Chamonix Bike Blog

Author: chamonixbikeblog

Stealing Autumn.

Back in 2016, I imagined what would happen if the then president elect went biking in Chamonix. Four years later, leaving office with the legacy of being the first president to be impeached twice, he’s here in his own words again*; A timeline of how autumn was stolen.

04/11/2020 Election night speech: “I want to thank the first lady, my entire family….for being with us all through this. And we were getting ready for a big ride. We were riding everything and all of a sudden it was just called off. The rides have been phenomenal and we are getting ready… I mean, literally we were just all set to get outside and just ride something that was so beautiful, so good. Such a trail, such a success for riders of Chamonix to have come out in record numbers. This is a trail. There’s never been anything like it to support our incredible riding. We rode trails that we weren’t expected to ride. Flatiere, we didn’t ride it. We rode it a lot.

And all of a sudden everything just stopped.

This is a fraud on the Chamonix public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to ride this trail when it was stolen by the snow. Frankly, we did ride this trail. We did ride this trail. So our goal now is to ensure the weather for the good of this nation. This is a very big moment. This is a major fraud in our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the Supreme Court. We want all weather to stop. We don’t want them to find any snow at four o’clock in the morning and add it to the trail. Okay? It’s a very sad moment. To me this is a very sad moment and we will ride this. And as far as I’m concerned, we already have ridden it. “

Tweet 04/11/2020 How come every time they count snow falls they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction? WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?

Tweet 04/11/20 We have claimed, for riding purposes, the Commonwealth of Flatiere (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Servoz, and the State of Les Bois, each one of which has a BIG dry trail network. Additionally, we hereby claim the State of Les Houches if, in fact,..there was a large number of secretly dumped snow as has been widely reported! Our lawyers have asked for “meaningful access”, but what good does that do? The damage has already been done to the integrity of our trails, and to the riding itself. This is what should be discussed!

Tweet 05/11/20 STOP THE SNOW!

Tweet 07/11/20 09.41 Lawyers press conference at Four Seasons, Philadelphia 11.00 A.M.

Tweet 07/11/20 09.45 Big press conference in Philadelphia at Four Seasons Total Landscaping – 11.30 A.M.

Tweet 07/11/20 Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia: To clarify, President Trump’s press conference will NOT be held at Four Seasons Hotel Philadelphia. It will be held at Four Seasons Total Landscaping— no relation with the hotel.

Tweet 07/11/20 Winter should not wrongfully claim the trails of Chamonix. I could make that claim also. Legal proceedings are just now beginning!

Tweet 07/11/20 I had such a big ride on all of these trails late into November 4th, only to see the trails miraculously disappear under snow as the days went by. Perhaps these trails will return as our legal proceedings move forward!

Tweet 09/11/20 Chamonix meteo, meteo france, meteoblue were so inaccurate with their forecasts, that it really is tampering with the weather. They were so far off in their forecast and in their attempt to suppress – that they should be called out for weather interference…

This claim about weather fraud is disputed

Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, phonecall 02/01/2021: “So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 dry trails, which is one more than we have. Because we won the season. The people of Chamonix are angry, the people in the country are angry” “And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.” “So what are we going to do here folks? I only need 11,000 dry trails. Fellas, I need 11,000 dry trails. Give me a break. There’s no way I lost Autumn. There’s no way. We won by hundreds of thousands of trails.” Brad Raffensperger: “Well, Mr President, the challenge that you have is, the data you have is wrong, winter always follows autumn.”

Tweet 12/12/2020 Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!

06/01/2021 Address to rally near White House: “But our fight against the big winter, big snow, big ice, and others is just getting started. This is the greatest in history. There’s never been a movement like that…. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have dry trails anymore….Because you’ll never take back autumn with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong…. And I had to beat Oprah, used to be a friend of mine. You know, I was on her last show, her last week, she picked the five outstanding people. I don’t think she thinks that any more.”

