Chamonix Bike Blog

Tag: Les Contamines

All the lifts.

In 2013 Lorne and I tried to ride every lift on the Chamonix pass in a day. We failed because we didn’t really think it through first. You can read all about it on the blog here.

In 2016 Lorne and I tried to ride every lift on the Chamonix pass in a day. We failed because we were a bit ambitious about how quick we’d move at the end of the day. You can read all about it on Pinkbike here.

In 2018 Lorne and I tried to ride every lift on the Chamonix pass* in a day. We…..

Well, where would the suspense be if you knew the outcome was by the 3rd paragraph? OK, it would be in the well written prose where it’s a literary technique called prolepsis, but here you’re lucky if I dinnay stray into Scots too often, so you can just have good old fashioned chronological prose instead. (play literary technique bingo HERE with the hand guide to words you’ll never remember)

In past attempts there were pages of maps and detailed spreadsheets of timings. For this go it was as much as either of us could do to find a date neither of us were working. Date found, we met for the 0754 train outta Chamonix with a scribbled list of lift closure times and worked it out on the way.

Pedal up to Le Tour, wait for the lifts to open, go up the lifts, ride round to the Vallorcine DH. Its been well hammered by some recent storms, the “black” grading probably needs shaded in even harder. It’s quite the warm up lap.

Up the Vallorcine gondola, pedal up to the Col Posettes, head down through the bike park. It’s the July – August bike ban so the more interesting ways down are all out of bounds. Obviously, being the smoothest and easiest trail of the day, I get a puncture on the green track.

Grands Montets, Flegere and Brevent are all closed to bikes this summer (well, Brevent isn’t, but you can only go up from 1615 and there’s just 1 way down, so we’re treating it as closed) so it’s a fast pedal through the valley to Les Houches and Prarion.

Prarion lift, Prarion DH trail. There’s a new see-saw to enter the track (we don’t like see-saws) the trails running pretty good, and the new finish spits you out just above the Bellevue lift.

Puncture excepted, all had gone smoothly up to now. There was a gondola sitting ready to leave. We weren’t allowed on it and had to wait for the next lift. I bought a baguette. You make the most of downtime on days like these.

There’s a grand yet little known trail starting a few hundred meter down from the Bellevue lift that drops you down towards La Chapiot. We took this trail for those reasons, it really is grand and being little known it wasn’t hoaching. It also handily puts you onto the trail round to Pont des Places and Le Champel and cuts out a wheen of road and climbing on the way to Les Contamines.

A handy feature of many of the lifts outside the Chamonix valley is they either close for lunch or run on 30 minute rotations. Or both. The Les Contamines lift closes from 1230 to 1345. With some smugness we were on the lift by 1200. As the next lift was also closed ’til 1345 we chose to do a bigger lap off the top. Well worth the detour. And we could stop and take some photos as we went too. Bonus.

Bollocks. Having sauntered up to the St Gervais lift well before its 1345 opening we get blocked out of the queue for the second stage and made to wait 15 mins for the next rotation. Will we make the last lift in time? Will we rue those missing 15 mins? Will anywhere have ice cream in Megeve? All these questions and more remain to be answered.

From the top of St Gervais we’re aiming for the Jaillet lift in Megeve, and strike a fairly direct line towards it down the hill. The trails about here aren’t so easy to find as over in Chamonix, you don’t get as many folks exploring this far. If you can bring yourself to make the effort, then joining the dots between Les Mandarines Restaurant, Bornand, Darbelet and Les Choseaux is well worth your effort, even if forestry work and storms have damaged or destroyed some sections of the trail. About a third of the way down we score the first crash of the day too, with Lorne hitting the deck hard. An enduro crash though, he’s up and riding as soon as he can see the bike is fine.

At the Jaillet lift we find Lorne is a little less fine, but it’s only blood and the body had something like 5 litres of the stuff so he can afford to waste some of it. Jaillet lift is also home to some fine trails, a veritable maze criss crosses its way through the forest below the lift. The best way to learn it is to get a day pass and keep trying different trails. We didn’t have time for that, so Lorne had to trust I could remember where I went in races past.

