Col de Joux Plane – APASSION https://www.apassion.com Live life with APASSION Wed, 13 Aug 2025 08:47:27 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://www.apassion.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/cropped-Mountain-Motif-Grey-32x32.jpeg Col de Joux Plane – APASSION https://www.apassion.com 32 32 Tour de France Femme hits Samoëns https://www.apassion.com/tour-de-france-femme-hits-samoens/ Wed, 13 Aug 2025 06:12:55 +0000 https://www.apassion.com/?p=11051

Bravo Pauline!

What a treat to be able to witness the Tour de France Femme take-on the challenge of the Col de Joux Plane. Starting from the village of Samoëns the ascent combines a total elevation gain of nearly 1,000m with an average gradient of 9% and was described by Lucien Van Impe (5 times winner of the Tour de France mountain jersey) as one of the toughest climbs in France.
 
With over a week of racing already in their legs the ladies of the TdF Femme seemed to make light-work of the heat and gruelling ascent en-route to the race finish in Châtel. 
 
Whist  Anna van der Breggen won the race to the 1691m summit of the Joux-Plane with a 45 second lead over the peloton, the day was really only about one lady; The incredible Pauline Ferrand-Prévot who doubled down on her stage win of the day before to win both her second stage of the 2025 Tour but also to extend her overall lead and become the first French winner of the ladies edition of the TdF in over 30 years! Bravo Pauline! 
]]> First Ski de Fond of 2024! https://www.apassion.com/ski-de-fond-2024/ Wed, 14 Feb 2024 17:40:04 +0000 https://www.apassion.com/?p=10238

Back to basics after a year since our last outing so we drove up to Le Col de Joux Plane to start on the gentle nursery slopes and whilst it looks pretty flat we soon worked-up a sweat getting back into the ski de fond / Nordic skiing technique! 

Considering it was mid-February we had the slopes largely to ourselves and after an hour and not many kilometres we found a snowy hill for a perfectly peaceful picnic lunch stop!  

Why not give something different a try on your next trip to the Alps!

 

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