06/01/21 Pre recorded address to ask protesters to stop storming the Capitol: “I know your pain, I know your hurt. We had an autumn that was stolen from us. It was an endless season, and everyone knows it, especially the other side…. But you have to go home now. We have to have skis. We have to have ice and snow…. We can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have winter. So go home. We love you; you’re very special.”

Tweet 06/01/2021 “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred season is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great riders (on Orange Patriots presumably…) who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”

12/01/2021 Alamo Texas, Trump address to crowd: “Free trails are under assault like never before…. The 25th amendment is of zero risk to me but will come back to haunt the snow and the snow administration as they call, I call it winter”

13/01/2021: Congress voted to impeach D.J.T, Presidential pardons released: NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT KNOWN that I, D. J. T, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby grant clemency to the said Autumn, and 70 others.

19/01/2021 Farewell address to the nation: “I did not seek the easiest course; by far, it was actually the most difficult. I did not seek the path that would get the least airtime. I took on the tough rock slabs, the hardest corners, the most difficult line choices – because that’s what you elected me to do.”

“I go from this majestic season with a loyal and joyful heart, an optimistic spirit, and a supreme confidence that for our bikes and for our trails, the best is yet to come. Thank you, and farewell. God bless you. God bless the United States of Flatiere.”

20/01/2021 Final public words as President: “So, have a good life. We will see you soon.”

Once again, all of the above is basically his own words, this time culled from tweets and press conferences and public addresses since he lost both the popular and electoral college vote.

The last go at this, back in November 12th 2016, saw an interesting anomaly this site’s analytics. The number 1 and 2 countries for the most hits are always the UK and France. They swap places, but it’s always one or the other. For the month after I posted Post Truth Biking, Russia rushed the number one spot, being responsible for 32.3% of all traffic to the blog between 12th November and 11th December 2016. Anyone care to hazard a guess at why that happened?

*So I had been chipping away at this post for a while, with a nice document listing tweets that I might use and with simple to follow hyperlinks to show that yes, Trump really did say that, when he staged a rally on the same day that congress was certifying the election of Joe Biden. At the rally, Trump encouraged his supporters to “walk down to the Capitol” and you know the rest. Alas this also led to Trump being permanently removed from twitter and all his old tweets disappearing. Along with my links. So if you want to check, the date and shape of each tweet is there, I’m sure your favourite conspiracy theory approved search engine can do the rest.

21/01/2021
Dorenaz

I got a fair bit of feedback on the last post here. Apparently the physics of time and space and time were/are/will be a step too far. Folk were worried. It’s nice to know people care. And read the blog.

With that in the mind, lets bring things back down to earth with something more cheery.

Parasites.

Damn they’re amazing. Take toxoplasmosis. Until recently all I knew about it was you get it in cat poo and it caused Tommy’s death in Trainspotting (err, spoiler). Well, it didn’t really, his death was the result of a chain of events that surely couldn’t have been foreseen but that doesn’t help my point, whatever, choose life.

Some of this is relevant. Toxoplasmosis is a parasite that lives in the guts of cats. To proliferate it needs to spread from cat to cat. Obviously, this is difficult when you live in the gut of a cat. So, toxoplasmosis leaves through the usual channels and sits on the floor. Cats don’t eat cat poo. Cats eat rats and mice. So instead the parasite waits for the rats and mice to eat the poo and get one step closer to the guts of the next cat. This would be interesting enough, but the really good bit is about to come. Normal mouse and rat behaviour is to stay as close as possible to the edge of a room or some other shelter. Not those that have been infected with toxoplasmosis. These rats and mice throw off their agoraphobia and make a b-line for the middle of the room, maximising their chance of ending up as cat snack. It gets weirder. Some studies into rats have shown that after being infected with toxoplasmosis they might become sexually attracted to the scent of cat urine. Which raises some interesting questions about the perfume industry.

This tiny wee parasite completely alters the behaviour of a host animal for it’s own gain. Where could analogies with day to day life be found in that?

