Chamonix Bike Blog

Author: chamonixbikeblog

La Thuile, not racing.

The world series of who’s best at ‘going out and riding their bike about a hill and calling it ENDURO’ has come to La Thuile, which I reckoned was probably the best place I’d been for ‘going out and riding a bike about a hill and calling it ENDURO’ when I first rode there a few years back, so that seems pretty fitting.

As the E.W.S. races are open to everyone I thought it would be good to head through the tunnel and ride against the world’s best. Alas work was less interested in this idea and thought it would be better if I stayed in Chamonix and turned up on the shop floor.

The La Thuile round falls under the organisation of the Italian Superenduro series whose rules allow for 2 days of practice before the race, so instead I went over with Nina (who has no job) to “help” with practice. Which is pretty cool really, its not like you can rock up in Monaco on the GP weekend and take a spin round the track.

The pit set up for the race was huge, not DH world cup level quite yet but the amount of money being poured into enduro racing is considerable. Our pit set up wasn’t quite as impressive.

After a worrying moment at the lift office where they asked for my name to check off on the race list (appointing myself team mechanic surmounted this problem) we headed up to check out the stages.

Stages 3, 5 & 6 all have the same start section, so it made sense to check that out first. The shared section is the trail that I least liked when I rode here before, which is a bit disappointing, but it was more fun than I remember. Fast, rock, some new tech sections at the start. We arrived at the first junction for Nina to get her first flat in 2 years, a rock had sliced the tyre carcass.

Optimistically we thought the sealant had filled the hole, but a bit further down stage 3/5 accepted it hadn’t and put a tube in whilst watching assorted pros barrel past.

For the rest of stage 5 we followed the bike park trail Muret in what turned out to be my favourite stage of the day, mostly as it didn’t involve any pedalling.

Back to the car to stock up on more tubes and we headed down the common trail to the first junction, where Nina had her second flat in 2 years. The rocks up high just seem designed to shred tyres and as we were stopped a steady stream of flat tyres arrived either to be repaired, or ridden on the rim to the mechanic (the bikes hadn’t been marked yet, so you could replace all the broken parts you wanted, or could afford).

Stage 6 this time, which turned out to be pretty physical in the upper sections, not climbing but very flat so very pedally. Lower down it got steeper and techier through the trees and somehow, despite the biblical rain and snow storms this week, we then rode some bone dry loam!

Another trip to the car, this time to put on a spare DH tyre and tube, and back up for the last of the 3 common front face stages. This time, thanks to an extra 1/2 kilo of rotating mass and 35psi, there were no punctures.

Stage 3 links the trails Muret & Garin which are all brilliant bits of riding in their own right, but in linking them there was a nasty sharp climb for a few hundred meters about 3/4’s of the way down the course that was not being appreciated by the racers. Fine if you’ve just turned up to ride though.

Karma almost got me at the end of the trail where I came up short trying to double then triple the 5 pack of jumps on the dual slalom course into the finish paddock and lift line. The fear of going down infront of such a huge crowd was greater than the fear of getting hurt and I managed to suck up the impact and ride out as if I’d meant it like that all along…..

Stage 2 was the only stage of the day not accessed from the lifts. Instead a 600m climb on the opposite side of the valley was needed. With limited time and energy, we skipped it. Instead Nina collared Thomas Lapeyrie as he wandered past our pits and asked him what it was like.

Finally stage 1 & 4, the opening stage for both days, was up. Fred Glo was involved in sorting out the trails for the race, and it wouldn’t be one of his races without some trackless alpine pasture and wide spaced gates. As there isn’t much of that from the top of the lifts, you have to pedal and push for “a cool 40 minutes” (Thomas Lapeyrie), “a hard 1hr 20” (German bloke on a Orange alpine) or a “relaxed 50 minutes” (us) to get to the start on the border between France and Italy.

This stage really showed the difference between something that’s fun to ride, and fun to race. After the open pasture and rock gardens the stage joins “Super Kappa” or “K”, the trail of choice from the last visit. The difference is that the short flat sections you coast along sitting down and chatting are now stood up sprints, and the brief climbs you sat down and span up feel like you’re going to vomit your lungs when racing.

