I decided somewhat last-minute to spend a week cycling in early October in the northern French Alps, in the Haute Savoie and Savoie departments. I couldn’t have chosen a better week in terms of the weather and my recent obsession with ticking off all of the VeloViewer map tiles (see my blog post) caused me to plan a rather convoluted route that included an intense amount of climbing and many gravel/dirt roads.
I used my action camera for the first time in a while and got some great footage that I’ve compiled into the following video. This is the first video to receive the “Ride Far Productions” stamp, but I haven’t decided whether this will be a regular thing; it takes a lot of time to do it properly, but it is a lot nicer than a wordy ride report. Please let me know in the comments what you think.
The distances I rode weren’t massive, but I was climbing an average of about 3000 meters per 100 km, and one day I even managed to climb 5000 meters in just 125 km (see details on Strava). I finished with a total of 30,000 meters of climbing in 8 days, which is a new record for me (even in the mountainous TCR 2016 I only managed about 27,000 m of climbing in an 8-day period). I’ve also now surpassed my record amount of climbing in a calendar year with over 220,000 meters so far in 2017 (in 13,000 km of distance).
To get my VeloViewer tile cluster to continue all the way to Italy over the Col du Petit St Bernard, I rode many minor roads, gravel roads, and a little singletrack around the major passes of the Col de la Colombière, Col des Aravis, Cormet de Roseland, and Col du Petit St Bernard, plus several smaller passes. This caused me to discover some beautiful sections of road and trail that I wouldn’t have otherwise been motivated to explore. So thanks again to VeloViewer and the awesome Explorer metrics.
Here is my route created using the VeloViewer “Wheel” option and my current tile cluster for the region. Click an image to enlarge it.
