Cols!!! (passes)

Notice the campers set up...six days early for the Tour!



These signs are placed every kilometer to let you know what to expect



A friend that hitched a free ride up the col for at least 2k

7-7 Albertville –La Chambre

Today was a hard day as expected we did the Col de la Madeleine which tops out at 2000m after 25k of climbing. We spent the majority of our ride time trying to make it over this nasty climb because once we crested it came a 20k decent to La Chambre where we are camped. The climb its self took us 3hrs and 40mins of ride time and about 5hrs total once you add in our lunch stop and water filter stops… This was done with an average gradient of 5.4%. However, if I am doing my math correctly we climbed at an average of 6.8k/hr which beats our 5k/hr that I calculated on San Bernidino pass, some mild fitness improvements must be happening! Mo and I plan and hope to make it back up this pass from the other direction (south to north) to watch the tour as it comes over this climb in the direction that we did it today (north to south). Anyway, the day was filled with beautiful scenery, a handful of cyclists and not much traffic that keep us company throughout the day and what traffic we did see was mostly due to the upcoming stage of the tour. For example we saw several RV’s pass us and several more already set up along the road lying in wait for the 10 minutes of excitement they will see in a few days. Now it’s time for some rest as tomorrow is another big day up the Col du Glandon.

65k
Nate