Still, I was here to ride not race so could just enjoy the trail and not worry about it.

I hope the race showcases how incredible the riding is in La Thuile and gets more folk along to pay for lift passes and encourage more trails and more investment. The bike park is so hard to beat for anyone that just wants to have fun thrashing a bike about in the mountains.

As for the race, I predict it will be won by someone with huge levels of fitness, bike handling skills and a solid bike with 2 wheels (that have to be the same size)

12/07/2014
MB Enduro Megeve

Another weekend, another race.

For the last 5 years Megeve has been publicising the opening of it’s lifts for the summer with “the most difficult race in the world”, a 140km, 7000m +/- marathon race that in the 2010 running only 1 of the 600 starters finished.

That sounds a bit much like hard work, so fortunately they also have a 1 day enduro using the Portes du Mont Blanc network of lifts.

Being close to Chamonix there were a few familiar faces dotting about the paddock. The entry forms implied you could choose the riders you wish to race with so we had hoped that Nina, Ally, Spence (here for his first ever race) & I would all get to start at similar times. Instead Nina started 1st with the girls, I was mid pack and Ally & Spence were in the last 10.

Most of us had ridden in Megeve before, me only in the dry (more here) and Nina and Ally only in the wet. In the dry the trails looked well drained, but Nina and Ally said otherwise. An overnight storm meant the trails were pretty slick, but the forecast was for sunshine and light winds so the trail would probably dry out. Mud tyres or normal tyres? Looking about the paddock there was a mix from brand new Swamp Things to virtually bald High Rollers. In the end inertia chose for us and we all went with whatever was on our bikes already.

After some hectic running about Megeve trying to find where to register, we headed up on the Jaillet lift for the 1st of 6 stages. The stages were being ridden properly blind. Not only was there no practice runs, the only clue we had to what was coming was a (highly inaccurate it turned out) profile trace on the back of our race numbers. I’d done some reconnaissance (i.e., looking at previous years headcam footage on vimeo) the week before so figured there would be a mix of bike park, fire road and fresh cut loam.

I was completely correct for 5 of the 6 stages. Each one was some fun but generic bike park berms n rolls, great fresh cut trails through the forest which reminded Ally and me of our days racing the Scottish series in the borders, and brutal, brutal climbs. If it hadn’t been for the climbs then any of the stage could have been all time great trails, but instead some parts felt more like an XC race than an enduro. I think I’m fairly fit and I couldn’t even run up some of the climbs let alone ride. It showed the gulf between normal riders and the pros when we heard that the same climbs were getting ridden up by the fast boys.

Normally I’d have a mix of Spence’s photos and the official event video to save you from relying on my description of the riding, but Spence was racing and the official video will be mostly about a 140km death loop, so instead you’ll just have to use a mix of my description and some crappy i-phone pictures.

Stage 5 was the highlight for me (ignoring the killer climbs) which pretty much went straight down the hill in a loam trench. Sometimes twisting through natural bobsleigh runs, sometimes just hanging off the back of the bike hoping you don’t catch a root. Running in the middle of the pack meant you could feel the roost of loam over your legs as if skiing powder, even Spence & Ally at the back of the field had the same which shows how deep the brown pow was.

Another reminder of the SCU races was the amount of grip. Stages 1 & 2 were almost tractionless most of the time, and completely tractionless in the roots. It was amazing! It did also mean the bikes gained several kg of mud each stage, fortunately the organisers provided enduro specific sticks and puddles at each chairlift to help us clean the bikes. Less fortunately timing issues meant that stage 2 was not included in the overall results, Ally & I were particularly gutted as we both were definitely the fastest riders of the day and easily made up 5 minutes on the lead. Or something.

Stage 6 was not wet or loamy. Dry tarmac and cobbles instead for an urban stage through the posh centre of Megeve. Lots of fun, and always amazing to see how many random people line the barriers for these things to cheer you on, but despite finishing at a lower height than it started it felt like a 2 minute hill climb and was pretty brutal on the legs.