It seemed to work, 45 mins after getting off the St Gervais lift we were at the Rochebrune lift and ready to rock. Except the Rochebrune wasn’t running for another 15 mins. That answers that question.

Are there any worthwhile trails to ride off the Rochebrune lift? So far the answer there is no, but I’ve not tried every trail, so mibbies there’s something. Eitherways, it’s on the lift pass, takes bikes, and the 4×4 trails help get us over to the next lift with a minimum of pedaling, so it gets taken and ridden.

Petite Fontaine. This is more like it. We’re running seriously tight here to get to the next lift by 1630, so there’s no photos only memories (and they don’t convert to 1’s and 0’s well yet), but this lift is way more what folks have in mind when they think of undiscovered alpine chairlifts. Big rolling terrain and sweet rooty singletrack. Over all to soon but with the schedule we’re on, probably soon enough. Or maybe not, we get to our next checkpoint with so much time to spare we can buy ice creams. Another question answered.

Mont d’Arbois. Fourth of the poorly named Megeve trilogy, the lift brings you back up to more or less the top of the St Gervais lift. That means it brings you up to the top of the “Wizz” flow trail. In a region of the alps not known for getting flow trails right, this is a wee gem of a trail that could have been lifted straight out of Whistler. Early season Whistler before the braking bumps form up at that. Not sure about the name though.

Wizz trail ridden, we’re still 620m above and 16 mins before the last tramway, our last lift, of the day. Whilst it would be nice to do those 620m on some quality singletrack that’s not an option in this area, and even the average singletrack is a bit time consuming, so we crack on with a bit of road riding and cut through finding.

Two minutes early is as good as 10. Two minutes is enough to buy a can of juice whilst you wait for the Tramway car to appear over the horizon. You learn to make the most of downtime on days like these.

Arriving at the bike high point of the tramway, Bellevue, it sort of dawns on us that we’ve actually managed to get round all of the lifts. We’re both a bit tired and the cumulative wear and tear of the day is showing. The sensible choice here would be to take the classic GR5 trail down as a victory lap…..but somehow that doesn’t seem quite the fitting way to end. No, to celebrate we decide that we’ve not done enough today and the perfect way down would be to drag our battered bikes and bodies up towards the Col Mont Lachat and ride one of the most technical and consequential trails in the valley.

I’m not sure I could truthfully say the Arandellys descent is the most suitable trail to end this day on, but I guess there were a few parallels to the rest of the ride. You need a certain amount of ambition, confidence and luck to ride it clean. Neither of us rode it clean, but we were both above our average for getting through each section. Amazing what a bit of success does for the riding confidence.

Another convenient coincidence of this trail, it ends at a pub. So did our ride**

*Some caveats. These are all the lifts on the Chamonix Mont Blanc Unlimited annual pass that you are allowed to take a bike on during the bike ban months of July and August. Outwith these months there are more choices in the Chamonix Valley, but then most of the lifts outside the valley are closed. Brevent is the complicated one as after a few years of being closed to bikes in July and August has no opened to bikes, but only after 1615 and only to ride the road down. So we missed it out.

** Well, only figuratively. We then rode home after a couple pints (err, don’t drink and ride kids). As I live in a ground level apartment and Lorne a 3rd floor flat then I assume this is why my strava gives 9819m of descent and Lornes’ 9996m. A fair bit either way. Lorne worked out the numbers on the ride without the lifts and train. 123.4km, 2070m climbing, 9996m descending. Up for it?

Relive ‘Every lift August 2018’

17/08/2018
The Escher trail

There’s been a running joke for a few years now that, as well as the Chamonix Bike Book, there should be a Chamonix Don’t Bike Book. A bible for Chamonix riders of the trails that, no matter how tempting they look on the map, just ain’t worth the hassle. Dinnay bother.

