Oisans: The 21 Hairpins of Alpe d'Huez and the Meije Glaciers

Required Activities

• Cycle the 13.8 km from Le Bourg-d'Oisans to Alpe d'Huez, 1,090 m of climbing at 7.9 per cent on average with 8 to 9 per cent between the bends, and count the 21 hairpins down from 21 to 1 — the signs began as snow-plough markers and now carry the stage winners' names

• Time your own ascent and set it against the record, Tadej Pogačar's 35 minutes 27 seconds in 2026, against Marco Pantani's 36 minutes 40 seconds that stood from 1995, and against Coppi's 45 minutes 22 seconds in 1952

• Ride the Grandes-Rousses and Pic Blanc cable cars up the three stages — 2,100 m, 2,700 m and 3,330 m — to the top of the Alpe d'Huez ski area, and from the Pic Blanc pick out the Sarenne glacier below you and the line the Col de Sarenne road takes back down

• Walk out to Brandes above the resort, the silver-mining town that lived here from the late 11th century to the 14th — a site the excavators call unique in Europe, dug by the CNRS every year since 1977 — and pick out the fortified house, the church and the miners' workings that ran from the Sarenne valley up to the Lac Blanc

• Ride or drive over the Col de Sarenne, at 1,999m, for the view over the Oisans to the glaciers of the Meije