Not being a national level race we were all hoping for better results than usual, or at least, Nina and I were. Ally hadn’t raced since he was on the Scottish development team about a decade ago, and Spence had never raced at all, so was at least guaranteed a pb by finishing.

Nina rode consistently well, no crashes and overtaking several riders each stage, but was denied a podium place in 4th and 123rd of the 170 finishers. Spencer tried, but failed, to take Nina’s crown of stupidest rider induced mechanical in a race by knocking his forks to lock-out during a crash on stage 1, and not noticing until stage 3. His times improved dramatically from there and he got his pb as 70th man. Ally had a solid ride for his first race in about 10 years, staying pretty much upright for all 6 stages and cruising into 30th in men.

My race was going well, riding well within myself and happy to be not too far off the times of Nico Lau given how physical the stages were, until the 4th (or 3rd timed) stage. About half way down my derailleur caught into my wheel, mangling it and snapping my chain. I picked up the remains before running and freewheeling the rest of the stage, then ran the mile or so back to the car to put on a new mech hanger, fix the chain and bodge the derailleur as best I could. I was able to continue with the middle 5 gears of the block more or less working, but worried any impact or hard pedalling would be the end of the mech. Given all this, I was pretty happy with 18th overall.

That’s the racing over for a while now, time to get back to just going out riding.

07/07/2014
Coupe du France Enduro series round 2, Val d’Allos

12 years ago in a small ski resort (not that) far far away, a new race was born…….

The riders of Val d’Allos took DH racing, but went further, creating the “Tribe 10,000” where riders would race laps of different trails, with no practice, over a weekend clocking about 10,000m of descent (that’s 33,000ft, 18 laps of the Fort William DH course or 26 empire state buildings, depending on if you read The New York times, Dirt or The Sun). Like DH, but more endurancy.

The event went well and grew year after year. But what to call this new fangled endurancy DHy race?

Back to 2014 and the 12th edition of the Val d’Allos Tribe 10,000 is the second round of the Coupe du France enduro series, so the car was loaded with 3 bikes, 6 sets of riding gear, 3 riders, many tyres and lots of food for the drive south. The optimistic sat-nav was trying to convince us that the drive would only be 5 hr, but as we crawled up the pass to the Col d’Allos battling oncoming road bikers, motorcyclist, sportscars, broken barriers and several hundred sheep, 5 hr passed and we eventually made it to our apartment for the weekend about 6 1/2 hr after setting out.

Saturday started with an obligatory 0715 rider briefing. With 3 people who don’t do mornings it was always going to be a struggle, but somehow we managed to get ourselves to the grassy field under the main chairlift in time.

Speaking of the chairlift, the lifts used for the race are being replaced this summer (you could see why…) and aren’t running in 2014, except for this weekend where they were opened specially. I can’t see Compagnie du Mont Blanc doing that! The staff put in a huge effort not only loading hundreds of bikes onto chairs, but coaxing the lifts into life despite the mechanisms obviously not being happy about working one last time.

Back to the briefing where Fred Glo, Coupe du France heid honcho, told us that this wasn’t the EWS, so they could use whatever rules they wanted. Instead of 3 courses on Saturday with a reccy run followed by a chrono lap on each we would be getting a single reccy run of the 1st track, then the next 5 runs would be timed. The second course (laps 3 & 4) shared the same 1st 1/2 as laps 1 & 2, but the last course would be run completely blind.

Fortunately the reccy run showed that the trails in Val d’Allos are amazing. Fast, scary scary fast in places, singletrack sweeping through meadows and trees. Not much in the way of technical sections, but equally you could pretty much ride the whole trail chainless.

The second laps were the same but different. Fast swoopy traces of dirt meandering through the trees with the odd new cut section through the grass.

The final stage was something different though. A flat pedal for a 100m or so dropped you without warning down a steep chute into a 90 degree left. The trail then swapped between some of the sweeping singletrack of before, tighter rockier chutes and linked by widely taped meadow sections which felt more like skiing than cycling as you picked a line to air over small rolls and use the features to help cornering.

