Bikepacking in Torino–Nice Rally route

The Torino–Nice route links the high dirt passes of the western Alps — many of them military roads graded into the mountains by the Italian army a century ago — into a single line that begins in Turin and ends, improbably, by descending to the Mediterranean at Nice. Around seven hundred kilometres and fifteen thousand metres of climbing, most of it on gravel.

It is self-supported and genuinely hard: you carry your kit, sleep where you can, and grind up long unpaved cols for the reward of an alpine descent on the far side. The particular pleasure of it is the arc of the thing — from industrial Piedmont, through the emptiest corners of the Maritime Alps, to swimming in the sea in your cycling shorts at the finish.

The high passes hold snow into early summer, so the window is roughly June to September. Note that the rally itself is a separate annual departure; the route is simply there to ride whenever you like.

High passes hold snow into early summer. It's a route, not an organised event — the rally itself is a separate annual thing.