French Alps 2026 Day 5: Le Bourg-d’Oisans to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne

A bit of a simpler day today, albeit still challenging.

Leaving Le Bourg-d’Oisans, we decided we were too close to Alpe d’Huez not to climb it. So we did. All 21 switchbacks, all 8.1% average gradient, all 1100m of it. Lots of road bikers and a few ebikers were doing the same run as us, all with much lighter loads. Our bikes got a few double takes.

On the way up there are photographers stationed by the road taking your picture, hoping to sell it to you when you get home. I gave this one a taste of his own medicine.

If you’re into biking you might know that “the Alpe,” as I’ll call it, has an online equivalent in Zwift, the platform we ride virtually in the winter. They’ve got a perfect recreation of the climb in game, and it really does make the real thing feel familiar.

One of the cool things is that we could see the last col we came over yesterday, from the other side of the valley.

If you look carefully you can see the old road we used to descend down to the Bourg.

Unlike all our other routes, the Alpe dead ends on top at a ski resort, so the only option is to turn around and come back down. On the way down we dropped a few hundred meters and then took a side road, the Pas de la Confession, which makes for a much more interesting descent and dropped us at the base of our next climb in Allemond: the Col de la Croix de Fer (pass of the iron cross).

We started up and immediately felt the gradient and the unrelenting quality of the road. We were tired from the Alpe, of course, but this was 1km stretches averaging 9%, the hardest stuff we’ve ridden this trip. Plus it was early afternoon, bright sunshine, and heating up.

The first 45 minutes got us to a small village where we refilled our water. Then the road dropped through three steep switchbacks, crossed the rugged valley, and went back up the other side with another burst of intense gradients. It was tough.

In 2011 Liz and I spent two days biking in this same area, tackling these same two climbs. So I decided to recreate some vintage pics along the way (with Harald’s help):

And…

You can see the sign at the top is heavily stickered. What you might not be able to tell is that the reservoir is extremely low. France has been in drought due to climate change, and these mountain reservoirs are suffering, as are the glaciers.

So clearly we made it up the col. At the top we ran into a couple of German bikepackers doing nearly our loop, backwards. But dinner and a hotel awaited, so we headed down the other side and eventually reached Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne. One hiccup, we had booked the room for the wrong night but Harald was able to salvage the situation and we got a very nice room.

It was Sunday, and most grocery stores were closed, which made our particular biking lifestyle a bit of a challenge. One shop we thought might be open was in fact closed, so we were limited to the food we had on hand and whatever the hotel might offer. We survived. We even enjoyed a non alcoholic beer.

58 miles over about 7 hrs and another 9000+ ft day. Tomorrow should be a bit shorter as we tackle only one large and famous climb, La Madeleine. But we have a way of making things more difficult!