Epic

Today's guest blogger is Slug, who due to oxygen deprivation has forgotten his blogspot user id. Sorry for the delay in updates, but we have been riding, sleeping, and eating instead of blogging. Today's update covers Monday's Marmotte ride, which usually consists of the Croix de Fer, the Telegraphe, the Galibier, and Alpe d'Huez. The mountains were angry that day, my friends, and the temperature was high. Junk, Squirrel and I headed out and tackled the Croix de Fer with little to report other than beautiful views on the 27 kilometer climb to just over 2000m in altitude. After posing for the obligatory summit pictures, to be posted later, we proceeded down the switchbacked descent until we came to the unfortunate sign telling us "Route Barré". Undeterred, we figured (hoped) that the road closed sign only applied to cars. It didn't as the smell of dynamite and the rock avalanche covered road eventually signalled to us to turn around.

So we backtracked and found the Col de Mollard which the Dauphine and the Tour are using to bypass the road closure. At the same time, we also found Squirrel's front derailleur cable split in half leaving him in the small ring for the rest of the day. Squirrel was concerned and wanted to find a direct route home until Junk pointed out that the only way home was either to backtrack completely or complete the route. And anyway, the rest of the route was either uphill or switchback downhill, so the lack of big ring access wasn't too much to worry about. Now, the rest of the route...that was something to worry about.

The Col de Mollard turned out to be a nice, challenging 6.6km climb followed by a spectacular switchback descent on which Ludovic Turpin crashed and broke his leg two days prior in the Dauphine. After a wickedly hot stretch in the valley, we started on the Telegraphe. Squirrel seemed unaffected by heat and derailleur issues, but Junk and I learned what "bonk" means.
After being mistaken for a touring professional on the summit belying my desire to vomit, we took off for the Galibier. Now this is a challenging climb with good legs, let alone starting it completely bonked and dehydrated. We gutted it out and reached the top of this snow covered monster (well, I cut off the last km and went through the tunnel lest I perish 500m from the summit). After regrouping, we started the 25 mile descent which was almost interrupted when the native groundhog like creature called a Marmotte tried to commit suicide under my front wheel. So I was almost killed by the Marmotte twice in one day.

With the road closure, the extra detour climb, the extreme heat, and our pitiable state of body, we exercised the first good judgment of the day and decided not to climb Alpe d'Huez to finish the loop. 110 miles, 8+ hours of riding, and 4 epic climbs were enough for now.