This summer we (my family) are going further south in france for our camping trip and i am thinking of riding up Mt ventoux on my mtb so that i can ride back down again off road. Having been up there in the car before i think this might be possible, the offroad back down again bit.

Has anyone done this before? am i mad? is it going to be an unbearable slog up on my mtb with knobbly tires pumped up to a million psi?

Does anyone one know a route back down?

cheers

Iain

Hire a roadbike and do it properly up and down. Lycra optional.

Has anyone done this before? am i mad? is it going to be an unbearable slog up on my mtb with knobbly tires pumped up to a million psi?

Yup, many years ago my mate wanted to do it for his 40th.
We drove down and spent a week doing all the routes (some people do them all 24hrs) .
There are all shapes and sizes do it, plenty doing it on MTBs and tourers with triples.
I wouldn’t fancy it on knobblies.
As Eddie says, the main reason to do it on a proper road bike is so you can experience the full pain. Then, the next time it is used in Le Tour you can marvel at how quick the pro teams go up.
I made the mistake of forgetting to swap cassettes before we went, so ended up doing it on 39-23 .
Jeez that was hard. Stupidity of the young and all that.
Mind and keep an eye on the weather, it can change very quickly .
We had all sorts on our visit, from scorching to hailstones and lightning

Mont Ventoux: A Fourth Way Up (By Mountain Bike)

There’s a lovely gravel/off-road route up/down Ventoux. I’ve only ridden up this way on a drop-bar bike and downhill it wouldn’t be anything technical on an MTB, more fun than the tarmac options though.

cheers for the replies, i am liking the look of the Fourth way up Jameso posted, that way its only the final bit of tarmac on knobbly tyres!

i think i need to get a map so i can see if there is a more interesting way down and maybe on another day do as Eddiebaby says and hire a road bike, although is it against some road riding rule to ride a road bike with dmr vaults and 5-10’s? :o)

Certainly doable: people ride up on all sorts of things, and the first time I did it was on knobblies because that was all I had; took me 1h40 compared to the shabby 2h30 I took on a road bike 😀 but then I was nearly 20 years younger first time around…

To be honest, though, I’d only bother if you have a real urge to tick the box (especially since you’ve already seen the view from the top, and doubly especially if you’re going to be dragging MTB tyres up it): there’s arguably better riding nearby both on and (as far as I’m aware) off road. Not that there’s anything wrong with ticking the Ventoux box.

FWIW, if you’re going to do it once I’d do the Malaucène climb, it’s the most interesting. I wasn’t enamoured with the Bédoin ascent to be honest; Sault is kind of fun in that you can motor up it, although if you’re only doing one it’s borderline cheating 😉

Edit: the Route Forestière, as above, is of course the way to go with an MTB… was unaware of it when I took mine up there all those years ago.

I rode the Cingles last June, what a fantastic day that was, my best ever on a bike.

Not sure I would particularly want to do even one ascent on an MTB but each to their own. There were 5,000 Belgians doing a sportive on the day I was riding and they were on all sorts of BSO’s with one guy even riding/stepping on an elliptic (sp.?) bike.

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I'm not a religious man but there was something special about the beams of sun over Ventoux at 07:30 on Saturday #ventouxfivezero #ventoux #montventoux #1909metres #ciclismo #stravacycling #outsideisfree #dropbarsnotbombs #cyclinglife #lifebehindbars #cinglesdeventoux #cinglesduventoux #cingles

A post shared by Richard Sear (@ralph_e_rogers) on Jun 26, 2018 at 2:16pm PDT

The off road route that I used went from N of Bedoin onto the GR91 then branched off to Les Graviers Blanc and just climbed from there to Chalet Reynard, then road for the the last bit.  Much better than MTBing all the way up the road, but it’s a long slog still.

Downhill I picked up the trail opposite Chalet Reynard.

Not massively technical but I’m pretty sure there are alternative ways down that would be trickier.

I got the GPS track from the Uttagawa website, lots of other routes in  the area on there too!

https://www.strava.com/activities/873647465

i’m down there at the moment and hoping to get a chance to do it again next week 🙂