Warrick catatonic on Mont Ventoux
SEPT 2008
My ride of Mont Ventoux was on a whim and turned into an epic. As we had just spent 4 days riding from Chamonix to Nice and was on the return drive back when we decided to detour to Ventoux for a quick spin to the top and back down. Nothing was going to stop us, even with the Mistral blowing a gale. Or that it was 6pm and still had to drive to Annecy in the Alps after.
Got changed in the van and headed on up, seemed quite pleasant up the hidden valley, even if it was quite steep and consistant we felt good, climbing well. It was once we got out in the open and bore the Force of the wind we realized this may be interesting, got colder and wetter, stopped at the Tom Simpson memorial to put everything we had on, Sam nearly lost his bike as it started blowing off the mountain. Visibility was down to your handlebars and the wind was shearing off the mountain, so one moment you could be pushed up the road, next instant on the drops giving it 100% in first gear just trying to stay on the bike, maybe the zipp 404's were not a good idea, had nothing else to use though. Lost Sam in the mist so even though I was in front he got to the top first as I turned on the lower road, had to walk the last 50 meters as the wind was to strong to ride.
Took some shelter and snapped some pics of us, a road sign and nothing much else. We where freezing and had to get down which was even scarier than the climb, really feared for my life as I could not feel my hands and had the shakes as well as the wind was slamming us all over the place, at one point even got blown backwards, bike lifted off the road with me on it. Once back into the trees it was not much better as the road is steep and had no feeling in hands, so in an attempt to get some heat into hands I would gain speed and then stop as fast as I could, jump off and put my hands either side of the carbon rims as the friction heats the rims. Did this all the way down.
When we got to the bottom the Ambulance was just leaving the last harpin where a cyclist we had seen descending when we were climbing had crashed. And it was sunny at that point.
Would I do it again, hell yeah as long as the weather was better.
Still only took 1 ½ hours up and back down.