Prime examples would be the auspicious looking dashed line heading NE from the Col de Balme past La Remointse (the descent from the Refuge des Grands would be fun enough, if your enthusiasm somehow survives the preceding hike a bike). Then there’s the trail from the Refuge de Logan down to Argentiere, which does start promisingly enough (….then keeps suggesting it’s going to get better again, then just gives up and dumps you out onto 500m vert of rubble). And how many naive riders have rocked up at the top of Brevent full of enthusiasm to take the track down towards Col du Brevent and round to Pont d’Arieve (there’s a reason the bitter old locals just carry up from Planpraz to Col du Brevent and it’s not that we like carrying our bikes)?

All this isn’t to say that unrideable trails can’t be part of a good day out on the bike….

With the look of ovine compliance only those who don’t know what’s about to happen can truly nail, Dave, Tim and Robbie followed me to the Bellevue lift to join the hikers and e-bikers and start the ride. Robbie did have an inkling of what was about to happen, he’s been on my exploratory rides before and also up to the Col Du Tricot, but it turns out he’d forgotten all the bad bits. Or maybe blanked them out as part of a coping mechanism. Hard to tell.

Anyways, the descent down to the snout of the Bionassay Glacier is classic big mountain mountain biking. Huge views, a good trail, occasional exposure and the odd bit that it’s probably for the best if you don’t ride.

The trail culminates with the photo stop classic of the wire bridge, which still isn’t any easier to ride with 650mm+ bars but a pure dead good wheelie could get you to the other side. At which point rider stops riding bike and bike rides rider. With the advantage of youth, fitness and no knowledge of how long the climb is, Tim and Dave pulled off into the lead whilst Robbie and I set a more relaxed pace.

Considerable skepticism as to the ridablility of the descent for the Col du Tricot was being expressed by walkers on the way up and Dave and Tim didn’t seem completely convinced by Robbie and my assertions to the contrary. Fortunately on reaching the col and looking down all doubts were assuaged and lunch one could be enjoyed with the view of the descent to come.

The trail’s changed a bit from the last time it was written about here but only 2 short sections weren’t ridden by anyone in the team, mostly due to a combination of fear of smashing brake rotors and the amount of goat poo on the track.

At the chalets Miage the first trail choice had to be made. Another 200m of hike a bike over Mont Truc
[Cartographer: You there, local hick, what do you call this insignificant mountain?
Local Hick: Indecipherable.
Cartographer {to scribe}: God knows, call it Mount Thingy] to get to a grand wee trail I knew down to Les Contamines or roll the dice with the 4×4 track traverse round the hill to an unknow line on the map that would also drop us down to Les Contamines.

We gambled and, at first at least, it seemed we’d rolled double sixes. The traverse was pretty quick and the short climb pretty easy. Dropping into the singletrack (or straight off the singletrack in Tim’s case) we found a smashing wee trail that snaked down the hill with a fine balance of narrow and tech without loosing flow too much. Then it went uphill for a bit, then a fainter trail descended from the climb. Obviously we took the descending trail. It wasn’t quite as good as the trail before, loamy straights into hairpin turns, but still plenty fun, before it spat us out onto an overgrown 4×4 track.

A slightly too late look at the map showed we should have suffered up the climb for another couple of minutes more and we would have had a longer descent down to Les Contamines. As it was the 4×4 was pretty interesting as these things go and we headed down to Les Contamines and on to the Telecabine de la Gorge.

The Mont Blanc Unlimited lift pass covers a huge area of lifts in the summer, however with such a spread of lifts comes some idiosyncrasies. The lower half of the Les Contamines lifts runs no stop during the day, the upper half closes from 1230 to 1345. On a completely unrelated matter, at the mid station there’s a little paddling lake and a couple of cafes. Nothing for it but to sit with the feet in the lake eating icecream. And “help” Robbie fix a slow puncture.