Thinking about it, is this blog parasitic? Does it alter your behaviour when you read these posts and keep seeing yon lovely Airdrop Edit on the finest trails in the world, you start associating the two. Probably not your behaviour, but does it alter my behaviour? I’m keen to keep riding the bike (it’s the most fun bike I’ve owned), and I’m also keen to keep getting them, so does that worm its way into my mind and alter my picture choices? How about when you see ideas for rides that are notchamonix and they work on your mind to change your behaviour to do that, leave the safety of the bikepark, head out into the open. Does this blog make you attracted to the smell of marmotte pee?

So many questions with no intention of finding an answer. On with the riding.

In a valley not so far away there is a magical lift. Ok, maybe magical is pushing it a bit, but unique should cover it. Dorenaz is public transport, a quicker easier way up to Champex than taking the bus. That makes it fairly rare. It takes bikes, at least 6 of them, for a small extra fee. This makes it rarer. You hang the bikes from hooks on the underside of the lift and hope they’re still attached when you get to the top. There’s not many lifts that make you do that.

Normally when you use uplift you sling the bike into the carrier and forget about it until you have to unhook it from the chairlift at the top. Not so much in Dorenaz where I challenge anyone not to have a quick glance at their axles to make sure everything’s done up good and tight. It’s funny the things that get inside your head.

No matter how amazing, the lift only gets you so far. We stood about in the slightly cooler air of 1124m altitude, looked at a map, discussed options, and decided it was way too much like effort to go all the way to the Tete du Portail, and definitely way too hot and dry for the descent. The lower trails on the south facing aspects from the Dorenaz lift are loose and dry at the best of times, as it doesn’t seem to have rained this century in Valais we couldn’t really call this the best of times.

Instead we started traversing and climbing along the west facing slopes, linking trails we knew with trails we’d heard of.

It went pretty well. We basically ended up with 2 descents, the first steep, slow and technical the second faster looser and more flowing.

The first was what I guess BC Canada would feel like if it rained less and was warmer. So BC in about 10 years then. The dirt didn’t quite have that hero tack of Whistler, but it wasn’t just loose dust either, and the rock lined trail dropping down through old growth forest with the early autumn light filtering down to the green floor made you feel like you were in another Frenchie-living-in-Squamish shredit. Stills make this myth easier to perpetuate than video.

I can’t really remember the climb, which is probably part of the bike being a parasite thing, altering memory to suppress the bit’s that aren’t fun, so maybe the first descent led straight into the second?

It didn’t, but we get to make our own truths, so it did. Which will be part of the parasitic behaviour of society thing.

The second course was a much quicker affair, which was good and bad. Lot’s of fun, but it’s all over so much quicker. It was good to be in nice wide spaced trees, and being early autumn there was a fine combination of orange on the forest floor, orange in the canopy, and less intense orange sunlight dappling down amongst the shadows.

Orange, truly the colour of our time.

I alluded to it being quick, 850m had been lost in a dusty, slidy, hairpin-y flash and we were left with the pay off from going right for the last few hours. A sharp turn to the left and heading back home. We can but hope. Turned out the fun wasn’t over. Whilst going right had been a steady downhill trend, going left still had some fun singletrack next to the Rhone to pump and pop along before the final few kilometers of vineyard track back to the car. Chat turned to where next in 2020’s adventure. No idea, but I’ll probably write something for it. Photos for this week come from the phone’s of messieurs Oliver Carr and Juan Coatez, ta muchly!

22/09/2020
Backpacks in the bikepark // Pila

Ninety six percent of the human body is made up of just four elements; carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen*. As best science can currently tell us, the only way to form these elements is inside a star. The nuclear alchemy at the centre of a distant supernova, eons ago, created these atoms and flung them out across space. In the void of the galaxy, their tiny gravitation forces slowly drew them to other elements. Greater objects exerted greater draws and eventually they were pulled on the fused ball of spacedust we know as earth. Over further millennia these same atoms formed the building blocks of increasingly complex organisms. Bacteria, virus, plants, fishes, mammals. Finally, in 2020, these bits of actual stardust, form us.

