Chamonix Bike Blog

Tag: Arve valley

Hunting trails

A mission statement is a short definition of an organisations purpose, a phrase to focus and direct the activities of the group. One example is the Starship Enterprise’s “To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!” though the last bit was more about Captain James T Kirk’s efforts at interspecies relations than the attempts to be an interstellar UN. Another example is the US army’s: “The U.S. Army’s mission is to fight and win our Nation’s wars by providing prompt, sustained land dominance across the full range of military operations and spectrum of conflict in support of combatant commanders.” which has evolved somewhat from the traditional Hummer playlist that liberated Baghdad (and suggested some folks don’t quite listen hard enough to lyrics…).

The Chamonix Bike Blog is neither a business, the worlds largest military force nor a fictional spaceship, so doesn’t need a mission statement. If it was though, I guess the closest it’s got is to encourage cyclists to try trails other than the main honeypot routes in the valley, and for everyone to be nice to each other.

In the name of a non existant mission statement, I’ve gone and ridden pure hunners of amazing trails then written something about a few of them here to encourage y’all to go give them a go too.

So if I said that a couple weeks ago, before the snows came, I went for a ride with Oli and Luke down by Sallanches and found a proper cracker of a 1300m descent, you’d expect that I’d now give some clues about where it is and how to go ride it.

Well, I’m not. I’m going to put up a load of photos to make you feel like you really missed out, give a wee bit of an explanation why, then go off on a tangent.

So why am I not saying where it is? About 5 years ago I rode this trail with Tom “Chamonix Bike Book” Wilson North. It wasn’t a complete success, but the terrain hinted at something better so I started looked about the map and saw another promising looking line. Searching through the interwebz I found a tiny amount of information about walking and biking the trail, all of which suggested it was too technical to be worth doing. Problem is, one persons technical is another person’s flowtrail…. With a relatively low expectation for success and plenty other things to try less than 30 mins from the front door, it remained on the ‘to do’ list for about 5 years.

Eventually, opportunities aligned and we said sod it, lets gie it a go. There were a few navigation points on the way down and the occasional uncertainty that we were on the right line, but nothing that can’t be dealt with if you’re an IML or spend winters doing ski lines like these.

The trail certainly wasn’t for everyone, but there were only 3 short steps all of us chose to walk. A few tweeks of alignment and it could be a classic.

That’s not the point I’m going for though. Because the thing is, we all enjoyed it far far more for not really knowing if this was going to work out. For not knowing if at any moment the good was going to end and we’d be walking the rest of the way to the valley floor. And I don’t want to take that enjoyment away from anyone else. So if you know the trail, you’ll recognise it here, but if you don’t you won’t, so you’re still going to have to go and see if the line YOU think is going to work out will.

Then there’s the other thing.

We rode this trail on a Wednesday. Really, we could only ride this trail on a Wednesday or a Friday. Between 9th September and 20th January the Haute Savoie is in hunting season and these are the only 2 days hunting is forbidden. As the trail is deep in the woods, little frequented, yet easy enough to access if you have a car, it’s a fair assumption there will be hunters in the area. And nobody wants to get shot.

A lot of people would say we’re being a touch paranoid, but a 34 year old mountain biker was shot dead on the Super Morzine trails by a 22 year old hunter earlier in October. He was the 4th person to be killed in France due to a hunt since June 1st this year. Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.

The investigation into the death is ongoing however some of the details are becoming clearer. Le Dauphine has provided the best information, you can read it in French here: https://www.ledauphine.com/haute-savoie/2018/10/16/vetetiste-tue-par-un-chasseur-pour-le-procureur-de-la-republique-la-visibilite-etait-totale-haute-savoie-montriond , a rough summary of what’s been written would be: The 8 hunters were in a line parallel with the trail the cyclist was riding, roughly 40 meters from the trail, and had clear visibility. The cyclist was wearing a bright coloured t-shirt and coloured bike and helmet. The round was on an upward trajectory when it hit the cyclist, the hunters should have been shooting towards the ground.

Hard to mistake him for a boar. And it’s not like he was the first non hunter to be killed either, there are legion stories of innocent folks getting shot.

