Cluses

4:58 / 49 miles / 6,630 ft. Near Saint Gervais-Les-Bains, France. Boris and Karine have the quietest family. Lisa and I slept in the open loft above the kitchen, and Karine and the two boys were up about 6:30 eating breakfast and getting ready for school. I think they left about 7:30, but we didn’t hear a peep and slept in until about 8:00. They left us everything we needed for breakfast including some fresh apricot juice from a near by orchard. Boris came back to the house a bit before 9 AM and we chatted with him for quite a while. As we were loading our bikes and lubing our chains, Boris was cleaning both my bike and Lisa‘s bike, this was SO nice! We always find it hard to leave our Warmshower hosts when we have made such a nice connection. We knew we were going to have a beautiful day ahead, but also some tough climbing. We had a nice 5 mile warm-up through the valley, and then we hit our first climb of the day which was 6.2 miles of an average gradient of 10.2%.😵‍💫 The Col de la Forclaz. It’s always fun looking back at the valley below to see how high we have climbed. We felt we were being cheered on by the cows and their bells as we climbed through the crisp mountain air toward the sunny sky. At the pass we took a rest in a grassy field, and absorbed some sunshine. After our break, there was a 4 mile descent which led into our second climb of the day. Col des Montets was 4.7 miles long with an average gradient of 4.7%. Near the top of the col we could see the snowcapped peaks of some of the higher mountains in the Alps, and Mont Blanc, the highest peak of the Alps. From the pass we cruised down to the touristic town of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc. We decided to put on our casual shoes and take a stroll through the city center and grabbed some supplies for a picnic. We found a place in the sun where we could see the glaciers of Mont Blanc. This was Lisa’s first time seeing a glacier. After lunch, we continued onward with the stunning view of the glaciers on our left side. We never tire of the sites of the Alps; old churches, Alpine houses, cows, farms, sharp mountains, cold streams, villages in the valleys and high on the mountain sides,and too much to capture in writing or pictures. Again, we ended the day with about a 2 mile climb to our cute Airbnb on the mountain side. We made baked potatoes in the microwave for dinner and topped them with fresh olives and some various cheeses. I was thinking it would be funny for me to make a cookbook for bicycle touring. Also, some type of shopping list for when you get to a grocery store and you are a tired and hungry cyclist.Read more