Lance Armstrong suffered no further scares as he defended his Tour de France lead on the 197.5-km 16th stage, but it was compatriot Tyler Hamilton who stole the show.
Hamilton, riding with a broken collar bone after crashing on stage one, spent around 100 km out on his own before clinching his first stage victory in the Tour de France.
Armstrong, closing in on a record-equalling fifth Tour victory, finished safely in the peloton, 1:55 behind Hamilton, and now the only threat to the American's yellow jersey, barring a crash, will come in the time trial in Pornic on Saturday.
Hamilton, the former right-hand man to Armstrong at US Postal, attacked after 55 km and took the outright lead of the stage on the category one climb to Col Bagarguy.
With 40 km remaining he had built up a lead of five minutes, but with no other rider for company he was gradually reeled in by the peloton on the descent to Bayonne.
But the 30-year-old held on and moved to sixth in the overall classification ahead of Italian Ivan Basso.
German Erik Zabel, disappointing throughout this year's Tour, won the bunch sprint to the finish line, just ahead of Ukraine's Yuriy Krivtsov.
"I owe this to my (CSC) team," said Hamilton. "I was struggling at the beginning and was dropped by the peloton but five of them came back to help me. I couldn't have done it without them."
The final day in the Pyrenees was a marked contrast to Monday's incident-packed stage when race leader Armstrong fell on the final climb before producing a devastating sprint to extend his lead over Germany's Jan Ullrich.
Armstrong will take a 1:07 lead into Thursday's flat stage to Bordeaux. The race ends in Paris on Sunday.