Once the lift had opened and carried us up to 1875m the main part of the day could start. Following the trail that traverses from the ski area out towards the Chalets d Roselette and then from there on to the Lacs Jovet.

And at first it seemed ok. Not fully rideable but not too far off. Then there were some slightly harder bits to carry the bike across then. Then to carry the bike up. Then to carry the bike down. Carrying the bike down is not a good sign, group enthusiasm starts to drop off pretty quickly once you have to carry the bike downhill.

By the time we’d finished climbing and carrying and climbing our way down across the first half of traverse to the trail that scampered back towards Les Contamines it wasn’t hard to find a bunch of perfectly rational reasons why it would make much more sense to head back that way rather than continue with the original plan.

At first the trail was pretty good, though the novelty of just being on the bike and rolling across the terrain without much effort possibly helped this assessment. Even this trail then started to head up hill, even as it was definitely loosing height.

What an achievement, we’d found the fabled Escher trail. Like an alpine Electric Brae we seemed doomed to keep ascending to the base of the trail forever.

Fortunately we’re all rational folk and physics quickly re-asserted itself. We joined the furtherest south of the trails we normally ride from the Les Contamines lifts. It pointed downhill and stayed downhill. And it’s a really good trail too. Braap, laugh, wheelie and drift our way down towards the Nant Borant refuge. With a quick excursion off the bike and into the undergrowth for Robbie.

We could have gone for another lap or two off the Les Contamines lifts, but the prospect of letting gravity pull us down towards St Gervais along the riverside singletrack through Les Contamines followed by ice cold sugary drinks and an earlier tramway back into the Chamonix valley was too much to resist, so we enjoyed the last of the 1000 or so meters of descent that counts for a way home out here and I mentally put another red line onto the map of trails in my head. Not fully scored out, but for now mibbies best leave that one alone and just pedal up from the valley floor to explore the trails near Lacs Jovet. Another time, there’s trails straight off the lifts to be ridden before the summer ends…

31/08/2017
Les Contamines, no bad.

After 2 weeks of near constant rain it seemed the Scottish summer was over in Chamonix. Four days of sun meant the trails were dry (mostly) and spirits were high (mostly). It also meant everyone had headed out to enjoy the trails.

Eager to ride some empty downhill trails, preferably with well built berms, a trip out of the valley was called for, and where better than Pila? Spence would even get to take his DH bike, and the rest of us could sit and eat ice cream or drink coffee.

I guess plenty of other folk had had a similar idea and the queue for the Mont Blanc tunnel was backed up at least 45 minutes, so we headed to Les Contamines aiming to meet friends instead.

In an area filled with off the radar bike friendly lifts, Les Contamines is pretty much an unknown. Before the trip I found some info on the sole bike trail down from the top lift at 1850m to the base at 1180m, some second hand information that the riding is”pretty good” and, that’s about it.

Turned out the riding was indeed “pretty good”.

The lift pass for the day is a cheap 12.60euro, though you need to pay 2euro for a magnetic card if you don’t have a spare one already. This gets you 2 lifts, the first a short 300m hop open all day and the longer second stage runs from 1500m to the top but closes 1230-1315.

Spence had swapped bikes back to his normal all mountain bike and it’s as well he did. The single official DH trail is plenty of fun and, with no climbs, easily ridden on a DH bike but you’d be scuppered for all the other trails.

The first lap was on said DH trail. Lots of nice berms, especially through the woods, no real braking bumps and good flow. It could do with some bigger features as we all landed flat from every jump, drop or hip, but I guess they’re catering for a more family market.

After the warm up lap we headed up the hill from the lift towards the Chalets de Roselette, before joining a narrow trace of singletrack through the alpine and down towards the valley floor. The trail was particularly good up high, mixing fast sweeping sections with some tighter rock gardens and gnarled old roots. As we got lower in the direction of Notre Damn de la Gorge the trail got steeper and more technical. Never unridable, but certainly demanding, before easing off for the final blast down to the back of the church and the short coast down the road to the telepherique and lunch.

