mood: pleased to be somewhere with a restaurant.
Read the complete Briançon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Briançon comes up 93 km in. You lose 732 m on the way down to it, steadily. Reckon on about 4 °C colder than the valley, and more in the wind. Next is back to Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, mostly downhill.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back to Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne closes the day. You lose 614 m on the way down to it, steadily.