the birm*

30mins of downhill is free…but i paid for it!

The day looked rainy and cloudy but blue sky was poking through, so I thought I’d give it a shot. I grabbed some food, an ER blanket, extra clothes and headed off. Just getting to the start of this epic ride was 20mins worth of cranking uphill (5km and 150 vertical metres), but that would be but a warm up…

The first 1.5km to Mizoen was straight up and would have killed me if I hadn’t known that the next 1000m of vertical climbing weren’t so steep…

So anyway, two hours of granny gear later (in 3 years I used my granny gear about a dozen time in Australia…) I was up on the Plateu d’Emparis, 2260m. from there it’s a lovely flat ride for a while before crossing a stream (which is tiny in summer) and climbing a bit more to the col (saddle).

I was having heaps of fun riding through the bits of snow left on the track…until I got to the track I had to head down to the stream. It was almost covered with deep snow (too deep to ride in). as for the “stream”, it was more of a rushing river. Twenty minutes later I found a spot to cross, only getting one foot wet in the icy bath. That’s when the snow kinda got annoying…it was ankle to waist deep, so riding was impossible for most of it…so I pushed and pushed, feet frozen and arms burning.

After an hour of trudging and hauling I got to the top of Col du Souchet, 2365m, and admired the view of the Meije across the deep chasm. It’s an amazing spot. The plateau is so flat and green (well…usually) and the mountains so steep and white…

This is where the real fun really began: half an hour of sweet, rolling, downhill single-track. the whole way down I’m thinking “woohoo, I gotta do this again”, not even thinking about the 2 hours of up hill or the hour through the snow (well…I did think I’d prefer to do it in a few weeks when the snow had melted!).

i got to the bottom, filled my bladder back up (I had just finished the 3 litres I’d taken) and had a mars bar. From there (Chazelet) it’s a nice run through the middle of some villages and down to La Grave. Then it’s road back to the bottom…except I tried the river track. 40mins later I was back on the road, having ridden a bit of it and pushed for too long!

So 6 and a half hours after I left camp I was back. I immediately went to soak in the fountain…ahhh, so cold and relaxing! I then went to check on my sunburn…