Solo, Serre Chevalier, and Every Col I Could Find

No plan beyond a base and a list of names I wanted to say I'd ridden. Briançon and Serre Chevalier for a few days, the bike loaded light, and every big climb within reach picked off one at a time. Solo — nobody to wait for, nobody to blame the pace on.

It was brutal. Not in the scenic, brochure sense — in the actual sense, legs-gone, why-am-I-doing-this sense, more than once. That's the part worth writing down before it fades into "yeah, great trip."

Le Monêtier-les-Bains

The easy part of the trip, geographically speaking — the valley floor, spinning between climbs. The river here doesn't look real. Glacial melt does something to the colour that no filter earns honestly, and the village sits right up against it, church spire and all, like it was placed there specifically to be photographed from this exact spot on the bank.

I didn't linger. You don't linger in a valley when there are cols waiting at both ends of it.

A narrow paved mountain road curving through alpine terrain with jagged granite spires in the distance — Somewhere above the treeline, still climbing, still convinced the top is close.

The Galibier

This is the one everyone knows, and it earns it. 2,642 metres, hairpins that stack on top of each other until the valley disappears, and a final stretch where the road just gives up pretending to be reasonable. The Tour has finished stages up here for a reason — it's the kind of climb that turns your brain quiet somewhere around the last few kilometres, when there's nothing left to think about except the next pedal stroke.

A gravel road bike loaded with bikepacking bags leaning against the Col du Galibier summit sign, jagged peaks behind — Made it. The sign is held together entirely by other people's stickers at this point.

The summit sign is a monument in itself — decades of riders' stickers layered over each other, a scrapbook of everyone who's suffered up the same road. I added nothing to it. Just leaned the bike against it, took the photo, and sat down for longer than I'd like to admit.

Refuge Napoléon, at the end of the day

The other climb — the one that actually broke me a little — ended at Refuge Napoléon as the light was going. By the time I got there my legs had nothing left to negotiate with, and then the sky did this.

A dramatic pink and orange sunset over hairpin switchbacks and a mountain refuge, with peaks silhouetted on the horizon — Refuge Napoléon, last light — the kind of sunset that makes you forget your legs for about ninety seconds.

Ninety seconds is about right. Then the legs remind you they exist, you remember you still have to get back down, and the descent in fading light becomes its own small negotiation with common sense. Worth it anyway. Every brutal climb on this trip was worth it for exactly one moment like this one.

Going back

I'll do it again, and I'll pick harder climbs on purpose, because apparently that's the whole appeal. Solo suits this kind of trip — no one to slow down for, no one to apologize to when you need to stop and stand over the bike for a minute at 2,600 metres. Just the road, the legs, and whatever's waiting at the top.