So you want to go play outdoor between September and January but don’t want to get shot? Advice to walkers, runners and cyclists during hunting periods includes to carry a bell and wear bright colours. And we do, I’ve got lovely pair of fluorescent orange Fox shorts that come out at this time of year. Except the dead mountainbiker was wearing bright colours and on a bright coloured bike when he was shot. Also, much like it’s the cyclists responsibility to not run over the walkers, I kinda feel the onus should be on the hunter to not shoot a human, rather than the human to dress up like a christmas tree.

There are two ways to go hunting in France, a day license or an annual hunting permit. The annual permit costs 447 euro or 150 euro if you only want to kill things in your own department. Not bad compared to buying a summer lift pass. You don’t just buy the license anymore though, following the high accident rates pre 2000 you’re required to sit an exam to get it. Here’s an anglophone’s experience.

Before you start thinking that sounds quite complicated, it’s a license to kill things. With a gun. Compare that to the challenge of sitting a driving license theory and practical exam.

The good news is that deaths are decreasing. In 2002 hunters managed to kill 40 people, which is verging on humans being a legitimate form of game, last year they had that down to ‘only’ 13. The bad news is that November is historically the worst month for deaths. So don’t put the hi vis away quite yet.

So maybe it’s time for a bit more regulation? The hunting lobby is strong in France (what is it with guns and government?) there’s apparently 1.12 million hunters in France (down from 1.5m in 2000). In 2017, 2,780,000 bikes were sold in France (and you can look at the live selling rate here). I think cyclists outnumber hunters. And dinnay forget the walkers, trailrunners, mushroom hunters, dog owners, horse riders….. So I’m not convinced that hunters are that strong in number, just very very vocal (kinda like the NRA). Mibbies it’s time we were a wee bit more vocal.

The purpose of all this isn’t to say hunting should be banned. We have to accept that simply by existing all organisms have a negative and positive influence on the other organisms in the vicinity. We might try to minimize the negative, but even Buddha accidentally stands on an insect every so often. Hunters have just as much right to be in the hills as mountain bikers, or runners, or any other group, but the current rules of society say that no group has the right to go about killing people, and only one of these groups regularly does.

Again, I’m not saying hunting should be banned, just that perhaps there should be a zero tolerance approach to alcohol, one of the weekend days can be a no hunting day, maybe ban shooting over the line of trails within 1km, the calibre and power of the guns could be limited to reduce the range of stray bullets and the damage they can do at a distance (of course, this means you need to get closer to the prey, but then I keep hearing that hunting is about skill and stealth not wantonly blasting away at the undergrowth, so surely this shouldn’t be an issue for all the true hunters).

Before that happens, here’s some useful links to help:

CHASSECO. Kinda a one stop shop for finding out where hunters can hunt and on what days. Quite handy. And also available as an app should you already be cycling and trying to avoid the bullets: http://chasseco.fr/site.html#RECHERCHE

If you want to know what dates the hunts are on, and which animal you really shouldn’t look like, here’s the info: https://www.chasseurs74.fr/reglementation-chasse-haute-savoie

In summary; hunting trails good, hunting trail users bad.

01/11/2018
Feel the serenity.

Everyone loves a good bit of content. A little creative framing of the background, your best insta-face, appropriate filter, add a witty “zinger” of a caption. Sorted.

Problem is, once you’ve got a few good contents under the belt your start needing to get something a bit……more…..to get the same hit. Like.

Then, quicker than you can re-write some tired broadsheet copy from the last decade, you’re hanging backwards off a large building in Abu Dhabi. Or biking for 2 days to get to a totally improbable descent on your bike. Obviously one of these situations will be more relevant to most of yous.

Which is why last weekend, Toby, Tim and me found ourselves hiding underneath an overhang in a large couloir as raindrops the size of smarties battered down around us.

Obviously we didn’t start at this point. We started in Plaine Joux, a bit above Servoz, with a pedal out of the ski area and up towards the Chalets Souay, then up towards the Refuge Moede Anternne, then up towards the Col du Mode Anterne. I say pedal, there was a fair bit of pushing in there. And a bit of carrying. Which kinda started a theme.

