French Alps 2026 Day 6: Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (Col de la Madeleine)

Another simple day in retrospect. One big climb, one long descent, one hotel at each end.

We started with a good breakfast at the hotel in Saint-Jean, which we deemed worth the extra charge. Most mornings we’ve been skipping the hotel breakfast and eating whatever was left in our bags until a market or bakery turned up. Today, though, coffee, breads, pastries, jams, eggs and cheese for me (vegan waiver acquired, for vacation use only!).

While we were packing up we retrieved our bikes from the hotel bike room, which had been full of nice road bikes. There was a “team” in there getting ready for the day, though really I think they’re more of a club: a week abroad on vacation, using the hotel as a base, and a support van parked outside, which is pretty sweet. Norwegians, Dutch, one American apparently. Today they were headed up the same climb we ended up doing, the Col de la Madeleine. How do we join?!

Even with breakfast in us we made a quick stop at the grocery store for supplies for the day. For me that’s bread and cheese, my go-to foods while riding in France. They do them both so well!

The plan was an alternative approach to the Col de la Madeleine, rather than doing all 19km and 1500m of it in one go. This involved the Montvernier, a famous little climb of stacked hairpins, and then some jiggery Harald had prepared to side load us onto the Madeleine via a gravel road. It would have been cool. Except we got to the base of the Montvernier and it was closed for the day for construction. Dang!

Oh well. We rode another 10km or so along the valley to get to the correct spot, the valley floor town of La Chambre, and did the vanilla Madeleine instead. That was perfectly okay! Quite pleasant, in fact, if strenuous.

The Col de la Madeleine is an “hors catégorie” climb in pro cycling, which means beyond categorization, they ran out of numbers because the hardest climbs previously were category 1. The combination of length, gradient and total elevation puts it among the hardest climbs in the sport. I guess we started up around 10:30 and wrapped it up at 2:30 or so. We took one longer lunch break…

…and one short break to refill water, but mostly we just climbed for those four hours. We felt it. If you were wondering, the climb was set at 52m40s by a couple of dopers in 1998. Still impressive!

Along the way we ended up loosely clustered with a few other cyclists near our pace: a young French bikepacking couple from Strasbourg, who would later turn up at our hotel and check in a bit after us, and a touring Swiss couple from Bern. The last 5km went fast for Harald because he was riding with the Swiss guy, speaking German, doing German things.

Of course we were also passed, decisively, by dozens of roadies going up and coming down. It was a very active cycling road,. considering the difficulty! Along the way we found evidence of its use in last year’s Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes (avec Zwift!), where it hosted the penultimate stage eight mountaintop finish.

Most of the paint had survived a year of weather better than my photography did.

At the top.

We treated ourselves to a couple of Cokes at about 2010m elevation, and a bit of sitting around before the long descent down the other side.

The descent was fast and fun. Much quieter on that side, very few cars or cyclists, and we passed through a string of nice little mountain villages.

The last hour had us rolling down the flattish valley toward Albertville and our hotel. You may remember Albertville hosted the 1992 Winter Olympics. There’s quite a bit around here to remind you of that fact, in case you didn’t!

The usual stuff happened at the hotel (laundry, showers), then a short walk to what is the largest Lidl Harald has ever seen (me too, for the record). That’s saying something, as he’s an aficionado of German grocery chains.

About 50 miles, a bit over 5 hrs of riding and 5600ft of climbing. A good recovery day!