• Homepage
• News
• Forum
• Introducing...
• Features
• About the club
• 2008 Activities
• Club Run
• Road Racing
• Time Trialling
• Cyclosportif
• Membership
• Coaching

Mont Salève

Club member Ian Collins recently moved to Geneva. Since then, he's ridden some of the sport's greatest routes. Here Ian writes about the closest climb to his house, Mont Salève.

The weather in Switzerland so far has been pretty mild, although October saw torrential rain almost every day. However, I thought I’d take advantage of one rain-free Sunday to climb the local mountain, Mont Salève, which dominates the view on one side of Geneva and which I can see from my house. There are about 5 or 6 ways up but one route seems to me to be by far the hardest. It’s not long – only about 7 or 8 kms – but the gradients seem very steep. I’m not lying when I say I found Alpe d’Huez easier, even though you are only climbing up to 1350m or so from 373m.

This climb has become a bit of an obsession with me and in the three months I’ve been here, I must have climbed it about 6 times, though I don’t seem to be getting any faster.

This one particular time, it had started to rain as I went up and the wind became pretty ferocious and cold in the last third of the climb. I was very pleased to make it to the top and happily descended down one side with the intention of climbing back up it again using a different route, having ridden round the base of the mountain. All things were going well and I started climbing back up along a relatively mild gradient. This way up is a little longer at about 10 or 11km but takes you through lush forest. In good weather it is a pleasure. Unfortunately, the rain and the wind had started to give way to heavy snow by the time I was three quarters to the top. I had normal bib-shorts on with leg warmers, a racing jersey and arm warmers and a lightweight showerproof jacket over the top. Thankfully I’d put my overshoes on but leaving a warm pair of waterproof gloves at home was a big mistake. Visibility was down to about 2 metres, the snow was swirling and my fingers had frozen to the handlebars. I got to the top and started a relatively gentle descent towards a hotel and bar which marks the point at which the gradient steepens, leaving me with a very fast descent down the way I had originally come. By this time the road was completely white and indistinguishable from the fields next to it, as well as very slippery. I was shaking with cold and increasingly unable to pull my brake levers. I thought about stopping but there was nowhere to shelter and I would only have ended up getting colder.

Thankfully I reached the hotel and bar in one piece but decided it was impossible to go on – certainly there was no way I was going to finish the descent in one piece if I didn’t get my fingers working again. The hotel was actually closed but mercifully the proprietors were having their lunch in the bar and I asked them if I could stay there for a bit to warm up. Fortified by a hot, sweet espresso, I decided to call the wife for immediate rescue. Within 40 minutes she was with me, though bizarrely suggested I should just leave my bike there while I got in the warm car and drove home (she really should get her priorities right). After struggling even to get the quick release levers undone, I did manage to fit the bike in the car and shook violently all the way home before a long hot shower. Lesson very well learnt – do not take chances with the weather in the mountains and certainly have enough back-up clothing if you insist riding up them outside the summer months...(or even in the summer months as I understand it is certainly not impossible for there to be snow in July and August).

To cap it all I was very nearly finished off the next night when I got locked out of the house after an evening run and had to sit on the doorstep for 90 minutes in the very cold wearing just running kit.