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225

L’Etape du Tour de France

The Wheels on the Bike Go Round & Round

France

Your legs feel like someone poured gasoline on them and lit a match. Each breath you take gives you half the oxygen you need, and your heart is pounding in your throat. No, you’re not in the emergency room—not yet, anyway. You volunteered and paid good money to ride in L’Etape du Tour (one stage of the famous Tour de France bicycle race), and like so many others around you, you’re now wondering if you don’t have some kind of a masochistic edge, if not an all-out death wish. Up ahead you see a fellow rider bloodied and broken like roadkill on the side of the highway, surrounded by medics with worried looks on their faces. But for the grace of God . . .

Each year, organizers of L’Etape du Tour pick one stage of the actual Tour de France and make a one-day race of it—one long, hellish day of heaving up the mountain passes of the Pyrenees or the French Alps, where grueling climbs of more than 2,100m (nearly 7,000 ft.) are commonplace. Downhills, while a welcome respite, aren’t exactly risk free either; groups of riders ripping around curves at high speeds have almost no margin for error, and one slip-up can wipe out 20 cyclists or more.

Signing up for L’Etape should be done months in advance, and of course training should begin at least a year before the actual event. The well-organized ride has plenty of van support and medical teams to assist fallen riders. Expect plenty of company on the ride; each year over 8,000 riders enter this event. The course changes each year, but is generally about 161km (100 miles) long more or less, and some courses can have a total of 3,000m (10,000 ft.) of climbing. Though the weather in July can be pleasant, freezing weather and mountaintop hailstorms can destroy the resolve of even the hardiest bikers. But the hundreds of onlookers cheering riders to the finish can restore the adrenaline of beleaguered bicyclists, and at the end of the ride—assuming you make it—there’s plenty of free wine and cold beer. Bon courage! —ML

L’Etape du Tour ( 33/1/41-331-468;www.letapedutour.com).

When to Go: July.

226

Maah Daah Hey Trail

Going Maah Way?

Medora, North Dakota, U.S.A.

One hundred miles of spectacular Badlands scenery, endless skies, frequent wildlife sightings, and some of the best and most challenging mountain biking terrain anywhere (yes, including even Moab, Utah [see ])—yet amazingly, even some avid bikers have never even heard of the Maah Daah Hey Trail in North Dakota. That’s changing fast, however, now that the ride has been granted Epic status by the International Mountain Biking Association.

The Maah Daah Hey Trail is cobbled together from a number of different landowners, including the Little Missouri National Grasslands, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, state-owned land, and private property. The trail head is found in Sully Creek State Recreation Area near Medora; from there, the narrow single-track trail travels northward to the U.S. Forest Service’s CCC Campground near Watford City. Most tour operators leave from Bismark or from the Dakota Cyclery (www.dakotacyclery.com) in Medora, which is also an ideal place to pick up maps and check current trail conditions.

It’s not called the Badlands for nothing, and bikers should be prepared for extreme conditions. Water is scarce, so bring extra and use water filters to make safe what little water is available on the trail. Rainy weather turns the trail to mud—the thick, heavy kind that sticks to shoes and tires. And with plenty of cactus around, there’s no shortage of sharp needles to puncture tires, so consider investing in a good-quality patch kit as well as extra inner tubes. One extra note of caution: There are cattle all along this trail, so watch out for cow chips.

A biker rides along the Maah Daah Hey Trail.

Though the trail is long, one need not conquer its entire length to experience the rugged beauty of this region—though you may be tempted to go the distance, given the dramatic landscape and the frequent encounters with wildlife such