For years I have searched…
Countless hours spent looking for evidence in maps, afternoons pacing the forest floor hoping against hope to stumble across something that would lead me to the next clue, find the next breadcrumb, unlock the next secret.
Over time the picture grew more complete, but never more than an outline. The shape and idea was there, yet still so far from something you could say was even near whole. I read all I could, histories from many countries, long dead webpages from the wayback vaults, and still the true way remained elusive. My dream seemed just that, something that would exist in my head only.
Then in 2024 Chamonix mairie did all the work for me. Found it, fixed it and opened a signposted track.
Shouldn’t have bothered. Wait long enough and anything is ridable, guided vallee blanche bike descents available from 2099…
102 years ago Chamonix hosted the first ever winter Olympics and, in what would become the one true enduring legacy of all Olympics, spent big on creating infrastructure of use only to a small number of rich white men.
Infrastructure like a bobsleigh track.
The 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics has just kicked off, simultaneously providing Cortina with the excuse to drop €132 million on refurbishing the original 1923 bobsleigh track and me the excuse to spend €13 on Moodys coffee beans to fuel writing a blog.
Much like room 101, the Chamonix bobsleigh track of 101 (+1) years ago contained only terror. Of the 13 teams that entered, 4 withdrew after just looking at the track. Only 6 of the teams managed all 4 of their runs. 26 years after its creation the track got dropped from the bobsleigh circuit when 5 died in a series of accidents at the 1950 French National Championships.
The track fell slowly into disrepair, then; with the construction of the Mont Blanc Tunnel and it’s access road in the 1960’s, fell rapidly. After the upper turns were demolished to make way for the tunnel road, the lower part of the track which returned to the old Pelerin Telepherique station was absorbed by the sprawl of Chamonix as the town swallowed Pelerin.
The middle part just got grown over.
Which is where I joined the story and decided that riding the track would be cool and started poking about to find where it had gone.
This took a while. There’s a lot of forest and not much track. I’d just been starting to pick up the clues when along comes the Mairie and they do a proper job of it. For which I’m both very grateful and exceptionally pissed off. A reminder that sometimes inspiration instagram posts are right and you need to seize the day, act now, etc. Anyways, it’s not a complete unearthing as there’s still a few chunks that haven’t been renovated so mibbies it’s the best of both worlds?
It needed ridden.
Actually, that wasn’t so so hard to manage. The hard bit was, to make for semi interesting content, it needed ridden AND photos of said riddening taken. Only between me finally riding and deciding that I actually wanted to write something about it, winter came.
Which is in it’s own way fitting. It is a bobsleigh track after all. It was made with the express intention of being descended whilst the snow lay thick and even all around. Does make it harder to convince all but the most committed of riders that going and riding ice and snow covered granite is a good idea.
Fiona didn’t take much convincing, although I suspect she was wishing she’d not been so keen to keep getting the winter biking in as we struggled our way up the section of the trail that bypasses the incursion of the tunnel autoroute. I suppose it would be possible to descend on the true line of the track then hop the barriers and cross the road, which was semi closed for the annual tunnel refurbishment anyways. But you’re not allowed to do that so obviously there’s no way that’s what we did…
Without winter’s layer of compacted snow and ice the track is a way less intimidating prospect than in the 1920’s, a mix of loam and walked in firmer dirt makes up the majority of the descent at reasonable speed in normal weather. Except it’s now late November and winter. The granite walls look pretty damn terrifying with a few cm of snow on them and, much like the tobbonganists of years gone, a couple runs was enough. Dry and grippy in the height of summer will be a different story but. They might not be quite Morgins, but even the worst brake dragger in the PDS is going to struggle to put braking bumps in them.
It’s a fun wee trail, but it’s only that. Wee. Fortunately if you want to make more of a historic meal of it, you could tag it on to a visit to the lift that was meant to be opened for the games. A mere 450m hike-a-bike above the bobsleigh track. Alas, that lift also turned out to be a fine example of how future Olympic infrastructure would work, it’s much advertised opening for 1924 being a bit of sham as only 1 cable had been installed and the lift could only really turn to look impressive rather than carry the great and good who’d turned up to be booed for their association with ICE.
The ancient Gare de la Para was abandoned in 1958 but the building, and even the cable cars, still sit below the north face of the midi. If you can be having with the ascent, it’s a pretty sick descent.
And photogenic.
Or, if you’re feeling a bit more gallus, the aptly named Gare des Glaciers sits in proto brutalist splendour 750m higher at 2400m, usually prime position to gaze back up at the Midi after a lap of Cosmiques, and ideally whilst drinking a Cosmiques (if your friends run a brewery and name an IPA after the run, you’ve kinda got to give them a shout out) but in summer that can of Cosmiques helps you pretend to be Kilian Bron with a play on the structure followed by some of the best ‘oh my gosh what a backdrop’ singletrack you’ll ever ride ever. Getting Lost in the Woods after is optional…
Last autumn’s perma-summer saw me up there with both Fiona and Sapaudia Tim. Which is convenient as there’s only so much content you can get out of a few hundred meters of semi derelict bobsleigh track, so we get to use those photos too.
If you’re not aware of the trail, it’s one of the triptych of big hike-a-bikes on the north facing side of the valley, the Signal Forbes above Montenvers and the Grands Bois side of the mid station of the midi being your other targets. Which also both got ridden in the last year, but that’s stories (and videos…) for another time. The trail in question, the ancient Gare des Glaciers trail, is about as easy as it gets navigationally. From the footbridge at the tunnel carpark, follow the signs for “ancient gare du midi”. Keep climbing until the top/exhaustion. Turn around and head back down.
Simple really.
The trail isn’t exactly simple all the way down, but there is a fair bit of flow between the challenges. If you like riding Brevent / Flegere then you’ll probably enjoy it, if you don’t then it’s a good chance to improve on stuff that might be useful somewhere else in your biking life. Or go ride the refurbished La Wizz at St Gervais, which is about as opposite as it gets, and also a cracking trail.
So what have we learned at the end of all this? Probably that if you try to do something improbable and hard, there’s a reasonably chance you’ll fail. And people will then judge you for failing. So there’s no point really, don’t bother dreaming, don’t bother trying, the Olympic spirit never did anything for anyone. Who’d want to try create an unutterably improbable lift that was almost 50 years ahead of it’s time and without which the lessons wouldn’t have been learned to make that 50 years later Aiguille du Midi lift possible. Who’d want to make a society defying return to competition, prove the naysayers wrong, then risk it all again for the naysayers to get the chance to say they’re right whilst every single one of your peers is in awe of you staying true to your inner belief and doing the hard thing again? Would it be better if the new Olympic motto was “I failed, but did so much more than everyone who never even tried” instead of “Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together”?
You’ve probably noticed that there’s not been much content on here lately. Lately being near 4 years. The blog almost got deleted to save some admin fees. Fortunately my guiding website (the point of which is also increasingly negligible given how many folks find stuff from websites now) apparently needs to be kept running so the blog tags on the back of it. There’s not much point to it, this is never going to be NSMB, but it does keep me amused on the once in a 42 month period I feel like writing something. Mibbies I’ll make a substack instead. Whilst you’re waiting for that to not happen, try this: https://www.remontees-mecaniques.net/bdd/reportage-tph18-de-l-aiguille-du-midi-les-glaciers-ceretti-tanfani-dyle-bacalan-3869.html which is where most of the historical info came for this. It’s very detailed…