SNOW JOKE

In the hours before the race passed on my first ever Tour de France mountain stage in 2015, my mind was mainly fixated on the snow on the mountains in the distance, fantasising and planning ski touring lines. Mont Blanc, Europe’s highest mountain which a friend and I had summited a few days prior, was visible to the north, its many glaciers that pour towards the valley floor reflecting a pristine magnificence.

With those happy times forever etched in my memory, it’s been utterly heartwrenching that this year’s Tour has played out against a backdrop of snowless mountains, and the hulking great glacial masses