Minimum altitude: 735 meters
Distance: 48.7 km
Slope Aspect: South-West
Vertical Climbed: 1,560 meters (5,118 feet)
Vertical Descended: 1,550 meters
Rating: 5
Second big col of the spring campaign. This time we drove to Beaufortain as Mike finds the Albertville road uninteresting and very busy. He's not wrong. We too the back road to Arêches. Not a great plan as we had to 3km of gravel riding to avoid too much up and down but we didn't see a car. From Arêches lots of tourists and motorbikes; never seen so many. It is the busiest backroad in the Alps. We ticked the climb off fairly painlessly despite many kms of 10%+ gradients at the end. 26m22 compared to over 46 minutes last time for the 516 meter climb. Not bad, not bad.
Over the dam and on to the second climb. Again a nice improvement: 31m06 compared to 41m20 way back in 2021 for 375m of climb from the dam over 7.75km. I must have been very slow 10 years ago but it was also October and freezing with snow everywhere. Not much snow at the col, certainly no point trying to ski tour this year. Then onto the descent
Followed some pros from Cofidis down from the Pre crossroads, hence the PR at 10m29 (a minute quicker), they take the corners very fast. We were also a minute quicker from the Roselend down to the lake. 7m09 but last time I was very tired from the climb from Bourg d'Oisans
26C, not too hot, 13C at the col. Lots of road traffic. A bit fresh after the dam.