With such an improbably fantastic heritage inside us, what have we been inspired to achieve? Mixed bag really. After that amazing journey to arrive where we are you’d think it would be easy enough to accept science as it is, you wouldn’t have folk claiming the earth is flat, that people of slightly different skin colour deserve to die on a beach, 5g gives you coronavirus and vaccines aren’t tested, all because it sounds too complex, too improbable. But we do, blame the solar system.

There’s been some good stuff too.

Like Italy.

Coffee, ice cream, stylish engineering and Pila bikepark. These four elements may not be as vital to life on earth as C, H, N and O, but they compliment them well.

So Pila, yeah, it’s all that.

Unfortunately I only really get to ride the lower section due to summer work clashing with opening dates but with the selection of atoms know as SARS-CoV-2 limiting that, best make hay whilst the sun shines.

Which obviously it always does in Aosta.

The bikepark gets all the attention on the socials, and it is right good with some new to me trails and features since I last lapped the Chamole chairlift in 2018, but if you can handle the fashion faux pas of wearing a backpack in the bikepark then the stuff you explore to from the lifts but outside the tape is every bit as good…

Traverse from the top of the Chamole chairlift along a newly built blue flow trail and you’ll quickly arrive at the Couis 1 chair. Assuming it’s running (it closes Sunday 23rd this year) and you’ll then slowly arrive at the top.

Really slowly.

Took us 30 mins bottom to top, so it’s just as weel the views are good. They get even better at the summit as the Cogne valley unveils itself below and your eyes get drawn to the ridgeline stretching out towards Aosta town.

You can ride that ridgeline, and if you like ridgelines you should. Then you too can take photos like these.

You need to make choices though, turn off left to ride to Cogne (we didn’t), keep going all the way along the ridge to join walking trails 23 and 21 to the valley floor (again, we didn’t, you had to climb a bit, too hot for that game), or turn off right to rejoin the Desarpa trail that winds it’s way back to Pila for more coffee and more fun.

After dingying a climb at 2600m altitude, we instead climbed from the top of the Chamole chair at 2300m. The air was a bit denser, or we were. Either / or.

It’s just a short climb to the Lago Chamole though, then another short climb onto the Testa Nera ridgeline. Definitely got a thing for ridgelines these days.

Again we eschewed the classic choices for a bit of exploring. Where normally you’d turn right for long descending adventure or left for a quick and enjoyable return to the lifts, we went straight.

Then wandered about in circles a bit, turned around, went back to the junction, tried going straight 10 meters further to the left, and found what we were looking for.

Unfortunately it seemed no one else had been looking for a while as the trail was a wee bit overgrown and unloved. A shame as the basic shape of it was classic Aostan gold but them’s the breaks.

And it really wasn’t too shabby where it wasn’t too shrubby.

Assorted trails later we were at the valley floor, where it was too hot to hang about so headed straight back up again and stayed up high until the lifts closed and we figured we’d have to head for home.

Via ice cream obviously.

Pila; we are stardust, we are golden.

All pictures of me taken by Toby, on his bloody phone! All pictures of Toby taken by me on a Sony RX100 which I’ve gone back to playing with the dials on and as a result most shots are out of focus, over/under exposed, too grainy/too blurred. it’s a learning process.

*Of course, these elements don’t just create life, they can destroy it too. Take the next major threat to life you’re going to be hearing lots about: dihydrogen monoxide. A clear, tasteless acid which turns up in nuclear waste, acid rain, fossil fuel power plant fumes and even in human cancers. It can corrode metal and rock, and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of over 350,000 people a year, yet is found in most food stuffs and drinks. There’s several petitions desperately trying to raise awareness and get this poison banned, hopefully at least one will get some traction somewhere.

