Just…a….bit….longer…..to…wait

Woof

Lifts open next weekend. Which is nice. There seems to be a bit more of a buzz about town than usual for mountain biking this year. I don’t know if it’s the long winter making everyone over eager for summer activities, the rise of “enduro” racing in magazines and websites making everyone excited about shiny new toys or what, but basically, we’re looking forward to the lifts opening. A lot.

Spencer taking the tech

Of course, folk haven’t stopped riding just because they have to get up the hill themselves. The snow lines been slowly working its way up the hill and the trails on the north facing side of the valley have been getting hit.

Sandy cruising on the lower Plan trail

The trail down form Plan d’Aiguille is good from about half height, although there’s still little patches of snow here and there in avalanche corridors. Less well cleared is the trail down from Montenvers. A group of us rode up to the Rochers du Mottets then pushed up towards the top from there. We ended up heading down from underneath the viaduct as there was just too much snow on the ground to be worth going further. The trail quickly cleared and all was good, we thought, until hitting the main avalanche corridor where the trail was well and truly buried. It was easiest to descend to the paravalanche tunnel and follow the railway back to the trail. Dave gave it a pretty good go at riding it, the rest of us took a more circumspect approach… Probably best to turn round at Caillet for the next few weeks yet.

....going, going, gone....