Col du Galibier & Col du Télégraphe

This is one of my favourite climbing days anywhere — just as hard every time, and the scenery never stops delivering. I rode it again in July 2025, and even without the Tour de France coming over the Galibier this year, the mountain felt alive: campers stacked up on the verges, motorbikes droning past, and painted names on the tarmac from every edition that's ever crossed it.

The day starts in Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, down on the valley floor of the Arc. The D902 peels off almost immediately and tips up into forested hairpins — shade, pine resin, the river somewhere below, and a steady rhythm you have to respect because there's a lot of road left. The Télégraphe is regular rather than savage, relentless at around its average gradient, with the odd window through the conifers onto the Maurienne far underneath. The Fort du Télégraphe at the summit is the usual photo stop, then a short swooping descent flicks you into Valloire before the legs have really cooled.

Valloire is where I always stop. Bakeries on the main square, water fountains, the last proper shops before the high mountains — tarte aux myrtilles and a coffee, fill the bottles, because from here the character of the ride changes completely. The road rolls gently up the Valloirette through broad alpine pastures, cattle bells, the river braiding alongside. It feels easy. It isn't, really — you're just being set up.

At Plan Lachat the Galibier shows its hand. The road kicks hard left across the river and ramps up the bare southern flank, grass giving way to scree, the air thinning, and suddenly you're grinding in your lowest gear with the Tour names at your wheel. The final hairpins above the Col du Lautaret tunnel are brutally exposed — no shade, no hiding — but the top is one of those summits that actually lives up to the reputation. La Meije and the glaciers of the Massif des Écrins to the south, the Grandes Rousses to the west, the Henri Desgrange memorial just below the col, and the road falling away in stacked switchbacks on both sides.

The descent to the Col du Lautaret is fast and sweeping. I always pull in at the pass house for a hot chocolate and an omelette on the terrace — La Meije hanging there the entire time you're eating. From Lautaret the D1091 drops for a long, gliding run down the Romanche gorge, past La Grave with the glaciers still filling the rear-view, back into the Oisans. Carry a jacket for the top — it's cold up there even in July — start early to stay ahead of the afternoon thunderstorms, and check that the Galibier road is actually open before you drive to the start. It's only clear from roughly late May or early June through to autumn, and the weather up high does what it wants.