20/08/2020
Emosson dam / Things are generally better than you think they are.

Here’s a question for you*:

In the last 20 years the percentage of the world’s population living in extreme poverty** has?

A) About doubled
B) Remained about the same
C) About halved

A, obviously.

How about this one then:

How many of the world’s 1 year old children have been vaccinated*** against at least 1 disease?

A) 20%
B) 50%
C) 80%

Again, surely A isn’t it. Depressing but that’s how it goes. Certainly not C. What optimistic fool would think that?

So yeah, it’s C. Both times. Don’t worry, most people get it wrong. You’d assume by the wonders of multiple choice averages then about 33% would get those questions right, but no, its closer to 13%

And your education doesn’t seem to help either, apparently that last question has a strong correlation where the better your education, the more likely you said A. Which makes sense, as you’d be more aware of the complexities of creating, storing, transporting and administering a vaccine that needs to be kept refrigerated at all times and delivered by highly trained professionals.

Why’s this? I don’t really know, but clevererer folks than me think it’s because there’s a lag time between your education and your current place in the world. What you learnt at school was probably right(ish) 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago but the world has moved on. It’s just your knowledge that hasn’t. You imagine that because you were taught about famines and corruption and destitution in many regions across the world, things haven’t really changed. If a country can’t feed their population, how can they have a refrigerated transport network? Well they can by having moved on over a 20 year period and now most citizens live a lifestyle similar to the UK not that long ago. In general, on almost any metric you care to use, the world of right now is a better place than the world of your school days. Things really are getting better. So essentially, before making a flash judgement on something, you need to check what the state of the art is and re-assess your existing knowledge. Then crack on with your whataboutisms that the statue is there because of his philanthropic work and historical context, not the other dubious bits. Like, why else would you want to keep the statue of Jimmy Savile?

Bikes then Graham, how are you pulling this back to bikes?

Weel, a similar thing happens with trails. You might have ridden a line on the map 8 years ago, but mountain geology is an active thing, trails change, work gets done to make things less or more rideable. Riders change, our tastes change, our bikes get better. Basically, you need to go back to places every so often to see if the situations changed.

Years ago I more or less wrote off Emosson Dam as being not worth the effort of biking except the classic line from the dam to Martigny. James got in touch to see if I wanted to try and find a trail he’d heard of over Emosson dam way. I was fairly sure it’d be ok, just not worth the effort you’d put in to get there, but I’d not seen James in ages and playing bikes is only ever an excuse to catch up with the amazing people that ride them. So I said aye, where shall we meet and a day later we’d both taken the same different train and were sat in a cafe in Finhaut drinking coffee out of antique tea cups whilst a giant cat pinned me to the chair and a road climb in the sun waited for us.

Long story short, turned out to be a great trail. It wouldn’t have been a great trail 15 years ago because my bike would have broken on the way down (twice) and I’d have broken on the way up if I’d tried to pedal something that would survive the down.

We explored a bit, we turned around from the first attempt due to too much snow, we found the second plan, we sessioned a few bits, we looked at dragon flies, we rode some great trail, we talked about all sorts of shit.

Actually, that’s not praise enough. It really was a good trail. We chose not to ride a couple of short sections, partly because we are now old, partly because even though both of us are happy to represent for bike companies that produce bikes we really like (obviously mine is better though, covid compliant fist bumps to Airdrop for the new Edit which has taken the baton passed to it by my old Edit and Bolted down the hill) we don’t want to replace those bikes too often and big piles of rocks do shorten bike lifespans when you drop them into it.

The upper section had the most bike threatening terrain, but past the initial couple hundred meters of descent things mellowed out and it turned onto one of those trails that you know is older than your grandparents yet somehow was built with 2020 bikes in mind. Tight switchbacks but with supportive berms, assorted small lips with perfectly placed backsides to aim for, rocks that roll or launch depending on your preference. Like I say, really was a good trail.

