Section 2 of 7
Cols
Five passes, their altitudes and what each road had to do to get over them.
Read the section against the scale it belongs to
Altitudes IGN
Every piece in Cols sits somewhere on this line.
-
Start here
The Galibier Is a Road That Admits It Should Not Be There
The Col du Galibier sits at 2,642 metres in the Graian Alps, carrying a road that required a tunnel, a gallery and decades of repair to stay open. Every feature of the route — the hairpins, the avalanche shelters, the winter closure — is engineering's acknowledgement that the mountain resists passage.
-
Cols
2,764 Metres: The Iseran and What It Took to Pave It
At 2,764 metres (IGN), the Col de l'Iseran is the highest paved pass in the Alps.
Cols
The Croix de Fer Goes the Long Way Round
The pass at 2,067 metres is not the highest in the Savoyard repertoire, but it is among the most effortful to reach — not because of what it asks at the summit, but because of the ground it has to cover to get there.
Cols
The Télégraphe, Which Is Never the Point
The Col du Télégraphe sits at 1,566 metres and is almost universally treated as a corridor to somewhere else.
Cols
Petit Saint-Bernard: One Pass, Three Layers of Claims
A col at 2,188 metres that Romans, a medieval saint and a Carthaginian general have all been made to cross — not always with convincing evidence.
Located on the map
- 1Col du GalibierCols2,642 m
- 2Col de l'IseranCols2,764 m
- 3Col de la Croix de FerCols2,067 m
Altitudes IGN. Numbers correspond to the pins.
Where the section sits on the ground, at true coordinates.
Geometry: IGN / project map kit