After the Race

We hung around the top of L’Alpe d’Huez long enough to swap stories, refuel and buy a souvenir or two.  The town of Alpe d’Huez is surprisingly uncharming, a ski town sprawled across a barren slope, very un-French in its lack of planning and mish-mash of shops, condos and parking lots.  After a while, we coasted back down to hairpin 6, then turned and took a one-lane road through a few buildings crowded hard against the edge of the mountain and then winding down the mountainside with stunning views out over the valley.  We’d cycle 200 yds, stop for photos, cycle another 200 yds.  Eventually we unstruck our awe enough to make our way back to L’Boug-de-Oisans for lunch.  

It was noon and we had cycled only 25 miles, but the racing up L’Alpe (1100 m. vert) had whupped several of us—me, for sure—and I was thinking of lunch, beer, a nap and an easy afternoon at the hotel.  Some of my boyz were leaning the same way.  The discussion at lunch turned to a road Charles had seen carved into the edge of a mountain above our hotel, and another road twisting down the other side of the same mountain.  Charles had studied a map of the area the night before and, while this wasn’t a regular cycling route, it looked like a cool adventure and the two roads were connected by a dotted line at the top of the mountain.  The beer took hold and after an hour, we decided to forego naps and check out the road.

 

It was, of course, single-lane, cut into the rock, longer and steeper than we had thought, and included 3 tunnels, 2 of them curved and pitch black since you couldn’t see the other end.  It was also so stunningly beautiful that we hardly noticed we were, in essence, climbing Alpe d'Huez a second time both in steepness and length.  At the end of the road, high on the mountain, we arrived at a small hamlet named Notre Dame-du-Something, with a small café that said “Biere.”  There was also a sign pointing up a narrow lane that struck out across the rolling top of the mountain, apparently to another hamlet.  A sign at the lane said “Obstructed,” and this was, presumably, the dashed line of the map.  

While we had a biere, we asked the cafe woman for details.  She told Nel that the lane was gravel, it was 4 km to the next town, it was rolling and would add another 100 m. vertical, mostly guys on mountain bikes crossed it but occasionally a road bike would come through.  It was impassable by car.  Meanwhile, the sky had clouded over, the wind was gusting and it was clearly raining in the direction the lane headed.  I was tired, really tired, and ready to head back down the way we had come up, but once again my more courageous comrades--excited by the unknown--prevailed and we set out across the moor-like mountain top.  

It was exactly as advertised except for the vert. meters, which we estimated as closer to 200 than 100.  The first km was hard-packed and fairly easy to navigate on skinny tires.  Then it got more interesting.  Small glaciers encroached on the lane in 2 locations, releasing rivulets of water across our path.  Shale scree was scattered over the surface, puddles and muddy patches dotted the way, a sheer bank dropped from the lane’s edge and the clouds began to spit light rain.  And it was absolutely beautiful, one of the most exhilarating and top-of-the-world experiences we could imagine on a road bike!  We managed to ride the lane for the most part, walking a place or two where loose shale made balance impossible, and ultimately we came to a hard-packed gravel road that led to a paved road and down the other side of the mountain, just as the map had predicted. Amazingly, at the very top where the loose shale met the hard-packed gravel, was parked an old pickup truck and a solitary man with a hoe was working in a garden plot—all by himself on top of the mountain.

The descent was as exhilarating as the climb and crossing, with smooth pavement and the tightest hairpins we had ever ridden, and only 2 cars seen in 10 km.  We sailed over a bridge and up a short grade to a main road where we stopped to regroup, huge smiles on our faces.  "THAT was QUALITY!!!" enthused Rich, and we all laughed, filled with the thrill of an adventure that went right.

We arrived back at our hotel with our cyclometers showing 50 mi. and 2200 m. of climbing for the day—all of which seemed impossibly inadequate to describe what we all agreed was the greatest cycling day of our lives.