UKC

Are you allowed to cycle it?

If you are allowed, would you want to?

Or would it be unspeakably horrible and terrifyingly lethal?

I'm guessing No, No, and Yes. But I got playing with Map My Ride and noticed that a circular trip from Chamonix, via Martigny, to the Great St Bernard, down to Aosta then up to Courmayeur and so (?) back to Chamonix, would be 171km and 6563m, with two hors-cate'goire climbs in it (Col des Montets and the GSB). Quite a day out, even if you finished it by sticking the bike on the bus in Courmayeur like a normal person.


Update: wait a minute. I see what that second HC climb is. And why it's so steep... the software is computing it like you take the bike *over* the Mer de Glace rather than *under* it. Doh...

Still, definitely a two-Yorkie-Bar ride, even without the cycle up, and more pertinently down, the Aiguille du Midi

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Having drive through it last year (40E one way!) I can't imagine bikes would be allowed, so it looks like you may have to go over rather than under!

In reply to Tim Chappell:

Not a chance of cycling it, death on a stick.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

I'm not sure if you 'can' but I wouldn't!

Alternative routes.... limited and all over the top except I know there is a bus from Briancon via Montgenevre down to Oulx and its only €4. But you should be cycling it!

In reply to Tim Chappell:

I met a chap on hol who had entered this:

http://www.sportcommunication.info/letourdumontblanc/images/parcours1.jpg

but had to abandon at Bourg St M. due to weather.

In reply to Tim Chappell:

You're not allowed to ride through the tunnel (which is good and bad I guess) but the road tour du Mont Blanc as in the sportcommunication link is a good 1 day challenge........though Chamonix based folk will often drive through the tunnel, leave the car in Courmayeur, ride round to Chamonix, sleep, then complete the route back to the car the next day.

In reply to gdp:

Merci a' tous pour les renseignements.

In reply to Tim Chappell:


Even if you were, it'd be horribly tedious, wouldn't it? Almost as much as it looked like the channel tunnel would be, in that video of Chris Froome going through, except perhaps less claustrophobic.

In reply to Removed UserBwox:

Yep. I hate tunnels on bikes. All the potholes between Bourg St Maurice and the top of the Col de l'Iseran seem to be concentrated in the fastest and darkest bits of the Tignes tunnels. My other half crashed in a tunnel coming off the Croiz de Fer a couple of years ago and nearly got run over by a load of Ferraris going up. The Mont Blanc tunnel would be horrible.

In reply to Tim Chappell:


I went through the M.Blanc tunnel with my bike in 1980. I cycled up to the 'péage' and asked people with vans/trucks to take me through. After a short wait, a friendly french trucker gave me a lift !

No idea if this would be possible today.