The Radavist

“We have four kilometers to go with six hundred meters of climbing.” “Well, we can always walk.”

Self-named French “Team Tourist” is sitting cross-legged on a patch of gravel. Regardless of the weather or terrain, Mathias, Sophie, and Elise are smiling and calm, ready to take on anything.

Rue finds a tick behind her knee and Sophie lends us a tiny pair of plastic pliers to get it out. Then, she gives them to us as a gift.

“My hope is that we’ll all regroup here.”

Gaby’s phone rings.

“Okay. Well, that sounds like a good plan. How much is it? Okay. That’ll work.”

It’s day one and Sami is onto her second e-bike of the trip. She burned through the first one near Samoëns. She’s getting ahead and shooting from behind to make a video about our trip. E-bikes are incredible tools for media projects. Ali, the local expert, took her to a bike shop there to see if they could get a new battery and they said for some reason, it was so fried it wouldn’t charge. Instead, she’ll rent a new one with bigger tires, more suspension, and better brakes. With one camera enclosed in a scuba diving protective case, another strapped to a carabiner on her waist, a full backpack, and a drone in her hip pack, she looks like Lara Croft. On the new rig, she’s ready to rip.

A historical route and tourist attraction, the Route des Grandes Alpes allows one to cross the French Alps from Thonon-les-Bains (North) to Nice (South) via the most important mountain passes featured in the Tour de France: Cormet de Roselend, Iseran, Galibier, Izoard or even La Bonnette. On paper, it is a bit like the best-of of the Alps in one week, akind of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela for cyclists. Something that makes cyclists all over the world dream and that the French have within reach, but the grass is always greener… Thus, among the fifty or so cyclists with whom we ride regularly in Paris, no one had “ticked” the box off this crossing, whose starting point is only four and a half hours by train from the capital. L’Amicale Cycliste (the name of our crew) had to set an example, but not in any which way: we decided to attempt it when the passes opened, i.e. just after the last snowplow passages that open these closed roads all winter and push the valleys into a summer as sudden as it is temporary.

The Mountain Plays Burzum
Words and Photos by Cani Sciolti Valtellina

“Hey, whenever I look at your Tumblr or Flickr I envy you so much…”

This is the same old sentence that comes out from the mouth of my Tuscany friend Fano every time we meet. That’s because we can easily open the door and ride on the Alps, where we live, and where the history (and the present) of cycling has been written in sweat, tears, pain, joy and suffering. To ride the Alps are probably one of any cyclists’ biggest dream. Or at least it was Fano’s…

Enter day 05 of nothing but Alpine mountain biking with Mission Workshop. My body is still sore, almost a week later and all I can think about is how much fun we all had. The morning was cold, damp and silent, save for the cow bells that somehow echoed through the valley all night, barely being muted by the drunken Swiss wine-tasting party that erupted outside my open hotel window.

Lyle and I awoke at 7am and ate breakfast with Stefan (owner of Stilrad Zurich) and Alberto. 7:30am we rolled out into the misty mountains. From the onset, today was supposed to be quite easy, with a few technical sections and one nasty, nasty climb. At this point, the extra rain clothes and merino base layers I brought became a burden. Every ounce of extra weight in my backpack seemed to pull me back down each climb. Not to mention the 5Dmkii and 24-70mm lens… But hey, that’s my job right?

We made it out just fine, save for a few spills, a few flats and loose legs. All I could think of was drinking a sparkling water and a Radler… 30 miles and 4,000′ of climbing at altitude, on a MTB is no joke.

Check out more narrated photos in the Gallery!

Side note: I want to thank everyone who made this trip possible. Stefan, Alberto, Mission Workshop, Santa Cruz Bicycles and anyone else who helped us out along the way. THANK YOU!