The Semnoz

The Col du Semnoz - not one of the Tour's well known climbs. Perhaps thats because its never been raced until this year's Tour de France! There a number of ways up to the Semnoz. The most spectacular, I think, is from the Cret de Chatillion and the Col des Leschaux. Thats the way I descended - its quite a narrow road with some great hairpins. The road has a reputation for having a poor road surface, but when I descended lots of it had been resurfaced. Perhaps the Tour will be using it in future on the way to a stage finish in Annecy?

This year, the Tour ascended the Semnoz from Quintal, but I started in Annecy which joins the Quintal road about halfway up. The climb from Annecy is 16km at 7.1% and is quite similar to the Malaucene side of the Ventoux, albeit 4kms shorter. The 7.1% average makes the climb sound a bit easier than it is. There's a 3km stretch about a third of the way up that is only 3.2% - which after 5kms of 7% felt like it was dead flat! My time for the 16kms was 1hr 11mins.




The climb - like the Ventoux - is in three parts. The first section out of Annecy is stacked full of hairpins. The road winds its way out of Annecy past the hospital and then into the woods. You dont get out of the woods until you hit the 3kms of false flat. Its all pretty sheltered here and very quiet. I didnt see any other cyclists, or that many cars for that matter, on this section. After the false flat then its onto the hardest stretch. From the Quintal junction its 7.5kms at 8.6% - not too dissimilar to the forest section on the Ventoux from Bedoin. The big difference though is the road surface. The road is really quite wide and has an excellent road surface. In addition, all the way up are kilometer signs with gradient information.

One thing to remember though is that this ascent is on the north face, which means its cold. At the top, my Garmin was reading 6 degrees and my feet were freezing. Most of the ascent is in woodland, so it is sheltered from the wind. Its not until you reach the ski station with 1.5kms to go that you come out into the open and hit the wind as you come over the top and round the corner to the summit. There's a restaurant at the top as well as a finish line to show you've got to the top.

There was still a fair amount of Tour de France graffiti on the climb, and I spent a lot of time trying to work out where these mountain bikers jumped over Chris Froome during the Tour de France. Despite looking, I never saw the landing ramp they used.



The view from the top was a bit of a disappointment: there was so much cloud around that you couldnt see anything. I dont even know if you can see Lake Annecy from the summit.


Selfie on the Semnoz: nice if you like clouds.

The descent was pretty cool: fairly fast but technical - descending straight back to Annecy would have been very fast and much easier. If the roads werent so wet and I wasnt so cold it would have been much better. Pretty much though its 24kms downhill to St Jorioz where you can get back on the excellent 'Piste Cyclable' and head back to Annecy, or, as I did, on to the Col de la Forclaz...