the galibier

The Galibier featured in every Tour de France from 1911 till 1949, and regularly since. Until 1979 it passed through a tunnel at 2,556m to the descent on the other side. An archway collapsed, the tunnel was closed, and a kilometre at 10 per cent was added to reach the shoulder of the massif. 

Now it’s 2,645 m tall and only two climbs top it: the Iseran at 2,720m and the Col de la Bonnette-Restefond at 2,802m.

Graeme Fife rode the Galibier, the sacred monster, on 12 September 1995. He describes his ascent in The beautiful machine. From Valloire, where his ascent begins, it’s 18.1kms to the summit at 6.9%, height gain 1245m. What follows is his account.

We set out from Valloire … into cold rain, skies as grey as dull unenamelled steel tubing. Lightly laden I went ahead. Shorts. No tights. No overshoes. Hadn’t heard of them. No gloves (keeping them dry for the downhill). Minimal waterproof. Seventeen kilometres to ride. The road up ahead marked ominously with double chevrons on the map.

The approach across the open ground towards Plan Lachat, at halfway, was about as unromantic as a freezing wet day in the high mountains could make it. I passed clumps of dishevelled farm buildings, which even the flower-spangled glory of a hot summer would hardly render handsome. They crouched, hunkered down, sodden and morose, in stagnant swamps of thick cowpat-brown mud. A knot of shuttered chalets. Bleak moorland. The waters of the Valloirette River course unseen. Wetness everywhere. To the west, a mighty wall of mountain, the Aigles d’Arve; to the east, another rampart, La Sétaz Vieille. Threatening banks of foul weather. Ahead the col, somewhere, overshadowed by two majestic steeples of rock marking the end of the two opposing ridges: the Grand Galibier and the Pic des Trois Evêchés. The road noses into a line of dripping trees—no shelter there—and out the other side.

Plan Lachat is a huddle of ugly wooden ski chalets in a crook of the ranges. Beyond it, the meandering road swings abruptly right and steeply up—frighteningly steep—onto the first of the ramps, the real start of the climb, the proper testing stuff. Everything till now has been preamble, no great tax of gradient, yet I’ve been in my lowest gear since we set out, which means that the only gear I have left is out of the saddle …

From here on, the Galibier is horribly exposed and, on this day of slantwise rain-cum-sleet, wintry cold. The road breaks every vertebra in its spine with stress fracture on the bare rock. No trees occlude or shelter the way forward. I can see the next hairpin snapping back on itself overhead as the hairpin I am on unbends from its tight V. I’m riding very slowly. Pedal stroke by pedal stroke. Suddenly, being on the Galibier is very scary. Had I thought much about it beforehand? Well, I had, but here I am inhabiting the gap between the mental image and the reality, treading the gulf between what I had nursed as possibility across the insuperable fact of my own limitations. This is a massive alp with a deserved reputation … Occasionally I stand up on the pedals to relieve the cricking ache in the small of my back, 80 metres or so, and then settle onto the seat again.

The rain turns inexorably to snow. Now, when I honk (get out of the saddle), the back wheel occasionally loses purchase on the settling slick and I have to plonk my bum down to counter the skid. A Dutch camper van shoots past in a vile, wet, freezing broadcast of slush and liquid and very nearly takes me out.

Not far from the top, I see a huge gully to my right, a funnel between two huge gaunt pillars of rock, a chasm plunging over a precipice, swirling with ghostly flurries of blinding white snow in chaotic spirals of wind. I am riding into the lost region of thin air where the frost makes pastel rainbows and the legendary demon of misfortune, the Witch with Green Teeth, trails nets of ice-fibre mesh to trap the unwary rider and sweep him into the thrall of mechanical failure and punctures, if not to throw him off the machine altogether. This is the realm of Frost-Blink, and I am riding a glacial brook not a tarmac road. But I think of the men of 1911 and then cannot match this, any of this, to what they did …

I get nearer—how near? Never inquire, just stick with it—and the realisation that I am going to make it begins to break, but no: absit omen. It’s never over till it’s over. Then I see ten or so cars parked either side of the road, a snowplough beyond them on the left-hand verge. The car passengers stand around in fur coats, overcoats, muffled with scarves, hats, gloves, their breath pluming in the frosty thin air.

I stop, dismount and call out: “Is this the col?”

It’s the col, and, as I fumble woodenly with frozen fingers at the straps of my saddlebag to liberate my gloves and a thick sweater, one of the dungareed snowplough men calls over to me in a sullen tone: “A car’s slipped off the road. We need your help.”

Right. They need my help. They’ve been stooging around waiting for a bike-rider. They have the population of a small skiing chalet togged out in toasty warm clothes, standing around like tripe at fourpence, the driver of said car included, presumably, and they need my help. I reply, with some acid incredulity in my voice: “I’ve just cycled up the Galibier and you want me to help you with a car?”