Tour des Glaciers de la Vanoise 2024: three passes above 2,500 metres#
The Tour des Glaciers de la Vanoise does exactly what its name promises: it circles the largest ice cap in the French Alps. The long format, around 59 kilometres for 3,000 metres of climbing, completes in a single day an itinerary that walkers normally cover in three or four stages, hut to hut.
That is what makes this race unusual. You are not running on trail-running paths: you are running a high-mountain tour.
Two things make it a memory apart for me. The first is that I ran it nine days after finishing the Race Across France 2500, 2,505 kilometres and 31,727 metres of climbing by bike between Lille and Mandelieu. The second is that I was not there for myself.
Pralognan, 6 am#
Start on Sunday 7 July 2024, at six in the morning, from Pralognan-la-Vanoise. The day begins at 1,412 metres and will end in the same place, after crossing 2,500 metres three times.
The first pass comes quickly: the Col de la Vanoise, at 2,522 metres, beneath the Grande Casse. It is one of the busiest crossings in the Alps in summer, and at six in the morning it is empty.
The Arpont balcony, then the Col d’Aussois#
From there the route tips south and follows the Arpont slope above the Maurienne, on balcony paths facing the glaciers. It is the longest and most runnable part, runnable in the high-mountain sense: you run little, you jog a lot, you walk as soon as it steepens.
It was there, at halfway, that I filled my flasks straight from a torrent. I felt like Dawa Sherpa drinking from his river at the Trail de la Côte Roannaise, six weeks earlier. There are worse role models.
Then comes the centrepiece of the day: the Col d’Aussois, 2,917 metres on my watch. It is the high point of the race, and the place where you understand this is no longer really running. At that altitude, on that ground, the notion of pace disappears, you move forward, that is all.
The third pass is the Col de Chavière, 2,796 metres, one of the highest walking passes in the French Alps and the last barrier before the return to Pralognan.
The numbers#
58.2 kilometres, 3,071 metres of climbing, between 1,412 and 2,917 metres of altitude. 8 hours 04 moving for 8 hours 28 of racing, twenty-four minutes stopped across the day, which, over three high-mountain passes, is close to negligent.
An average of 154 bpm, 5,464 calories. An average speed of 6.9 kilometres per hour, which obviously means nothing in isolation: on this kind of terrain, instantaneous speed swings from fifteen kilometres per hour on the descents to three on the climbs, and the average tells you nothing.
Trying to keep up#
Here is the real story of this day: I was not running for myself.
Somebody close to me was on the start line, and I had set myself a single idea, to try to keep up with her. Nobody had asked me to and it was no role anyone had given me: it was my own objective. It turned out to be far more ambitious than I had imagined.
I managed it, with very, very great difficulty.
The context did not help. Nine days earlier I had finished 2,505 kilometres by bike with 31,727 metres of climbing, after eight days of racing between Lille and Mandelieu. You do not recover from something like that in nine days, and certainly not enough to link three high-mountain passes on foot. My legs knew it from the Col de la Vanoise onwards.
She finished third woman.
Running in the high mountains#
What stays with me from this day is the gap between what you are doing and where you are doing it.
The Vanoise, Aussois and Chavière passes are alpine walking routes. You normally cross them with a three-day pack, you sleep in huts, you take your time, you stop to look at the glaciers. Linking all three between dawn and mid-afternoon, with a hydration bladder and two bars, is a fairly brutal way to see the mountains, and paradoxically, a way to see far more of them in a single day.
My placing has no importance whatsoever and it was never the point. It is one of the rare race days where I did not look at it once. I took enormous pleasure from that route, on terrain that is not my discipline, with legs that had no business being there.
Some races you win. This one I simply followed, and it is among the ones I remember best.
Photo credits#
The photographs illustrating this account come from Wikimedia Commons and have been resized for the web. They remain under their original licence.
- Centre de Pralognan-la-Vanoise, Florian Pépellin, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Glacier de la Grande Casse: Rémih, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Bouquetins sous le col d’Aussois, Ibex73, CC BY-SA 4.0