Minimum altitude: 975 meters
Distance: 25 km
Slope Aspect: East
Vertical Climbed: 536 meters (1,759 feet)
A year later I was back in Autrans and this time to ski the Foulée Blanche but with more realistic ambitions - the 20km race. Still not an easy affair as the poor snow cover meant it was routed over the hills between Meaudre and Autrans giving around 550 meters of climbing.
The principal climb is the Voie Blanche, over 4.5 km of climbing over 300 meters with the last 1.5km at 10%. A bit too steep for my liking. I rolled in around 200th place (out of 700) in a time of 1h37. The skiing was a bit "rock 'n' roll" with some fairly unskilled skiers with a lot of people treading on polls and skis. Most annoying was arriving at the finish when someone thought he was Martin Forcade and skied almost over the top of me.
Relatively warm due to overnight cloud cover, skating was okay on the climb but sticky when back in the valley. The last 3km were very hard going.