The Trio

The good Lord gave us mountains, so we could learn how to climb...



A pillar tribute to the Tour de France on Galibier



A huge bike with the Col du Lautaret sign right next to a cafe named the "Tour-mente"

July 10 Col du Lautaret, Galibier, Telegraphe

Today we started out in La Grave with the end goal of St. Jean de Maurienne. I was nervous about today because we had three cols, one col was going to be the highest elevation we had climbed so far, and I had heard some things from other tourists about the climb. The first col we had to summit was the Col du Lautaret. This is basically the base of the next climb. The road to the first col was windy with a headwind most of the way and a tailwind on the few switchbacks we ran into. We stopped in the town on top for the traditional photos of the scenery and the pass’ sign. It was here that we also heard a funny noise coming from our bike. We pulled over to check it out and it turned out that one of our brake pads had a hole burned through it. Nate started to work on replacing them, and I pulled out food for our impromptu lunch break. After lunch we were fresh for the next climb-the Col du Galibier. I was excited to find out that we only needed to travel another 8k to the top of the col. It was a very scenic road and not too bad of a climb. It is so great to see the remnants of paint on the road from past Tours-it gives us something to read as we climb. Once we reached the top of this climb we took more photos and headed down the other side. There was also a bike race in the town at the bottom of the climb. From the town, we had 5k to climb to the Col de Telegraphe which we reached in no time. Today was a day of three cols, but it almost feels like cheating to claim 3 because they were in such close proximity (distance and elevation). After that we had a nice downhill coast with only one “deviation” to get to St. Jean de Maurienne. When we reached St. Jean, we quickly found camping (it turns out that they had only four more openings because Le Tour was due through there in the next two days.) We quickly set up camp and rushed to the store because it was about to close and the next day was SUNDAY. This shopping trip we actually needed to stock up for Sunday, Monday, and half of Tuesday because we were heading back up the Col de Madeleine to stake out a spot for Le Tour.
We went shopping (me for food and Nate for a bike lock) and it started absolutely pouring while we were at the store with just our bike mind you. Many people just looked at us in our little shelter and chuckled. I like to think that they would’ve offered us a ride, but we have a tandem and they have smart cars…The rain finally died down enough for us to get back. It turned out that we left our rain fly open so it could not do its job of blocking the rain. We soaked up the water with dirty clothes since we were planning on doing laundry tomorrow anyway and made the best of it. We made our dinner of premade frozen cheeseburgers (literally with the cheese, ketchup, and mustard already on them). They tasted okay, but needless to say we question the nutritional value. We had to have dinner in two parts because it started pouring again. After dinner, we went to bed early so that we could gear up for the next day.
~60k
Mo