(If you have not read the prologue, start here)
In the fourth week of my bicycle journey through France, I was based in Grenoble and riding in the Alps. Today was the day I would take on the biggest mountain pass of the trip: a 35km climb with 2,200m of elevation gain. The giant of the Alps, the Col du Galibier.
My younger companion Nikhil wanted a little warm-up, so I dropped him in a town before the start and drove on. I parked at the foot of the climb in Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne and unloaded the bike. I rolled out at eight in the morning. If it had been up to me, I would have started much earlier, while the air was cooler. But thanks to an evening shower the night before, I had slept well, and my body felt ready. I also had the confidence that if I went slowly enough, I could make it.
I had dreamed of the Col du Galibier for years. It is one of the great mountains that appears again and again in Tour de France broadcasts. In Japan or America, nowhere near my home lets me climb this much vertical gain all in one go. I wanted to trace that overwhelming ascent with my own legs. In fact, the original impulse behind planning this bicycle journey through France was the desire to climb in the Alps, and at the center of that desire was the Col du Galibier. Even within a four-week trip, this was a special day.
When I parked the car, several cyclists were taking bikes out of their own cars and putting them together. Ah, so all of you are going to Galibier too, I thought, feeling a sudden kinship. Me too! I have finally come this far. The feeling grew stronger: this really is a special place. Before long I exchanged a few words with one of them.
I left town, crossed the river, passed under the highway, and the climb began at once. Under the elevated road was a large piece of street art that seemed to say, Welcome to the Col du Galibier. A little farther on, a group of small children cheered from the roadside. Their own bicycles lay scattered nearby. I wondered whether one day they too would want to ride this road all the way to the end. It was the first time I had ever ridden while people cheered for me. With their voices at my back, I entered the enormous mountain.
Now, a word about the structure of Galibier. I started from Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, a town at the bottom of the valley. From there you first climb about 800m to the Col du Télégraphe. This is the appetizer. From the town below, you can see the radio tower at the top of that pass. From there you descend a little to the town of Valloire. Here the main course begins: another 1,200m of climbing to reach the Col du Galibier, 2,642m above sea level, set between snowy mountains. The air is thin, the climb severe. That is the turnaround point. Returning to Valloire is easy, but from there you still have a small climb of about 150m back up to the Col du Télégraphe. This is dessert. That three-course hospitality is what awaits cyclists here. Over the past few days, I had begun to feel that the Alps are mountains piled on top of mountains. You climb the lower mountain and come out onto a plateau; from there you climb the upper mountain before finally reaching the very top. That is what 2,600m means.
The appetizer road ran through the forest. Almost immediately I felt as if a switch in my head had been turned off. I stopped thinking about what lay ahead and simply turned the pedals. When you face something enormous, staring up at the whole of it does not move your body forward. You can only climb the place where you are, one step at a time. Each time I stopped to take a photograph, I also used the stop to keep my pace down. When I climbed Ventoux with Sacha, I learned that going slowly really does make things easier. On the Madeleine, I learned that signs announcing the remaining distance can keep me from emptying my mind. What I had learned there had become, today, a way of using my body.
There were many riders ahead of me and behind me. Silhouettes large and small climbed in a line along the road threading through the trees, like a procession of ants. Our speeds differed, but everyone was moving upward on the same slope.
From the very beginning I was using my easiest gear. Even so, whenever the climb kept going, my finger would unconsciously press the lever, hoping there might be one gear lower. Nothing changed. I would realize again that this was already the easiest gear I had, and feel a little disappointed.
At the top of the Col du Télégraphe, many people had gathered to take photographs. On an ordinary day, climbing this far would have been more than enough as the day’s goal. But today, this was only the end of the appetizer. After a short descent, the forest broke open and the view widened. Chalets stood across the plateau, and the beautiful town of Valloire appeared. In winter, it must become a ski resort. But the next climb had already begun right inside the town. Somewhere along the way, the number of cyclists who had been around me had thinned considerably. Many people had been aiming only for the Col du Télégraphe.