If all that’s a bit hard to visualise, just watch the offishiul race video here.

The weather stayed dry pretty much all day and, with temperatures just warm enough to stop you needing too many layers it was a pretty good day’s riding.

Then Sunday came.

All week the forecast had been calling rain on Sunday, and sure enough in the middle of Saturday night the sound of water on tin roof came into the apartment. It eased up at points during the day, but when it rained, it rained…..

With the less than perfect weather, some changes to the format were announced. Instead of a reccy run of today’s stage (which was completely new, never raced, and featured mostly fresh cut trail. Perfect in the wet) followed by 2 chrono runs then a final “super special” stage on a secret trail, we would get to reccy the first half of the stage, then go straight up to the top for our first timed run.

Of course, most folk were planning on using the reccy run to work out what tyres to run, but now there was no time to swap before getting on the chair up. Most folk were on all round tyres anyway, with a few having gambled on the conditions and swapped to spikes already, but there were plenty concerned looking people still on fast rolling semi-slicks.

The reccy run was interesting……starting above the tree line it was hold on and hope over open hillside with slick grass and slick off camber rock. Once into the trees it was steep lines through more slick grass and very wet loam. I was one of the early runners on the reccy and the loam was amazingly tacky, but what would it be like after about 300 riders had slid through?

Back to the top and everyone huddled together like a penguin colony in the Antarctic winter trying to keep warm. Then the thunder started. The peel of thunder was followed by peels of laughter, what more could happen to the track now!

Once on the course the section below the reccied route turned out to follow old trails and paths so wasn’t as treacherous as up high. It was a long stage though with about 1000m of vertical taking us down below the finish village from Saturday.

We had thought there would then be a cycle back up the hill to Allos, but instead yet another lift was coaxed into action and we were returned to the paddock to sort bikes without having to break sweat.

After much milling about and hiding in the feed tent the next change in running order was announced. As the weather was only getting worse there would be no more runs on the new stage, instead the second and last stage of the day would be the lower part of the second course from Saturday.

How did the racing go?

I went into the weekend chanting the mantra “slow is fast, slow is fast, slow is fast” and cruised down my first few runs where I discovered that slow is still just slow. Nina was having none of the this approach and was flying when still on the bike, unfortunately some mechanicals and rider mistakes were holding her up. Read her thoughts on it all here.

The other problem holding us up was that the narrow trails were very hard to overtake on, and with more than 10 riders to pass on most laps, you had to get quite used to bouncing through the undergrowth. It was the same for everyone outside the top 20 though and just adds to the experience. I told myself.

The first run down the final trace of Saturday was my riding highlight of the weekend. I’d abandoned “slow is fast” in favour of “trying a bit harder but not too hard”. There’s not much better than riding fast into blind terrain and it always (or at least mostly always) working out like you hoped it would.

Sunday’s weather knocked a lot of the enthusiasm out of us though and the long first trace was hard to race. I took the run far too cautiously and was never anywhere close to a crash, but also didn’t overtake anyone and was passed twice. Fortunately this was down to me sneaking a start in with the fast folk and I ended up with my first top 50 stage time.

I hoped that swapping to flats would let me ride looser on the second lap and move up the standings, but the second running of the course never happened.

Instead we were back on Saturdays narrow singletrack. The flat pedals stayed on, but I was too lazy to swap to spikes instead hoping that the trail would stay firm. It didn’t, but even if it was slower without spikes, it was so much more fun! Pretty much every corner was foot out and drifting. Somehow I got away with it until virtually the last turn in the woods before the final berms when I slid out, off the trail, through the tapes, over a drop and down an embankment into the trees. It was fun while it lasted.

Nina’s first time on mud tyres went much better and despite catching the girl in front of her, crashing, then catching her again and not being able to pass, she rode in to 5th for the stage and only 12 seconds away from 3rd. Suddenly she liked riding in the wet…

Overall an improvement on my pretty rubbish performance in Blausasc with a 65th in category on the Saturday and 48th on the Sunday, but still plenty room for getting betterer.

