2012 Day 5 in France - Le Col de la Sarenne

This morning Guy Little, my host at the King of the Mountain Lodge sorted replaced the rim tape on both of my wheels, so oh joy, oh rapture, oh unmitigated bliss, hopefully I will have no more exciting flats on high speed descents.  My confidence in my tubes restored, I was all set to tackle the Col de la Sarenne loop.  This loop is yet another way to sneak up on Alpe d'Huez without riding up the 21 virages of the classic route.  In the google map that I have reproduced in my last two blog entries the Col de la Sarenne is the green route.  But as I have mentioned, the route actually comes into Alpe d'Huez at a point higher than the finish of the classic 21 virages routes, marked by the black squiggly line on the Google map.  Here is the map from my Garmin for the day.

The Garmin software does not do a great job showing exactly where one is relative to the actual roads.  I actually rode on route 91 when I got to the bottom of the Col d'Ornan and followed it quite a ways to the east, towards Le Grave, after I had gone through Bourg d'Oisans.  But I did leave route 91 right after the big bend, and those squiggly lines below the orange line of 91 mark my ascent up Le Traverse road.  This is a back way up the Les Deux Alpes road and it was a way to get off the main road, avoid some tunnels on same, and get in some extra climbing.  It is a quiet narrow road up through a forrest.

Eventually, as usual, you pop out of the forrest and onto a balcony road.

All of this is before I cross to the north side of the valley and head up the Col de la Sarenne.  Eventually Le Traverse Road hits the main route up to Les Deux Alpes and I descended the main road back down to the valley.  Below is a picture from the descent.

At the bottom of the Les Deux Alpes hill you hit route 91 again.  The highway crosses a dam and you immediately head up the Col de la Sarenne climb.  The road is steep right from the giddy-up.  

I was listening to Pink Floyd's 'The Division Bell' as I ascended through the forrest when I started hearing cow bells.  It was amazing how well the cow bells fit in with the music.

I did this climb last year after having only descended it the year before with Hank.  It is huge.  It features the locally famous house with the huge rock next to it.  The higher up on the alpine switchbacks you get, the smaller the house and the boulder get.

Finally the top of the col comes into sight.

From the top of the col there is quite a bit of up and down across the mountain top to Alpe d'Huez.  From there I descended the classic 21 virages route and rode back up the Col d'Ornan.  The total effort for the day was just over 47 miles of riding with just over 7,000 vertical feet of climbing.  It was another awesome day!