Minimum altitude: 229 meters
Distance: 30.1 km
Slope Aspect: West
Vertical Climbed: 793 meters (2,602 feet)
Vertical Descended: 793 meters
Rating: 3
I had a little over an hour before lunch, so I headed out for a short ride in the Grésivaudan, starting with the new cycle path from Brignoud towards Tencin. It is a useful addition to the valley, although at the moment it still has quite a bit of gravel on the surface kicked up by cars and vans who can use the path as a rat run as it is not gated, so it does not yet feel like a fully separated or particularly peaceful cycle route.
With limited time available, I had the idea of climbing up to the Col du Lauteret — no, not *that* Col du Lauteret — via Les Hurtières. The climb looked like a good option for squeezing in some elevation without straying too far from home.
Unfortunately, the ride was soon complicated by gear problems. These may have been linked to using the bike recently on a direct-drive home trainer. I had to stop several times to try to sort things out, but the shifting remained unreliable. In the end, the likely culprit seemed to be a stretched derailleur cable combined with a badly adjusted rear derailleur. The chain was changing off the bottom cog, which was not something I was going to fix properly at the roadside. That would have to be a home fettling job.
By the time I reached Les Hurtières, I decided not to continue all the way over to the col. Instead, I took a shortcut on a gravel trail towards the village of Les Tigneux. The first 200 metres were not really cyclable, partly because of works around the reservoir, but once the trail became less steep it was rideable enough.
After that, it was a quick roll down the hill. Only then did I realise that I had come out at Froges rather than Brignoud. In hindsight, it might have been better to push on for the final metres over the col on the paved road, which would have given a more direct descent back to Brignoud.
Still, it made for a decent short outing: around 30 km in total with roughly 600 metres of climbing. Not quite the loop I had planned, and with a bit more roadside tinkering than I would have liked, but a useful reminder that sometimes the bike decides the route as much as the rider does.
Hot, but the climb is in the shade
