Ballon d'Alsace, Mountain and free flight site in Vosges Mountains, France.

Ballon d'Alsace is a 1,247-meter mountain in the Vosges with access to multiple hiking trails and ski runs. Its summit offers views across the Rhine Valley, Black Forest, and distant Alps, with opportunities for both downhill and cross-country skiing.

The mountain gained fame in 1905 when René Pottier became the first cyclist to reach its summit in the Tour de France, marking the race's first official mountain stage. This moment established mountain climbing as a core test in professional cycling and shaped the sport's future.

The name Ballon d'Alsace is a topographic misnomer: historian Alban Fournier notes the summit was long called Ballon de Lorraine, or locally Ballon de Saint-Maurice and Ballon de Giromagny. A plaque at the pass commemorates René Pottier, first over the climb on 11 July 1905, and the mountain remains a fixture of the Tour de France.

A paved pass road crosses the mountain, its highest point at 1,171 m, linking Saint-Maurice-sur-Moselle via the D465 with Giromagny, and Sewen via the D466G. The northern climb from Saint-Maurice runs about nine kilometres at 6.8% average through forest and eight hairpins; the eastern climb from Sewen is the steepest, with five kilometres at 8.4%. Snow can persist into summer on the steep eastern slopes, where avalanche risk must be assessed.

The summit area lies where four communes meet: Sewen, Saint-Maurice-sur-Moselle, Plancher-les-Mines and Lepuix, spanning four departments and two regions. The watershed between the North Sea and the Mediterranean runs over the top, so rain falling on one side feeds the Rhine and on the other the Rhône. The massif is among the wettest parts of France.