Hi there!

We are Bert Evers (27) and Rolf Pruijsen (31), the authors of this site, both from The Netherlands. We know each other since the summer of 1997, when we met on a journey by bicycle through the Pyrenees from east to west. Since then we have become good friends and we have made several trips to races in our own country and Belgium. Moreover, we go every summer to the mountains to make a trip of at least 2 weeks. We do that with about 10 to 15 other persons, who are also completely crazy about cycling uphill. So far we have done the following: Pyrenees; from east to west (1997), French Alps; from north to south (1998), Swiss Alps (1999), Italian Alps/Dolomites (2000), North French Alps (2001). Before I met Rolf I did the French Alps from south to north (1996). Those trips were fully organized. That means that there is a cook, a mechanic and the luggage is transported by bus among other things. There is also supply of food, water and so on during the stage of that day. The only thing you have to do is cycle, eat and sleep (besides building up your tent every day and fatigue one or two times). Before we started to make those long trips and before we knew each other, we already cycled in the mountains, although that was not more than 1 or 2 mountains a day and the distances cycled were relatively short. In "normal" life Rolf is a mailman and I am becoming an officer in the army. At the moment I have the rank of ex-member of O.T.C. (Officers' Training Corps) with temporary rank below second lieutenant. But before I am really an officer, I have to complete a study at the Royal Dutch Military Academy .I have started in August 2001 and till now, I like it a lot. Rolf is spending almost all his time at sporting. Before he starts cycling in spring, he is running fanatically. Furthermore he is doing fitness and some mountain biking. For me cycling is almost the only sport I do in my private time. In winter I train a lot on a roller (Tacx). At the Academy, I also do some fitness and I swim on a regular basis. Yes.....I am interested in other things then sport too! I am very interested in computers and the internet. I like to spend time maintaining this site and to read magazines about computers and software. The last two years I have spent a lot of time understanding UNIX/Linux a bit. Moreover I am interested in politics and economics (I have studied economics at the University of Amsterdam). Of course I like it to drink a beer once a while and to go to see a movie. ;-) Why did we set up this site? Well, it started with a time trial at the Passo dello Stelvio (from Prato) during our trip through the Swiss Alps. Rolf came up with the idea to publish them on the internet and since he did not have the knowledge to do that himself, I did it. So first there was only one table with the times of the participants. After that I added some background information, profiles and so on. At a certain moment we got the idea to set up a table with all the mountains we cycled in the past. It seemed interesting to us to order them from most difficult one to the easiest one. Of course that is subject to a lot of discussion, but our method gives at least a good indication. During the last two years we have improved the layout constantly.
We espcially want to thank Livio Marzoli who is supplying the profiles. On his site (http://www.salite.ch) you can find thousands of profiles!!!
We hope you enjoy this site as much as we do. Comments, suggestions, useful material and so on are very welcome.

Bert & Rolf