Organisations
OCD CycloClimbing was the most well-established English language club for people enjoying cycling on mountain roads, but they have now been folded into the Audax UK association.
The name of my site came from OCDs use of this term.
“OCD stands for “Ordre des Cols Durs” – “the club of the hard cols” – the older French OCD club that inspired the creation of the OCD Cycloclimbing.
Club des Cent Cols is the biggest mountain cycling club in the world and is French, but with smaller sections in other countries like Italy and Switzerland and with many other foreign members. The main memberbase is still French for this club founded back in 1972 in Annecy. The name means ‘Club of the One Hundred Mountain Passes’ and describes the main rule for entry into the “brotherhood” – one has to climb at least 100 different mountain passes of which at least 5 must be higher than 2000m. One of the main resources of this club are the ever expanding and updated pass lists for different countries that are available for purchase. I have given reference numbers to these lists as far as possible in the pass descriptions in the pass lists on this website. They also offer free online overlays for easy location of passes found in their guides for an increasing number of areas.
Brevet International du Grimpeur (BIG) is the growing Belgian club started by Daniel Gobert which claims to be the most international club. For members of BIG both mountain tops and passes are allowed to be counted by the members from a predefined list of 1000 in gaining diplomas from the club.