Tour Les Grande Alpes
Tour Les Grandes Alpes, or The Grand Tour, has been on the cards for Arthur and Oskar for a year. A plan to strive for, to believe in, and to know that the day will come when they will have to start riding. Coffee brought them together. They set up the first commercial, all-electric coffee roastery “400mg coffee” in Switzerland. Both having been active all their lives, Oskar with a background in track and field and crossfit, Arthur with extreme sports and rock climbing, they slowly started to get into cycling and realised they had to discover their own limits. So the idea of crossing the French Alps from Geneva to Menton, crossing 17 mountain passes, was born.
Article and photos by: Arthur Strautins @arthurrill
Riders: Oskar Kartupelis @oskars____k, Arthur Strautins @arthurrill
The start of the trip didn’t get off to the smoothest start. The day before, I finished playing a concert at midnight, in Latvia, before heading back to the capital to catch a flight to Amsterdam, and then onto Zurich. Sleep-deprived, the last thing you want is lost luggage, especially when that luggage contains your bike and everything you need for the trip. I landed in Zurich, my bike did not and it was another 5 hours before it also made the journey from Amsterdam.
Nothing else could go wrong, surely. It was 5pm and I was ready to go to Lucerne, where the plan was to set up the bike and get ready for the journey. But no, the universe had other plans and an incident on the motorway meant I didn’t arrive in Lucerne until 10:30pm. Sleep can wait, we were leaving for Geneva at 4am, our starting point.
Only Oskar, living permanently in Lucerne, had any prior training for climbing over 1000m per day. For me, coming from the flat land of Latvia, I prepared by riding long and far—up to 300km a day. But of course, that's a completely different thing, and climbing a mountain with a bicycle with all the necessary luggage is something completely different.
Most of the time, we were at around 1000–2700m altitude. The previous week, at around 1500m, there was heavy rain, snow, and hail everywhere. We were prepared for the worst.
Starting on September 4th, we realised from the weather forecast that it was quite possible that the forecast would be good and there wouldn’t be bad weather—good news!
The first few days were spent trying to get used to the bikes, getting used to the rhythm, and acclimatisation. On the second day, we had three mountain passes to climb. Coming down from the second one, with a beautiful view of Mont Blanc, I realised that I had lost the only clothes that I had for the trip as they seemingly un-tied themselves from my pannier. Realising that it was low season and very few mountain shops would be open making it difficult to find new clothes, I rode back up the second climb. After an extra 500 metres of ascent, I could not find them. In total, that day was spent on the bike for about 12 hours, with 112km cycled and 3130m climbed, with temperatures reaching 37 degrees Celsius.
At the end of each day, we were trying to find something to eat, wash our clothes, and get ready for the morning. Funny, but each day seemed a bit harder than the last.
Starting the third day, we knew we were in for something special. We were going to cross the highest paved mountain pass in Europe, the Col de l'Iseran, via Bourg Saint-Maurice. 48km of constant ascent with an average gradient of 4.3%, sometimes reaching 12%. We felt like we were on a frying pan all day. The temperature in the sun reached around 40 degrees. No wind. We kept our spirits up, cheered each other up, and after the excruciating climb, we were greeted by perhaps one of the most beautiful descents in the world. It really is worth it. In the evening, we drove to the town of Modane, found the only eatery in the whole town, had a bite to eat, and prepared ourselves for the next few days.
During the first days of sun, I got second-degree sunburn on my legs even with the SPF 50+ sun cream. Oskar got food poisoning just before the Col du Télégraphe and vomited in the morning. Mostly all you could get in the mornings were pastries, but Oscar couldn't tolerate wheat flour; it certainly didn't help with recovery.
With this start to the day, we climbed Galibier (2642m) and knew we could do more than we had first thought.
We made it to La Selle-les-Alpes. The first signs of South France seemed to be slowly appearing in the air. The levels were switching. The air felt slightly different. Nature is changing.
On the fourth day, crossing the Vars mountain pass and reaching the town of Meyronnes, we were greeted by the last 4 slices of pizza in the only cafeteria in the whole town (there were 14 houses in this town) and 2 glasses of juice. I can say that Oskar was very happy to have such a nutritious recovery meal. The evening was definitely improved by the accommodating hostess, a swim in the mountain river, and a coffee cupping for “400mg” upcoming coffees in a sunlit valley. It seemed that the hardest part was definitely behind us—at least in terms of altitude and measured distance—but the remaining days surprised us with even more heat and no wind. The morning is around +5 degrees, and the day warms up to +43 degrees Celsius. I do not know if I have ever felt such heat, even in Death Valley, USA. In the last 4 days, we have only seen maybe 20 cyclists in total. The locals don't go out for a ride in that heat, and, as it turns out, neither do the tourists. We were laughing to ourselves—what are we doing here?
The last day was like a sweet treat. We knew we only had two small mountain passes of around 800m to go, and it was time to see how fit we were after this week's challenge. We started the trip in places where the average gradient is around 8%, going at 6–8 km/h. On the last day at this gradient level, we were going at around 12 km/h. It was very rewarding to see how our bodies change and are being able to adapt. Crossing the Castillon mountain pass, we instantly felt the salty air of the Mediterranean Sea and reached our destination in less than an hour, in Menton.
In total, we spent 8 days on the road without breaks, climbed 16,300m, covered 720 km, and burned 26650 kcal. No major crashes, no flat tires.
Thank you, Universal Colours. We are grateful to have been able to share this road together.
