The Col du Galibier snakes up the side of the Pic Blanc du Galibier, a hefty grey-brown monolith in the heart of the French Alps, 40 miles or so as the crow flies east of Grenoble. In winter this is ski country, but mid-summer it's a magnet for hikers, tourists and two-wheelers.
As mountains go it's hardly picture postcard pretty, but we're not looking at it; the road ahead has our attention. Narrow, barely room for two cars to pass, it's unfenced and crumbling at the edges. The blacktop hugs the mountainside on gentle gradients before periodically lunging upwards into the thin mountain air. There are hairpins, but not so many as to break the flow. The surface is good, and it's nicely cambered with handy little Tarmac berms on the inside of turns to catapult out of. A sports bike would be a harsh, overpowered handful here, a tourer too heavy, too lethargic. We pass both by the ferry load, but Jim and I have found the Holy Grail of Alpine tomfoolery: monster supermotos.
FOR OUR FIRST summit assault I'm on KTM's 950SM, Jim's opted for the BMW HP2. The KTM is absolutely, unequivocally in its element. This motorcycle is barking mad, and we've found its spiritual home. But this is a hooligan tool that really can be used as an everyday machine, the world's first truly practical supermoto - practical, with a lunatic streak. The motor is a gorgeous, carburetted 950cc V-twin, the chassis properly suspended with WP kit and the Brembo brakes staggering.
It's not possible to ride the KTM without laughing; it reduces anyone who tries it to a whooping, skidding, leg-out-in-the-corners idiot. It must be the riding position - adopt the elbows-up supermoto attack stance and you feel so in control that riding becomes a game. But it's that plus the stomping V-twin motor and the greater security that comes from the 950's scaled-up supermoto dimensions which make it so crushingly effective. It lunges, dives, pitches and punches into, through and out of corners in devastating fashion.
Then there's the HP2. It's often the way with BMWs that curious or irritating aspects of their behaviour are excused with a mitigating 'because it's a BMW', but that's far less the case with this one.
The HP2 is a re-styled, pared-to-the-bone R1200GS with its focus on one particular thing - off-roading - rather than several things. It was launched with the hint of more models in a similar vein. They have yet to appear, but in the meantime the HP2 ('HP' stands for High Performance') is a welcome departure.
Interestingly, while converting the GS to serious off-road use BMW chose to junk much of the engineering paraphernalia we find ourselves making excuses for on other Bee Emms. The HP2 gets 'normal' USD forks and non-servo, non-ABS brakes (a single disc at each end), and it's far lighter, too.
But the rear suspension is an oddball inflate-it-yourself air shock, it's still shaft drive and the indicators are nonsensical. It is, after all, a BMW.
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