Again, thanks to the Tribe team and all at Val d’Allos for another great event and cheers to Nina for letting me jump queues with her (the girls get to start after the top 20 guys, so get to go to the front of all the lift lines) and Spence for driving, mechanicing, chefing and taking the photos.

Next, something more local. Megeve racing.

02/07/2014
The longest day

Summer solstice. The longest day, shortest night and start of the countdown to winter. Also an excuse (if an excuse was ever needed) to both go in to the hills to do stuff and go out on the town.

After some warm up laps around Les Houches (trails all riding nice, bit of rain would be good to give some more grip though) we headed up the Bellevue gondola and climbed round towards the Col du Mont Lachet.

The trail down from the col is fairly exposed in places, but I think it’s pretty fun. Not everyone else, or possibly anyone else, agreed…..but I was enjoying myself.

With plenty of daylight to play with we had been aiming to get high somewhere in the valley and ride down in the evening light. Unfortunately all the usual supects that face west and would be bathed in dusky evening light are still just a bit too snowy, so we settled on an east facing lap down to Trient instead

With efficiency few locations in the developed world can equal, the last train from Chamonix to Montroc gets you there with enough just time to sprint up the hill and just catch the Le Tour lifts as they are closing. We had an anxious wait at the top of the Autannes chair to see if our bikes had been loaded or if the lifty had clocked off for the day….eventually they climbed into view.

In contrast to last year, the climb up to the Col du Balme only needed a couple of quick snow crossings rather than wanting to have an axe and crampons. The descent on the other hand still has a few snow patches, succesfully negotiated by all bar me. Saved by my bike and Lorne.

The trail to Trient was as good as always, more fast and flowing than the trails earlier in the day, great to ride in a chain of 4, even if being last generally meant choking on the dust from the others.

Although we were on the wrong aspect to get the best light, the later time meant we met no one else on the whole 20 minute descent, only tired arms and overheating brakes gave reasons to slow up or stop.

The tear down the road from Trient to Chatelard wasn’t as good as the tear down the trails, but did prove that tucking works, tucking and drafting works better, and tucking, drafting and running a semi-slick rear tyre works best.

The climb back up to Vallorcine is slow enough that tucking does little to help, though again less tread is better. Either way, it goes easy enough and soon we were looking at the lengthening shadows around the train station and waiting for a helping hand over (or through) the Col du Montets to Montroc where Lorne & I got out for the last few miles down the valley to beers at Rhodedendrons whilst Nina and Spencer put their feet up.

Of course, summer solstice in Chamonix is not complete without the Fete des Musique so a long day still wasn’t finished.

22/06/2014
Bikes on a train, and other forms of mechanical uplift.

Lifts are open, no more pretending that pedalling uphill is worthy and good.

An opening party was being held at Le Tour with demo bikes, drinks and rumours of new trails, so we headed in the opposite direction to Les Houches.

It seemed a fairly popular choice and it was surprising to see just how much the main DH track wore in over the course of the day.

Not having big bikes in addition to our normal bikes with their mere 160mm of travel, slack angles and huge brakes, Lorne & I rode a few laps of the Prarion front face away from the official DH track before dropping down ‘Who’s way‘ to St Gervais followed by a lap of the Pipeline trail and icecream whilst waiting for the Tramway back up to the Bellevue stop.

The 40 minute ride back up gives you plenty time to recover, so after heading down on the GR5 trail back to Les Houches it was back to quick laps on the Prarion front face again.

All the trails were riding well, though a bit of traffic to clean the loose stones and twigs will help. The official bike trails have had a bit of maintenance and, although there are no new sectors, the long muddy section low on the trail has had a wooden boardwalk put down to save you from the worst of the clart.

Tomorrow, more of the same I think. In the words of Adrian Moffat, it’s the first big weekend of the summer (though I don’t think he ever had riding bikes down hills in France in mind)

15/06/2014