Everyone’s favourite non-surfing surf band (no, not Weezer, the Beach Boys) said through the medium of song to tell the teacher they’d gone surfing for the summer. Well, schools back in and summer seems to be over as most bikepark lifts (except in Chamonix, obvz) closed at the weekend.
As the last chance to ride somewhere new I dodged several hundred roadies tracing the Tour du France routes over the cols from Chamonix to La Clusaz to meet Spence and shred some gnar. Or some dust.
It’d not rained for a bit in Haute Savoie and though the La Clusaz website claims 180 odd km of trails, the actual DH trails are concentrated near the lifts and seem to get a fair bit of use. As a result, you were surfing about in a couple inches of loose dust.
This is pretty good fun and both Spence and I had (mostly through laziness) both got damp conditions tyres on (shortys and magic marys for the rubber fetishist out there) which work well in dust, the main issue was not being able to see where you were going if you were riding second.
The enjoyment you get out of flicking up trails of dust at every corner or braking point more than makes up for this minor inconvenience. Not sure if the failure of our lungs in a couple years from dust inhalation will be viewed the same way, but hey, who thinks of the future these days. #yolo #etc.
How were the trails then? Not bad. It’s not La Thuile or Pila (despite the dust) but the riding was still pretty fun on natural feeling trails with some nicely built up catch berms mixed in with more standard “bikeparky” blue trails. Pretty much every feature could be hit blind on every trail we rode, which means if you like jumps you’re going to be a bit disappointed, but for most folk it’s fine.
Lift pass is 17.50 for the 3 lifts, so it’s not going to break the bank either. Small French bike park oddity of the day went to the lift pass mounting where everyone was insistent that the pass had to be stuck to your handlebars. A first for me but somehow it stayed there all day, a good crash could see some problems though….
The best riding? We preferred the stuff off the Cret du Merle & Cret du Loup chairs, the black Encarnes piste got the most laps but there were plenty of variations between the official blue, red and black lines what with walking paths and unofficial add ons.
Over on the Beauregard gondola side of the hill the La Feriaz trail was a bit more “freeride”, but that was mostly because it had some northshore. Spence has a similarly dislike of riding on wood to me, also believing it to have a pathological desire to kill bikers, so one lap was enough. I reckon there’s some sweet trails in the woods on this side but without a tame local to show us, we just headed back over the the other side to laps the easy to find stuff. It’s been a long summer and it’s not over yet, we can get to be lazy if we want.
Time for a bit more riding at home then. Chamonix lifts start to close on the 18th September and the last to go is Bellevue on the 25th. And in case you missed it, Flegere and Brevent are taking bikes again. If you’ve been missing blogs about riding in Chamonix, I have written a bit, but it went on Pinkbike instead because shameless self promotion. It’s here anyway.