Climbing 1000m doesn’t make for great content. Normally the slow pace means you get plenty of little rider/big scenery shots but the weather was treating us to 7/8ths cloud cover. This was grand news for my pasty Scottish skin but kinda hides the Mont Blanc and Chamonix Aiguilles banger backdrop we were hoping for. So we had to speak to each other and just get on with the climb instead.

Once over the col and on with the assorted padding and protection modern biking fashion and injuries dictate the content creation didn’t get much better. The descent from Col d’Anterne down past the Lac d’Anterne is normally framed by the massive limestone cliffs of the Fiz on one side and the rolling Scottish (slash Lake District slash Kiwi, the problems of going biking with foreigners) hills on the other. When we got there, it was framed by cloud. Not to worry, the trail is just as good irrespective of whether it’s bathed in sunshine or if the weather’s gone for an early bath. It’s also entertainingly unpredictable, with multiple line choices and several moments where what looks benign trail suddenly turns quite engaging.

So far so good, but so known. The ride to here had already been done, dusted and put online, at which point Jamie Carr had pointed out to me that there was a better descent than the line we’d ridden down to the Refuge d’Anterne Alfred Wills. Which is why we turned right just after the Lac d’Anterne towards the catchily titled “Le Petite Col ou Bas du Col d’Anterne” and into Terra Nova. Well, nova for us. The worn path on the ground and fact there was a sign pointing where to go makes it about as undiscovered as America or Australia was. Meh, we’re white and male and we’re claiming it as ours.

Turns out that as one of the original UK alps mountain bike guides, previously a world champs racer and currently a long time resident of the Grand Massif, Mr Carr does indeed know his good descents. After the scenic traverse towards the savage west face of Mt Buet the descent drops into a Mordor esque cirque. The deep greens around us start to blur as the trail eggs you on to ride quicker and quicker. It’s not a difficult trail but it’s plenty fun. As it’s worn into the hillside you’ve almost always got some form of support on the outside of each curve and the drainage ditches have mellow walls that let you manual, hop or bounce over and out as you feel like. And, as the gradient never gets too steep, you get massive value out of the 700m you descend to the hut.

The hut, Refuge des Fonts. Overnighting is a sure fire way to up the value of your content from a trip. Doesn’t matter if it’s climbing, skiing, kayaking or biking. Stay overnight, fire some shots of chillaxing at the end of a long day onto your socials, mibbies add a couple of star studded sky images or a long exposure of headtorches and you’re golden. Except there was no 4g. Oh, the humanity. There was beer though. We ordered some beers and chatted to each other. Again.

There’s not much to say about staying in refuges. Either it’s something you enjoy or you don’t. The food is hearty unless you don’t eat meat and vegetables and cheese. The beds are comfy as long as you’re not over six foot tall (and to be fair, the beds are still comfy, it’s just you can’t stand up in the dorms). The breakfast will be coffee, stale bread and jam. Someone will snore (apparently it was me).

They’re also infinitely better than riding with a tent, sleeping bag, stove and food strapped to your bike. The Refuge des Fonts ticked all these boxes, everyone was super friendly, our bikes got locked away in the store shed and we got to stay warm and dry through the overnight rain and wake to blue skies and sunshine.

Day two started as it was intended to finish. Going downhill. Rolling out of the refuge grounds the trail is just about 4×4 truck friendly with some surprisingly well placed banks to make things more interesting. After a few kilometers of that we got to break off left into some sweet singletrack through the trees. In the morning. After a overnight rain storm.

Wet root gardens are a much better wake up shot than any cup of coffee I’ve ever had. We all survived somehow.

Whilst the day would start and end descending, there was this middle bit where we would go uphill. It started easy enough with a nice meandering road climb up to Le Liggon. It then eased us into some rougher fireroad but still something you’d get a Rangerover up.

A little steeper.

A little narrower.

A little rougher.

It’s like a good book or movie. The protagonist slowly gets deeper and deeper into trouble but, like the proverbial frog being slowly boiled, doesn’t notice it until they see the side salad getting prepared for their “tastes like chicken” flesh to be served with.

