5 Hills ROAD Tour

The Susa Valley is an almost obligatory passage to access west into the French Alps, to the great paved roads of the Alpine Hills. Those made famous especially by the Tour de France and also by the Giro d’Italia, which intersect in the Route des Grandes Alpes, a historic route for motorized tourists born in the Belle Epoque and leading from Nice to Lake Geneva.

A taste of these routes can be had-starting in the Susa Valley-with a loop of about 240 km and over 5,000 meters of total elevation gain in ascent that we report here with arrival and departure from Susa. But of course the 5 Hills Tour can be taken in the same way with base and return at any point in the Valley.

It’s a fantastic tour exploring some of the passes in the Alps just across the border amid spectacular, bike-friendly vistas that nonetheless exude stories of Great Cycling.

Susa- Moncenisio – Haute Maurienne

The first section leads to the Moncenisio Pass, driving along the hairpin bends of the Napoleonic Road, which surge towards Giaglione, then with a few straight stretches, arrive at the old Customs House in Bar Cenisio to then reach the present border before the San Nicolao Plain. Along the way you can see the remains of some tunnels of the Fell Railroad and the old Royal Cantoning Houses, unfortunately abandoned.

Backdrop of the long straight is the Grand Staircase with its characteristic protections, the
piliers
, made of rhinestone and with characteristic hand-carved caps.

We thus climb up the road that runs alongside the dam and the Lake Moncenisio, between Forts Varisello and Roncia and overlooked by Turra discovering the immense scenery of one of the most beloved places in the Alps. And watch out for groundhogs lurking along the path!

After touching 2,083 meters above sea level at the Col, we descend into the Haute Maurienne with a beautiful series of breathtaking hairpin bends along the D1006. It passes through Lanslebourg, Termignon, Sollieres-Sardieres and Bramans.

We propose that bikers go up to Aussois and reach Modane from the so-called “old road.”

In this case, before arriving at Modane, on the left, the imposing system of nineteenth-century Savoy fortifications of the Barrier de l’esseillon, a system of 5 perpendicular terraced Forts that bars the entire orographic right side of the Valley from the Arc. Largely restored and can be visited, including via some breathtaking via ferrata routes. A real stone entrenched camp, within which about 10,000 men could be attested.

Once past Modane, the outlet of the 1861 rail tunnel, still in operation (pending the construction of the new 57-kilometer base tunnel from St. Jean de Maurienne to Susa) and the highway tunnels, you still descend along the E70, between the river, the railroad and the highway until you reach Saint Michel De Maurienne at 711 meters

Saint Michel De Maurienne – Col Du Telegraphe – Col Du Galibier

At the center of the village turn left in the direction of Valloire. The Galibier has 35.2 kilometers and 2,072 meters of ascent to go. Which should make us think, as we ride the bike, with the utmost respect for the many cyclists who will pass each other on the way up. Its cycling history begins in 1911, when the pioneers of the Tour tackled it on 15-kilo bicycles with no gears, on a road that was little more than a mule track driveway.

You cross the Arc and the railroad over a bridge, then begin the ascent that through the woods in 14 hairpin bends reaches the Col du Télégraphe at an elevation of 1,566 meters, ascending along which there are views across the Valley toward Saint Jean de Maurienne, with the massive barrage of the Saint Martin de la Porte locks. The Col connects the Arc Valley, with its side Valloirette Valley, a steep, narrow, forested canyon.

Here, too, of course there is a Fort, this time of French construction and from the late 1800s: it is the Fort Du Télégraphe (1,613 m.) reached by a small unpaved road-a splendid vantage point. The fort was built where there was an optical telegraphy station with Chappe mobile arms, of the line that in 1804 connected Paris to Milan via Dijon, Lyon, and Turin. Hence precisely the name that has remained on the Hill.

In 5 kilometers of slight descent you arrive at Valloire (1,430m) a major ski resort with a remarkable Baroque church.

Between rips and false-floors you proceed into a wide valley. The climbing at altitude is broken by a long three-kilometer falsopiano, at the end of which the road definitely resumes its gradient. The entire first part of the ascent, about 10 kilometers, is a long climb up the valley with few curves, while the mountains around gradually take on an increasingly magnificent character, dominated by the ridges of the Grand Galibier. At the Refuge de Plan Lachat (1,961m), leave the dirt road on the left (which climbs to Col de la Pare and Camp des Rochilles) and past a small bridge over the Valloirette stream, the road suddenly steepens with 4 narrow hairpin bends without protection; thus, you cross the rock face wall that bars the valley with an impressive sequence of hairpin bends that climb the mountain.

