Stage 3 - Col du Grand St. Bernard (Visp to Etroubles)

On Wed the 23rd June we had a rest day in Visp, a little Swiss village close to the Italian border. We treated ourselves to a large brekie and some of the gang headed off to see the Matterhorn. I chose not to do so, and instead organised my stuff and relaxed in the sunshine.

Visp, Switzerland

I'm glad I did, because what awaited on thurs was a monster climb up to the Col du Grand St Bernard - a pass connecting Martigny in Switzerland to Aosta in Italy, lying on the ridge between the two highest summits of the Alps, namely Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa. The pass itself is located within Switzerland in the canton of Valais. Not just a clever name, this mountain - although not the highest on our trip intinerary - stands at 2469m. The overall distance for the day was going to be 143km, with a 41.5km total climb to the summit, hitting 10% gradient at some points.

Marcel, one of the Bike Dreams crew, lead us out for the first 20 or so kms, to ensure safe delivery of all participants to the first town on the day's route.  Somehow some of the riders still managed to displace themselves from everybody else.  Further down the road the group seemed to join up again.  The first 50kms were very fast as Roger Cull, a classy Australian cyclist and myself led out a group of riders in a train that ripped through the valley towards Sion and onto Martigny at the 75km mark.  Lunch soon followed after a small ascent up the St Bernard.

 

Wrong turn confusion!

Putting the boot down with Rog!

The afternoon heat was a factor early on again today, whilst we rode through the valley from Martigny and on the early part of the climb. There was almost no wind and the sun was beating down.  The great thing about cycling to high altitude is that it gets cooler the higher you go. Unfortunately its gets much more labour intensive and harder to breath!
The temperature typically drops 10 degress for every 1000m climbed. Rune and Damo were setting a nice tempo a head of me and I finally caught them at a set of traffic lights which led into a 6km tunnel. My friend the tunnel!  We also noticed a sign that read 350km to Nice, albeit via a Motorway.  I roughly calculated that we only had another 1000kms to go on our passage to Nice.  When the tunnel ended the gradient really kicked up, and got the better of poor ole Rune. He's a big unit and was just pushing too hard into the red zone.

Rune & Damo just in front, with the Grand Bernard summit in sight

I cursed the steepness of the climb, willing it to end, and with it my pain. I kept looking down to see if I had any more gears, but my fears were contiually realised.  I have a little picture of "The Rock" on my handbar and I drew great inspiration and determination looking at him and thinking about the suffering he endured throughout his battle with cancer. There were some spiritual moments when I prayed for him to help me, and all of a sudden a tailwind would push me up the mountain a bit. Cycling so high made me feel closer to Martin, and with his help I conquered the Grand Bernard.

The Aussies Blake and Tim were already up there and we talked about the difficulty of the climb. I noticed we were all covered in salt, such was the perspiration throughout the climb. There were large chunks of ice and snow on the roads in places which was really cool. We basked in the sun on the summit restuarant terrace and downed a few coffees and cokes as the others struggled as we did up over the final few metres.

Ice field on the summit of Grand St. Bernard

Just before setting off on the descent, road behind!

We probably hung on a little too long up there, but we were in no rush to set off again.  40km of climbing was something I have never experience before, but as we like to say at home - where there is a will, there is a way. Obviously having trained for some months previous helped nonetheless! Another mesmerising descent lead us to the Italian town of Etrouble where we set up camp for the evening. After a big feed I hit the hay early, determinded to have a good night sleep for once, which I did thankfully.

We were in for a slightly "easier" day on fri to the summit of the Col du Petit St Bernard, the little sis of the one we had just climbed, at 2188m and a total of 105kms for the day.

Stage 2 - The Simplon Pass

Thanks to a super lite hypothermia inducing sleeping bag and a very noisy campsite I slept really badly after stage 1.  Myself and Outlaw Pete had watched Spain beating Chile in the World Cup group stage with a couple of beers but that failed to send me off to cloud cuckoo land. Tuesday was going to be the first real test of indurance with a 114km ride from Locarno to Visp via the Simplon Pass, at 2008m.

 Beers with Pete

Running late as per usual I set out with Rune the big Dane to catch the others who were already a good few kms up the road.  There was an early morning chill in the air but it was wonderfully sunny and the early climbs were overcome with ease.  We stopped a couple of times to take photos as the opportunity to do so seemed too tempting to let pass.

After around 25kms we hooked up with most of the others who were having a quick coffee in a small village near the Italian border. I couldn't resist necking a bottle of chilled Guinness that I discovered in the fridge, much to the amusement of my Antipodean friends.  It actually took the edge off the caffine buzz that I was on after one too many cups of coffee at breakfast.

 Guinness Time @ Stradon

The next few k's took us over a few hills and into some long valleys. The roads were really nice but there was a slight headwind which made progress slow. The headwind served a dual purpose, as it was getting very hot at that point. Lunch arrived in the nick of time and I would have cycled on passed it had it not been for Rune spotting the BikeDreams flag.

What lay ahead of us after lunch was a 38km climb to the top of the Simplon Pass, a historic pass built a few hundreds years previous to move big fuck off stuff between 2 countries. (citation needed)
And so the long, relentless, hot ascent began. Because it was early days on the trip I felt strong and moved up through the riders fairly comfortably. I've never cycled through so many tunnels in my life. Approaching HGVs sounded like 747s and made cycling quite unnerving at times.

At one stage a car drove past me, which was towing a boat, the arse of which neraly hit me.

The tunnels - which had been built as avalanch shelters for traffic - were a god send, shielding us from the early afternoon sun and providing some much needed cooling. Around 5kms for the top the headwind really picked up and I had to dig in hard to keep the pedals turning consistently and the cadence high.
I was cycling with Damian Crowe, a hardcore chap from Oz who had been on the road from Palermo to Nice the weeks previous. He had already found his mountain legs. Seeing snow for the first time was proof of how high we were getting. The air was getting tight and the quads were crying out when we spotted the little cafe at the top. Sweet!

First big climb overcome and a great sense of joy. I pulled on the arm covers, wind breaker and rain jacket and dropped like a stone to the town of Brig at the foot of the pass. The decent was absolutely massive, hitting close on 80kmph at points. The temperature went from around 8 degress to 30 degrees in roughly 10 mins on the decent.

We found our well equipped Swiss campsite in Visp and unpacked for our rest day the following day.
We would need all the rest we could get as the next mammoth climb on our itinerary would be the Col du Grand St. Bernard.