The bikes went onto our backs and we kept going uphill.

Fortunately we had the distractions of the Torrent de Sales and its waterfalls as we went up.

And, with good scenery comes the potential for good content, so we got to stop every so often, stretch out the shoulders, and take some photos. Woop.

Eventually, and after a pretty brutal 800m and 2hr of climbing, we rolled into the Refuge des Sales. It didn’t take much convincing for us to stop for refreshments. I’m not sure it even took any discussion.

With only 500m of up left you’d think things would be looking good from here. You’d think, but you’d be wrong. We were entering the Desert de Plate, one of France’s largest limestone karsts and home to some impressively big fissures (and you thought it was an option on the Refuge des Sales’ menu….). When the nearby Flaine ski area opened in 1970’s skiers were quick to exploit the off piste potential of the desert du plate, and promptly started disappearing into stone crevasses covered by thin snow bridges. It also doesn’t make for particularly direct trails.

Never mind, every pedal stroke (or footstep), is another stride in the right direction. Eventually we reached the Col de la Portette and could start looking at the down rather than the up.

Looking down had it’s advantages too, the trail from the top of the Col de la Portette isn’t really the kinda thing you just drop into. Not if you want to get beyond the first switchback at least. None of us rode the first switchback.

Nevermind, a couple switchbacks out of a near 1800m descent isn’t much to stress over. We continued down, and down, and down until we got to the Chalets de Plate. Where it started to spit with rain.

Up till now the weather had been pretty nice and the forecast had promised that it would stay so.

Unfortunately the weather hadn’t read that forecast.

Fortunately it seemed to be listening to those of us on the ground complaining and no sooner had it started raining it stopped and the ground began to dry again.

Buoyed with the excitement of it now being downhill all the way to the bar we traversed the short plateau to the main event of the day, the passage through the cliffs of Les Egratz.

Good content, as implied at the start of this, needs to be a bit eye catching. What could be more eye catching than some big views of a big drop and a wee trail scratching it’s way through it?

Cautiously, because you really didn’t want to fuck things up here, we started to descend….

Then it started to rain again.

Some geology deals well with the rain, a bit of moisture hardly dents the friction available. Squamish granite and Skye gabbro are two examples that come to mind. Limestone is not one of these materials. Limestone does not shrug off moisture and keep its mu. Limestone plus water equals a very unpleasant time for all. Limestone plus water plus death exposure equals not a massive amount of riding getting done.

There was a wee bit of debate as to how best to proceed when instead the environment made the choice for us. The rain turned to a deluge, drops of water the size of smarties pummeled us from above and we found ourselves right back where we started this story.

A loose, steep couloir is NOT the place to hang about in weather like this so, being all too aware of many events in the alps this season, we got down as fast as we could and hid under an overhang at the exit from the couloir.

When obviously it stopped raining.

I’ll not lie. We were all a bit disappointed by this turn of events (the rain, not the stopping of the rain). Two days is a fairly long approach in bike terms for a descent. It’s about the journey not the destination and all that though. We’d already had a wheen of good riding, missing out on less than 100 meters of vert didn’t change that, nor did it change that we still had a little over a vertical kilometer to drop yet. Dry your eyes mate, get back on the bike and start having fun.

From a story telling content perspective, I’d finish this post there, stepping out from the overhang, shot of three riders laughing and shrugging shoulders, then cuttying and manualling off into the sunset.

From a real life perspective, we continued more sheepishly. There were a few navigational issues on the descent, it turns out that if only one of the members of the team has ridden the trail, and only once, and that once was part of a longer ride where he was not on an e-bike whilst the others were, and it was in the evening, and it was 4 months ago, his memory might not be perfect for each junction……we got there in the end, and it was worth the detours. A trail destined for another visit for sure.

We reached the bar, the traditional end point for all rides and start point for the creation of the story of the ride. As none of us had go-pros we skipped high fives and went straight to ordering beers. What did we learn? Nothing we didn’t know already*.