Some sandwiches in the sun later we headed back up the 1st of the lifts. As the 2nd stage was still closed for lunch we tried a trail running south from the lift through the Bois des Granges.

It began with a lot of promise, very similar to the previous trail. Alas about 1/3 of the way down it flattened off and got rockier and rockier to the point where it was easier just to carry. We were starting to think it was going to be another average trail to chalk up to experience when the rocks finished and we were left with an amazing technical descent down through the woods and back to the road ready for another lap.

A few more goes of the DH trail later (we don’t get to ride well built stuff much in Chamonix ok), where Nina had had a massive superman over the bars and I’d ridden into the wrong end of a see-saw jump, we were ready to try exploring more.

Heading east from the top of the lift we dropped into the grassy expanse of the main ski area. A word of advice, don’t.

Another lap of the DH trail.

With a storm on the way in and warnings from the very friendly lifties that the telepherique may have to close we went for one last long lap. Following our tracks we headed back to the Chalets de Roselette but this time turned right instead of left after entering the woods.

A chat with some locals earlier had confirmed we’d found several of the best trails, and told us that the trail we were aiming for was quite wet and had some tricky root sections. I’d gone selectively deaf when they said it was wet and only heard the bit about roots. I like root sections. In the dry.

Fortunately the muddy sections weren’t too bad and on easy sections of the trail, whilst the roots were great. The track eventually spits you out just above (as in through the garden of) the Nant Borrant refuge, which just happens to serve ice cream, coffee and beer. It wasn’t perhaps the same quality as you’d get in Italy, but we weren’t in Italy and it tasted good enough for us.

All that was left was the cruise down the Roman road back to the car, though calling it a cruise would be a disservice to the track. Rock slabs, drops onto, off and over the trail, wee jumps abound, and you have to stop by the bridge over the stream to check out the rock formations.

Maybe we’re not going to rush back, but I think we’d all go back pretty happily. Certainly worth a stop by on a trip for a day for some chilled out quiet riding. No bad at all.

20/07/2014
Average.

Average sounds, well, average. Not good, not bad, but not anything memorable. Mediocre even. With hundreds of kilometres of the world’s best trails on the doorstep the ‘average’ bar sits pretty high around Chamonix.

Searching as ever for good, or at least above average, trails we headed out of town and round the corner to Les Contamines. It’s only 15km away in a straight line, but about 30 minutes in a car on account of there being some 4000m high lumps of rock and ice in the way.

The same lumps of rock and ice made a great back drop as we sweated our way up from Les Hoches (not to be confused with Les Houches…) towards Le Plan de la Croix in the sun. Fortunately some clouds came in along with a light breeze so the 700m of spinning up the tarmac and gravel roads went in a fairly easy going hour. So far so good, at least as far as it can for gaining height on a bike.

Alas the cloud didn’t then do the honourable thing and bugger off again once we reached the top of the climb at the Porcherey gite, so greybird it was for the down. At least the trail, once we’d picked which one to follow, looked good, both on the map and infront of us.

Starting through a field on a grassy bobsleigh run before dropping into the trees for some fast and loose corners, all with a banking to catch you if you got too enthusiastic.

It was starting to look like yet another above average trail, when the singletrack ended and we hit a trail you could (just about) get a 4×4 up. Still fast and fun, but not quite the same. With a few washed out sections making the trail more interesting it continued for the next ½ of the descent until we hit the road at Le Carteyron

A dashed line on the map perked us back up with more entertaining singletrack hairpinning the rest of the way down the hill to the car, but not enough to save the trail from being damned with the dreaded ‘OK’.

Despite this, it was good enough for us to talk of a return trip to test out some of the other options on the map in the hope of finding a more consistent descent.

Which just reminds us how lucky we are to get to ride here day in day out, when 700m of easily accessed fun downhill is just average.

Here’s to mediocrity.

01/06/2014