The climb starts in the spa town of Luz-Saint-Sauveur at 710m altitude and climbs for 13.1km at an average grade of 8%, with a max of 12%. It is a very well engineered road constructed in the 1970s, with 25 hairpin bends and long straight sections in between. Luz Ardiden saw the legendary battle between Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich on stage 15 of the 2003 Tour. Armstrong's brake lever snagged the handle of an official Tour de France musette carried by a child sending Armstrong and Iban Mayo crashing to the ground.