*An abrupt end for sure. I considered padding out the “living life in the moment” analogy even further, but there’s more than enough words in this already, and the irony about spending current time by writing of a past event as a parable to live in the moment is getting too much for me.

27/08/2018
Velo Ferrata

Most people imagine life as a Chamonix bike bum as a daily routine of getting up, selecting a bike from a quiver of top end steeds, being carried to the top of the hill by train/tram/chairlift/gondola or helicopter before ripping down on the finest rocky/rooty/buffed trails known to man then finishing the day quaffing fine wine with nubile bike groupies. Alas the truth couldn’t be more different.

Sometimes we have to pedal up the hill first.

Then there’s also the exploratory rides, where we go looking for the mythical perfect trail…. Acting on a couple of tip offs and a promising looking squiggly line on the map, Tom suggested we head down the valley to St Martin sur Arve to take a look at a loop below the “Tete du Colonney” cliffs. If you check it out on the map you’ll see that most of the 900m height gain can be done on a tarmacked road before moving to the 4×4 track to the Chalet du Meyrieu, leaving only about 250m to be done whilst pushing. Unfortunately what we didn’t notice was the gradient of some of the tarmac and 4×4 track. None of this slowed Twix the dog down any, but if you’re wanting to drive up to the car park, probably best to take something with some ground clearance and a fairly low 1^st gear.

Eventually pushing up the 4×4 track gave way to pushing up singletrack, which at least was a change of scenery. The French IGN maps use a selection of colours and lines to give you a clue about what to expect on the trail. We knew that up ahead there was a section of red dots. This could mean that the trail got narrow but still rideable, or it could mean you have a full on climb with fixed ropes and cut foot holds. We were hoping for the former, it turned out to be the latter. To be fair, having seen the size of the waterfalls and gullies that cut through the cliffs here, we could probably have guessed this, but it’s amazing what optimism does for you.

Through some stroke of luck the trails into each of these sections were rideable (sometimes easier to ride than walk!) which meant we just had to shoulder the bikes for the climbs out. This did leave us with one hand holding the bikes, one hand holding the wire, and no hands to spare for making upward progress, but we got there in the end. Twix was having no problems, despite her lack of opposable thumbs

Eventually we reached L’Achat d’en Bas at 1482 which meant the good stuff should start. Shouldn’t it?

It did, at first at least. The trail down to Chavan was fast and flowing. Tom was destroying it on his shiny new 29’er with Twix not far behind. I kept being drawn to the views of the Arve valley far, far below, and as a consequence kept spotting the drainage ditches at the last minute! The trail then gave way to some fairly hardcore 4×4 track then, at a very easy to miss junction, we turned off right to contour back round to the inspiration for the ride, the switch back squiggles leading down to Besseray

After a few interestingly narrow sections getting over, the switchback started off promisingly. Not too steep to be worrying, but steep enough to be challenging and with the option of blatting straight down the middle if your ethics allow. Then it got steeper. And tighter. If you can’t rolling endo round corners, you’re really going to struggle on this trail. After a while we gave up, some corners the consequences of a near inevitable fall were just too much.

Even once the corners opened up again, there were some pretty gnarly outlooks, with a not-quite-as-high-as-I’d-like fence between the trail and a very long but very fast approach to St Martin sur Arve.

As ever, Twix couldn’t see what our problem was and bounded back and forth with the enthusiasm of an animal that hasn’t been told how long it is till the next nap. Once out of the switchbacks our enthusiasm returned too. If that section had been designed to be as unsuitable as possible for bikes, then next was the opposite. Given some of the banking of corners, presence of little rock lips and use of the terrain, I’m almost sure it WAS made for bikes. Either way, an absolute corker of a singletrack blast to finish the ride off.

Some rides are instant classics, some you know you’ll come back to with more skills (or failing that, more travel) and others, well, you’re not going back. I’m not in any rush to ride the trail again and I can’t see Tom putting it in a guidebook anytime soon, but there’s plenty of other tracks down there which look like they could do with some exploration, so maybe that mythical ultimate trails IS waiting down there somewhere.

Anyway, time to get back up to Chamonix, there’s some fine wine and bike groupies waiting….

27/09/2012