At the Granges du Galibier, at 2,301 meters above sea level, it is impossible not to get excited as you pass by the Marco Pantani monument erected on the exact spot where, on July 27, 1998, the Pirate sprinted, going into a breakaway at the Tour, on a day marked by terrible near-winter weather, to arrive poo at the finish line in Les Deux Alpes with more than 9 minutes on his rival Ullrich. A feat that earned him victory in Paris and will forever mark the history of Great Cycling.

From this point there are still 5 kilometers to the summit. A series of curves leads to the northern entrance of the tunnel, which is regulated as a one-way street with traffic lights and prohibited to pedestrians and cyclists. But to the road, which was built between 1880 and 1881, in 1976, given the precarious condition of the tunnel that forced its closure (it was reopened in 2001), two more kilometers were added on the two sides , thus resulting in the highest crossing at 2,646 meters.

The top of the pass, a narrow esplanade, divides the Departments of Savoie and Hautes-Alpes. The view is breathtaking, and it is even more spectacular if you go up to the nearby viewpoint at 2,704 . To the east dominates the summit of the Grand Galibier (3,229 m.), and to the north, behind the Vanoise Glacier the Massif du Blanc is visible. Opposite, looking at the southward descent, the spectacle is provided by the Meije (3,983 m.) and the Barre des Ecrins (4,103 m.), two mountains with an unmistakable profile.

 

Col du Galibier – Col du Lautaret – Col de la Scala

The very steep and unprotected descent, after one kilometer, arrives at the southern outlet of the tunnel, where there are also the Chalet del Colle and the Monument to Henri Desgrange, creator of the Tour.

With another 8 kilometers or so of very gentle descent, you arrive at the Col du Lautaret 2,058 meters. Here if you turn right you go toward the Oisans, in the Romanche Valley, while to the left you head toward the Briançonnais, in the Guisane Valley. And the transition between the Northern and Southern Alps, between the Arves and Ecrins massifs. Crossroads to Grenoble or to the south of France.

The renovated 19th-century Hotel Des Glaciers and the Ecrins National Park Visitor Point are located at the Col; the Joseph-Fourier Alpine Station is worth seeing. A facility of the French CNR and the University of Grenoble , with the chalet-laboratory, its botanical garden housing more than 2,000 European and worldwide mountain botanical species.

The descent from the Lautaret is comfortable among wide grasslands, and in about 25 kilometers-overcoming the two avalanche-protection tunnels that are no longer traveled because the road now has a new location-you easily reach Monetier Les Bains. Location at 1,470 meters, a spa center, obviously discovered by the Romans, on the route of the ancient Via Domitia that connected the Italic plain to Arles.

From here, a few more kilometers of short descent and you arrive at the traffic circle that leads to Briançon, of which you can already appreciate from afar the profile of the Ville Vauban, the fortified citadel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site with its forts towering above.

It is a city with a multi-millennial history, extending beyond the Roman Brigantium, which arose on the Via Domizia that crossed the Alps at Montgenèvre Pass, followed the Durance Valley from Briançon pointing to the sea. Briançon was then the capital of the 5 Escartons, a territory that from 1343 until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 in five different valleys of the Cottian Alps enjoyed full administrative autonomy: Briançonnais, Oulx In Upper Susa Valley, Casteldelfino in Varaita Valley, Pragelato in Chisone Valley, and the Queyras. A true Alpine republic. It was then the military citadel we see today, shaped by the Marshal of France, Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban, one of the greatest military engineers of all time, and one of the major figures of the Sun King period.

Impossible not to make a stop and visit the center of the Citadelle Vauban, bustling with stores and clubs, with its bridges, its steep
gargouille,
where water flows through the center of the paving made of hollowed-out stone blocks.

From the 1,326 meters of the fortified fortress, you can set off again in the direction of Montgenèvre Pass , with its 1,850 meters last climb of the Tour and return to Italy via Clavière and Cesana Torinese.

We propose to bikers the return via the Val Clarée and the Colle della Scala

Leaving Briançon after a couple of km, turn left into the Val Clarée, crossing in a long falsopiano the villages of Val des Pres and Plampinet, before Nevache (which is worth a visit) turn right and climb up to 1,762 m. of the Colle della Scala, the lowest pass between Italy and France. We travel a few kilometers of a very green plateau in a magnificent valley surrounded by dolomite spires, then literally plunge downhill into the beautiful Valle Stretta and through the hamlet of Melezet to reach Bardonecchia.

We then return to Susa along the Monginevro State Highway, the advice is to take it at your own pace, passing through the villages of Salbertrand, Exilles in the shadow of its majestic Fort, naturally at a walking pace.