Past Valloire, I could see the road stretching far into the distance. Beyond the clear air, rock and snow stood sharply outlined, and no matter where I looked the mountains rose with overwhelming presence. It was beautiful, but the view was almost too open, because it showed me the road I still had to climb. The road traced the mountainside and continued to a height I did not want to believe. I am going all the way up there? I flinched, and still moved forward one step at a time at something like a jogging pace.
Gradually I became familiar with the people climbing at about the same speed. While I stopped for photographs, they would go ahead; when I started riding again, I would catch them. The same faces appeared again and again. Many were middle-aged women and men like me, all of us climbing slowly, desperately. We were not racing. Just seeing one another ahead or behind on the road told me I was not alone. By the single fact that we were aiming for this pass on this day, we were connected, passing and being passed as we moved through what seemed like eternity.
On Alpe d’Huez, words could not catch up with the scene before me, and tears simply came. On the Col du Galibier, as I climbed higher, even the space to stop and be moved gradually disappeared. Breath took up more and more space inside my body. From the mind that had been looking at the scenery, everything unnecessary fell away. Only inhaling and moving my legs remained.
The final few kilometers were truly desperate. I could already see the summit where people had gathered. And yet once it became visible, it seemed farther away than ever. Whether because the grade was steep or the air was thin, my body was reporting a different kind of suffering from before. At one point, I let my breathing slip for a bit, and lightheadedness rose up. Before the pedals, before anything else, I focused on keeping my breath going.
The finger that had tried to make the lightest gear still lighter, the backs of riders I had seen again and again from far away, the voices of the children along the road: all of it had led to this final climb. Emptying the mind did not mean feeling nothing. It meant not thinking about how much road remained, or how far I had already come, and repeating only the next breath and the next turn of the pedals.
The summit I finally reached was very narrow and crowded with people. From the other side, participants in an event were climbing up, and each arrival drew cheers. But what I felt inside was less a great joy than the relief of, at last, it is over. I was standing in a place I had dreamed of for so long. Even so, before I could savor that fact, my body was relieved that it no longer had to climb. What remained at the summit of my longing was not a sense of conquest, but the relief that I had kept breathing and made it this far.
When I turned around and began descending, the bicycle moved with astonishing speed. Even so, getting down to Valloire still took a substantial amount of time. As I descended, I wondered how I had possibly climbed such a long road. As the elevation dropped, I could feel the air growing warmer against my skin.
We had lunch in Valloire, with local beer and local sausage. Since coming to the Alps, partly because of the heat, I had found myself reaching for beer more often than wine.
Dessert after lunch was the climb back to the Col du Télégraphe. Short or not, it was hard on legs that had already decided they were descending. The lower elevation had also brought more heat. While I was taking a photograph on the way, one rider, perhaps thinking I was having trouble, asked if I was all right. Eventually I caught up with him, and we exchanged memories of climbing the Col du Galibier. He had gotten a flat partway up and done a major repair. Now that he mentioned it, his front and rear tires did not match. That he still did not give up seemed to say something about what makes this pass special.
I crossed the Col du Télégraphe, and from there it was all downhill to the parking lot. The road that had been cool in the forest in the morning grew heavier with heat the lower I descended. When I returned to the parking lot, the temperature had reached 38 degrees Celsius.
There I found the young cyclist I had spoken with that morning. We had met before heading into the mountain, and now, after each of us had finished our own long day, we met again and celebrated each other’s return. There was another cyclist whose pace had matched mine near the summit, and with whom I had ridden for a while. He and his wife had both made it to the top of the Col du Galibier. Hats off.
The people assembling bikes in the parking lot that morning, the children along the road, the riders moving in a line through the forest, the people I passed and was passed by again and again beyond Valloire, the man who repaired his puncture and kept climbing, the rider whose pace matched mine near the summit. With people whose names I did not know, I shared the time of the same mountain that day. Each person who had aimed for the pass climbed in their own way and came safely back down. What welcomed me on the Col du Galibier was not a glittering victory. It was the relief of a body that had kept breathing in thin air, and the quiet joy of returning to a community that existed for only one day.