Delete comment from: Dark Roasted Blend
The road between Villard Notre Dame and Villard Reymond in the French Alps west of Grenoble and south of Vizille is the scariest road I have ever driven, period, and I have driven some very scary mountain roads (to say nothing of driving over a bridge in Costa Rica that we had to help repair in order to get over it).
Just getting up to Villard Notre Dame was hair-raising, with a poorly-maintained, dark, rock-strewn tunnel. The death road itself hadn't been maintained in years, and there was at least one place where I know our right-side tires were not 100% on the roadway, and there was at least--at least!--at thousand-foot sheer drop to our right. But we couldn't back up, couldn't turn around, could only press forward hoping that the road would not get any narrower because of rockslides & all. Had there been, we would have had to hire some kind of heavy-duty helicopter to airlift our car to a safe place. Or abandon it forever.
The moral is, if you arrive at a road with gated entrance, and there's a sign there stating "if you take this road, your auto insurance is not applicable," you should really, truly take a different route, no matter how much you hate the thought of back-tracking.
Sep 2, 2007, 10:58:00 AM
Posted to Dangerous Roads of the World, Part 4