To my dismay, the low battery warning on my power meter pedals did not go away! An examination of the details on the head unit indicated that while the left battery was fine, the right was low. My spare must have been defective! I had no more spares, so I made a note to get a replacement at the next bike shop we encountered on a weekday.
We started the morning with a swift descent down to the intersection where we had taken a left turn the day before in the car, and turned right instead. The moment I turned right I knew it was the right decision, as the descent followed the riverbed into a beautiful series of Canyons. Not for the first time on this trip did I think that I should have gotten an Insta 360 camera on the tandem and tried my hand at making videos even though I knew I did not have the patience for it.
At the bottom of the canyon we turned right and headed up towards Gulliestere, where a bottleneck in the road happened because some truck drivers had decided to take container trucks along these sharp corners and low tunnels that had a good chance of opening up the tops of their containers like a can opener.
I decided to go a little more aggressively and squeeze through the bottleneck along with some motorcycles and then stayed ahead down into Gulliestere where we took off our clothing to start the Vars climb.
Vars started steeply and was fully exposed without a lick of shade until we exited the farming areas and started up towards the ski resort. At that point, the long straightaways gave way to slightly tighter switchbacks that would stair step their way up various villages, each of which granted us an opportunity to refill water bottles or drench our cycling caps in water (or both). The latter provided much less relief than expected. I remember at one point in between my dipping my cap in water and Boen refilling his water bottle, my cap had dried to the point where there was no longer much cooling from evaporation.
The Napoleon Vars refuge was 100m from the summit in vertical elevation, and you could see the summit from the refuge. Mark had gone ahead, deciding he would make the summit that day before doubling back to the refuge. Boen and I made the refuge, where the owner told us the rooms would be ready after we’d had time to have lunch. Boen ordered the fish and chips, and ate it all, indicating how hungry he was. The car was already at the refuge, and Xiaoqin and Bowen were out hiking.
The nice thing about the Volvo EX30 is that the app enables you to unlock the car, so effectively those of us with the app could unlock the car (though the app obviously needed an internet connection to talk to the car), so we grabbed our luggage into our rooms and then took a shower and did laundry. After that we went for a short hike. There weren’t a lot of choices, either the lake loop that Xiaoqin and Bowen had done, but Arturo constructed an out and back that had the potential to be a loop if the lines on the map turned out to be connectors. That didn’t work, and despite being at 2000m, it was still quite hot. This was proving to be a record breaking heat wave, and I wasn’t looking forward to sleeping at a relatively low 1200m in Jausiers the next day. I remembered that Barcelonnette was even warmer so that was out of the question. With this kind of heat, a hiking break was out of the question if it was positioned as low as Barcelonnette.
Arturo, Mark and I did a hike that wasn't a duplicate of Xiaoqin and Bowen's. It didn't really lead anywhere but did lend us nice views of the surrounding mountains.
The evening’s dinner was outstanding. We would later compare it against the Rosenlaui meals as contending for the best meal of the trip. The half pension gave us a hearty beef stew that was both delicious and satisfying at the same time, making us the envy of cyclists who had arrived later without reservations (and therefore the option of the half pension). They pointed to what we had and we told them it was the half pension. They had started in Thonon-Les-Bains, the official start of the Route des Grandes Alpes, and were on a schedule and pace but the official route would do Col de la Cayolle instead of going over Col Lombarde. As usual, I’m quite constitutionally unable to follow any sort of “official route” written down by other people, preferring to customize my route to the weather, whims, and condition of people with me.
We went to bed happy that we didn’t have to get an early start the next day. We examined options in Jausiers and found apartments in the same complex within walking distance of restaurants. It was a short day to give us a break before tackling the highest pass of the entire trip, the Col de la Bonnette. In addition, the highest paved road in the French Alps, the Cime de la Bonnette was only an additional 200m of climbing, and we were going to need all the rest we could get.
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