The road to the summit happiness is never just about altitude,
it’s about attitude.
Les Montées 2025 gathered twenty-four riders chasing something beyond oxygen and asphalt. Two pelotons, one pulse. They climbed not just hills, but doubts, pain, and silencem, until suffering started to look a lot like grace.
Because up there, somewhere between heartbeat and horizon,
you realize the summit isn’t a place.
It’s a state of mind.
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The journey began in Milan, inside the beating heart of Alba Optics Clubhouse, where the air smelled of espresso, ambition, and something electric.
Welcomed by the ever-mythical Pier Giorgio, the Nomads assembled, not just as riders, but as fragments of the same restless constellation.
Each pair of eyes told a story : caffeine-fueled resolve, the quiet thrill of departure, the poetry of motion waiting to happen. Because from Milan to the mountains, it’s never just about distance.
It’s about the madness it takes to start.
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Bikes tuned, spirits dialed past reason, the convoy rolled out of Milan like a caravan of beautiful chaoss.
Steel, carbon, and caffeine humming in unison.
Ahead: the French Alps. The thin air. The promise of silence that only mountains can keep.
They aimed for Le Bourg-d’Oisans, a name that already hums like a myth, echoing with ghosts of heroes and the whisper of spinning chains.
Every kilometer pulled them deeper into that strange devotion only cyclists understand, where suffering becomes rhythm, and rhythm becomes prayer.
It wasn’t just a road trip. It was a slow-motion rebellion against gravity, against comfort, against everything that stays still.
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Alpe d’Huez
(1,860 MSL · 13.8 km · 1,071 m elevation gain)
The first climb felt untouched, raw, new, almost sacred.
Twenty-one hairpins, each one a question whispered by the mountain :
how much do you really want this?
The asphalt curled upward like a serpent of suffering and grace, wrapping around lungs that burned and hearts that refused to yield.
Every turn stripped away another layer of comfort, another illusion of control, until all that remained was motion, raw, rhythmic, unfiltered.
Somewhere between switchback seventeen and the sky, pain stopped being punishment and started to feel like truth.
Because on Alpe d’Huez, you don’t conquer the climb, you let it rewrite you.
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The Alpe d’Huez demanded rhythm, not speed. Patience, not pride.
Grit,but the quiet kind that doesn’t need to be seen.
The mountain stood still, vast and indifferent, listening only to the language of effort.
For many, this was where the noise of the world fell away, where the trip stopped being a story to tell and became something lived, raw and unfiltered.
Because somewhere between the switchbacks and the sky, each rider found a strange truth :
The climb doesn’t begin when you leave the ground, it begins when you finally let go.
Col du Galibier
( 2,642 MSL, 34.8 km, 1,245 m elevation gain)
The Galibier was where the soul of the ride finally stepped out from hiding.
The air grew thin, and the wind sliced clean through thought, leaving only instinct and breath.
Yet somehow, the higher they climbed, the lighter the faces became. Smiles cracked open under the weight of altitude, not in defiance, but in awe.
Every meter gained felt less like conquest and more like confession, a slow burn unveiling of what it means to keep going when nothing in you wants to.
The road coiled upward into cloud, into myth, into that strange place where pain turns luminous.
And at the summit, wrapped in mist and something that felt like grace, it was as if the world had folded in half, sky meeting earth,
exhaustion meeting peace.
For a moment, everyone stood at the edge of something infinite,
and realized the Galibier doesn’t just test the body, it weighs the soul, then lets it fly.
Here, courage met elevation.
Mont Ventoux
(1,909 MSL, 21.5 km, 1,610 m elevation gain)
They call it the Giant of Provence, and rightly so.
A mountain of bone and wind, Mont Ventoux doesn’t roar; it waits.
Its slopes are bare, lunar, and merciless, a place where even the strongest legs are brought to silence.
Up there, there are no trees, no shelter, no lies, just sun, stone, and the sound of your own resolve echoing back at you.The Nomads climbed into the void, each one peeled down to essence: one pedal stroke, one breath, one quiet promise not to stop.
Ventoux doesn’t care for glory; it’s not impressed by strength.
It listens instead for honesty, for the moment when a rider stops fighting the mountain and starts moving with it.
And somewhere near the summit, where the sky feels almost too close to touch,
the suffering turns translucent,and what remains is something raw, wordless, and free.
At the top, the view was nothing short of lunar — vast, silent, and infinite.
The Descent Home
After three summits, countless espressos, and unmeasurable memories, the road back felt lighter.
From Milan to the mountains and back again, Les Montées 2025 was more than a tour was a pilgrimage of endurance, community, and freedom on two wheels.
No medals. No podiums. Just the satisfaction of knowing that every meter climbed was earned, and every summit conquered together.
Until the next ride, Nomads.
#MachinaNomads #LesMontees2025 #AlbaOptics