Col de Menté - Saint Béat

Un "mur" de 9 kms à 9% de moyenne! Les 2 premiers kms sont hards (10 et 11%), un court répit avant Boutx et çà repart de plus belle sur des lignes droite à 11% jusqu''au 7eme km où l''arrivée de lacets serrés permet de relancer un peu avant la dernière ligne droite très raide jusqu''au col de Mente. Très très difficile! Ne pas s''asphyxier d''entrée car même courte, la montée est sans pitié!

My personal climb rating:

Steady climb but at a very difficult gradient! Rarely able to/ wanted to leave lowest gear. Immediately ramps up as soon as leaving St Beat. Very hot, with little shade, enough that tarmac on the hairpins was melting. At about 2/3 of the climb hairpins begin, found this to be a bit easier than a constant climb – use the width of the hairpins to reduce the gradient. Wooded area towards the top indicate not long left to go! Difficult to see much of where you have gone or where you are going for most of the climb. Nice area at the summit with a restaurant, large parking area. Monument to the cyclist Serge Lapebie at the top of the col. Descent was great for our first real technical descent. Steep with series of tight hairpins with straight sections between. Very quiet so largely able to use the width of the road. Reserve some energy as you go descend as you come across a couple of fairly significant climbs! Support campervan brakes were smoking considerably at the bottom of the descent.

My personal climb rating:

After three days and seven big cols in my legs, I camped at St Beat, with the sounds of the annual fete and disco ringing in my ears. Each night I watched the sun creep down behind the grand mountains, my ride having brought me from London to here. My final day in the Pyrenees would take Menté and Portet dAspet. Menté is the unglamourous climb on paper; the maps show a thin white road, winding like a coil away from the Luchon valley. And it did nothing but make me feel glorious. Menté was MY climb. I saw nobody, a warm Saturday morning, and it began one of the finest bicycle rides of my life. Its roadsides are nature reserves, with every colour of butterfly, every kind of lizard, and the constant scent of wild flowers and herbs. The top: some dustbins, a lamp-post. It is more like a Himalayan pass than a cycling Col, and it is wild. When those early tours came through, Octave Lapize, Henri Pelissier et al, they were more like pilgrims and explorers. Col de Menté, for me, was the epitome of that age. Go, not to tell your cycling clubmates that you knocked off the Big Climbs, but to find the gems that people never thought to care for.

My personal climb rating: