Monthly Archives: August 2014

Coupe du France enduro series round 3, Val d’Isere

101 riders wait for their start time.

I heard on Thursday morning that the latest edition of the Oxford English dictionary was going to feature the word “amazeballs“. Generally I’m of the opinion that anyone using said phrase should have bungee cord tied to their amazeballs and be kicked off a bridge, but looking at the maps for the race when they went online Thursday evening, only one word came to mind.

Sweet.

8 stages over 2 days taking you from Val d’Isere over the cols to Tignes and back. Bits in the bike park, bits on walking trails, bits in the middle of nowhere marked “here … [Read full post]

The end is nigh. Repent.

The weather has, at times, been a bit biblical recently. Given Mount Ararat is 5137m high even Mont Blanc at 4810 ain’t going to save us. All we can do is head out in the rain and enjoy the biking whilst we still can.

The Chamonix trails, being generally steep and rocky, deal with the rain fairly well and drain pretty quick. Only Les Houches turns into a true quagmire and even there it’s possible to avoid the worst of it (which is generally the last 1/3 of the DH trail and all of the old DH trails from the … [Read full post]

Champex Lac: Seasonal discrepancies

Lorne on the high switchbacks of the trail of the day. I think he preferred it in winter though.

Deja vu? After 2 weeks of near constant rain it seemed the Scottish summer was over in Chamonix. One day 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 fast downhill trails, preferably with well build berms, a trip out of the valley was called for, and where better than Pila?

Turned out plenty of other folk had a similar idea and the queue for the Mont Blanc tunnel was backed up at least 60 minutes, so we headed to Champex … [Read full post]