A couple of weeks ago we ran our 10th anniversary Etape du Tour support package, as usual these days, in the Alps. Also as usual, a lot of the same characters that come back for this one every year joined us. We did welcome a few newbies, though, which is always nice (and rare) on our big tours.

I’ve talked about the mad rush to get accommodation sorted when the route is announced in October, and this year was no different. I managed to find a great chalet that takes the new ‘Col de l’Hotel’ prize to new heights – to get back home after any meaningful ride was a 9km climb that fluctuated between 7% and 9%.

But it had great views, lots of bedrooms, bike storage and a big kitchen for Chef Becky to work her magic for us the entire week most of us were there.

Above are photos of our arrival, the shake-out ride, and race day. Below is the rest of the week (we try to always have an Extension Tour), where we had half our contingent stay on (7 riders). We climbed one of the longest and easiest climbs in the Alps – Col du Petit Saint Bernard – which is actually not petit at all, but is a pedestrian 4%-5% pretty much the whole way up to the top…and the border of Italy. The next day we had an easier ride through the high-altitude villages of the Tarentaise Valley, a ‘rest day’ except for the Col de l’Hotel, of course.

On our final day we rode down to Courchevel to watch the Col de la Loze stage of the Tour de France. I can’t speak for John, who helped out this week, but I was full of stress and apprehension of this day. If you’ve ever attempted to watch the Tour on a mountain you might understand why, but when you’ve got to get 9 people up and out without incident (and back for dinner), it’s that much more of a headache.

But we did our homework and, as La Canadienne said about PFP in the comments of my last blog article, it wasn’t our first rodeo. I won’t bore you with all the details, but we found a spot in a very small village that had a public bathroom, a water fountain, a small store, shelter from the rain that may or may not come, and two villagers who John befriended and happened to have some homemade liquor they wanted to share. One of them had a daughter who was the girlfriend of EF rider Alex Baudin (you can see her behind the Savoie flask in one of the pics below), who she actually got to stop and kiss her on the way up – usually something that receives a fine, but she said there were no cameras around, so all was good…although she did say the kiss was salty.

And we were high enough that we saw the riders good and exploded all over the mountain, but not too high that we were stuck in a traffic jam on the way out. One of our clients said that he’s not sure he wants to see another stage live because he’s afraid it wouldn’t live up to that day.

I will freely admit that the Etape du Tour package takes the most work of any type of tour that we run, mainly because you start from scratch each year and you are competing with 15,000 other people for accommodation. But it’s also one of the most rewarding and because it’s in a different area every year, you really get to know the Alps after a decade…and the Alpine chefs – Becky cooked for us before Covid in an adjacent valley!