Cyclist
Classic climb: Col de la Loze, the Alpine climb that breaks Tour champions
‘I’m gone. I’m dead,’ crackles the team radio. Unzipped jersey flailing in the wind, his trademark tufts poking through his helmet, Tadej Pogačar couldn’t look more done if he tried. His 2023 Tour de France dream is over, and the culprit? Yesterday’s time-trial didn’t help, nor Jumbo-Visma turning the screws today. But it’s not the time gap or a metronomic Jonas Vingegaard that has floored the Slovenian, it’s this climb: the Col de la Loze.
‘A kilometre here just goes on and on forever,’ says commentator Sean Kelly as the moto camera takes an alarming tilt.
Joining forces
Located between the ski resorts of Méribel and Courchevel in France’s Savoie department, the Col de la Loze is a beast, albeit a newly discovered one. Until a few years ago its roads terminated at these resorts – at 1,630m and 1,850m respectively – but in 2019 a new road opened, winding 7km on from Méribel and 6km from Courchevel and converging atop the col at 2,304m.
In the grand scheme of France’s highest paved climbs, that puts the Col de la Loze 13th – hardly anything to write home about. Yet by another metric this is France’s hardest climb.
Using the Fiets system*, the Col de la Loze (via Méribel) scores 13.8 Fiets, beating the Col de Portet (13 Fiets) and the mighty Ventoux (from Bédoin, 12.6 Fiets) into second and third. The reason isn’t elevation; rather this climb’s unrivalled toughness comes from its huge 1,700m elevation gain combined with its 22km length. However, here’s where it gets a bit tricky, and why before you pedal out of Brides-les-Bains you must answer the question: why are you here?
If it’s to do the absolute hardest climb you can, leave town to the west then travel south via Les Allues and Méribel to the top. If it’s for something more sedate (a mere 11.1 Fiets) and some say more picturesque, head east and make your ascent via all four Courchevels – Le Praz, 1550, 1650 and 1850.
But if you’re here for a mix of the scenic and the sinew-straining, there is a third way, the route that capped off Stage 17 at the Tour de France last year. So make a left at the crossroads for the D915, signed Courchevel, and get ready.
Flags and jumps
The first few kilometres are comparatively uninspiring. At little more than 600m above sea level the mountain views are pinched shut by the valley. The gradient, mind you, is already shaping up, hovering restlessly between 6% and 7%.
Traffic is steady, the odd commuter off to Moûtiers or the barrelling engine of a rubbish truck making the rounds, but by the roundabout it has thinned out, and by the fourth hairpin things just feel right. The Tarentaise Valley unfurls slowly below, the air hangs Alpine-quiet. You haven’t needed to shift gears or change your position in ages. Everything is perfect progress.
At Saint-Bon-Tarentaise, Le Tricolore flutters limply over the town hall’s doorway, the only movement in this tiny enclave. By contrast, when it comes, Courchevel Le Praz is a metropolis, larch hotels fronted by huge pictures of themselves covered in snow and their names written in a kind of inviting holidays cursive.
But don’t get distracted because ahead is a crucial turning. You’ll know it by the tall, silver, trumpet-looking thing on its end – a totem to the Winter Olympics – and the ski jump stadium behind. Be sure to bear right at the fork signed Méribel. You’re here for the full Pogačar.
Village people
The run through Méribel Village turns from flat to downhill, which is a bittersweet feeling on any climb as physical relief is overtaken by the mental frustration of lost metres. A hundred vertical ones burnt over 3km, in fact. But it’s OK, there’s one of those fun roundabouts with sculptures on it to commemorate the history of such parts. It’s usually cheesemakers or cows. This statue has a wheelbarrow full of flowers.
Tightly packed hairpins see the gradient back where it belongs, nudging the teens to deliver you to the higher-up Méribel reserved for the well-heeled skier. French Alp quaintness reigns supreme, although you’d swear Méribel must have at least one large-scale building project at any given time given these towering cranes. But nothing can spoil the views to your right.
Vast, sweeping, green; views of the kind you know are plastered all over the hotel lobby pamphlets. Then comes the rub: a roundabout, more expensive-looking hotels, another roundabout then a huge white arrow stencilled on the ground, pointing up the grassy piste and labelled Col de la Loze.
Free as a bike
By some miracle of civic planning, this new stretch of road has been designated car-free. It feels like the smoothest bike path in the world, and by the hairpin near the golf course you’ll be convinced it’s also the quietest.
By the time you reach the field of donging cows, you’re cursing this as the hardest effing thing you’ve ever ridden. Pog cracked somewhere around here and you’re beginning to know how that felt. However it isn’t the hardest thing – not yet anyway.
You think you must surely be close to done but swinging back under the lifeless chairlifts and around the final hairpin comes the most disastrously long road of your life. It disappears to a point like an escalator to the clouds; somewhere among its rippling flanks lie stretches near 20%.
Down and to your left are some truly spectacular views, though, so depending on your raison d’être and the remnants of your legs’ joie de vivre, now is a great place to stop. A final kilometre to go, a racetrack panorama of the road you’ve just climbed below.
Whatever your disposition, the same fate awaits – a final 24% sucker-punch to the softest tissues. There is no smaller gear to find, no more saddle to get out of. It is just a patella-shortening grind.
Your reward is weird. It’s sort of cool, very Tour de France woz ’ere. A chalk effigy-type yellow jersey adorns the highest slope of the col, reachable only by foot; a huge bicycle of dubious proportions and perilous geometry sits at the highest point reachable by bike.
Go get your photo taken by it, then sneak off down the road to get some more beautiful, less affected views, before enjoying the final spoil of this climb – that 6km road back to Courchevel 1850. It’s pristine, it’s all downhill and it belongs only to bicycles.
The post Classic climb: Col de la Loze, the Alpine climb that breaks Tour champions appeared first on Cyclist.