It’s the trail between the dam, Gietroz and Chatelard. That should give enough clues to tempt you away from the increasingly busy Chamonix without taking away too much of the fun of updating your knowledge.

*If you’ve read Factfullness then none of this is news to you. I’m confident most of you haven’t, so I can get away with stealing content.

**Extreme poverty is generally defined as living on ‘less than a dollar a day’ but that’s based on 1996 prices, so the world bank considers, for 2019, that extreme poverty is living on less than $2.16 a day. In 2018 an estimated 8.6% of the world lived in extreme poverty, in 1998 24% which is closer to thirded than halved, but there’s plenty room for error in the stats. Unfortunately, and in opposition to the general aim of this piece, the predictions are that for the first time in a very long time the percentage of people living (perhaps surviving might be a better term) in extreme poverty looks set to rise due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Which is shit. And also a reminder that the restarting of economies in the rich nations has knock on effects world wide if we stay with the current global economic model, or that if the world is going to change to a new more human/less $ focused system then we’d better do it quick sharp as time really is running out for a lot of people. Don’t worry though, the ultra rich still got richer so that’s good isn’t it.

18/07/2020 Also, just to clarify and I should have had this in originally; Things getting better isn’t the same as things being good. 8.6% of the world living in extreme poverty whilst the richest 26 people in the world hold 50% of global wealth is a fucking disgrace and needs to change.

***Interesting facts for all you die-hard, or at least die-of-preventable-illness, anti-vaxers: the very first vaccine was made in 1796 to neuter smallpox, a disease that was eventually eradicated thanks to that thar vaccination. Regrettably no double blind study was carried out 224 years ago, we had to wait over 150 years for that to start happening, but it does happen. Seriously, how can you believe despite all the evidence that these vaccines are unleashed on the public untested, how does that great conspiracy theory run through governments that can’t even get the trains to run on time?

16/07/2020
Queyras

About now I should be busy working, showing riders mostly from the UK or US around amazing alpine trails that I know really well. But, whilst life is a fair chunk of the way back to normal here in France and most of Europe, the UK and US are taking longer to control the pandemic and a summer biking holiday isn’t on the cards for most folks.

Lots of other MTB guides are in the same boat, so we’re off exploring new trails instead.

Somewhere a little over four hours drive from Chamonix is a mythical place where the food is cheap, the sun shines 300 plus days a year, and the trails are the golden flowy perfection of bike magazine covers.

No, not Italy, the Queyras. And conveniently Emily of The Inside Line was headed over there to scout out more trails and get some quality #content to use to persuade the world that they should be booking a holiday with her to ride said trails. Which is why last week I packed up the car and headed south over a road bikers dream of cols. Dream / nightmare, the cols Telegraphe, Galibier, Lautaret and d’Izoard are things of legend. One for another day.

As the trip was for a mix of searching out potential new trail gold to mine as well as filuming known trails there was a lot of working around the golden hours of early morning and late evening to get the perfect lightbro. I hate mornings so was happy to be starting out at the respectable time of 5pm to go and bag our shots.

Sure enough, an hour or so of pedalling from the Col d’Izoard later we were above a mountain lake, staring towards distant mountains that framed a sinuous snake of singletrack, and bathed in soft evening light.

…and discussing how best to shoot it. Which usually involves riding the same bit of trail several times over to get footage from umpteen angles whilst I alternate between washing out the front wheel and forgetting to turn when I reach the corner. Pattern set for the week.

Shooting done we could enjoy the hundreds of meters of flow through the forest, and move on to the carpark that would be home for the night.

Sun comes up, time to ride bikes again. We pedal through the ever so slightly odd village of Abries, and up tarmac then gravel towards the morning’s objective. Slightly odd, very odd might be better. For reasons none of us felt like exploring, Abries has chosen to populate the sleepy streets with assorted stuffed mannequins performing the mundane tasks of everyday life. Whatever gets you through lock down.

Every meter pedalled was a meter away from the village and towards our trail however. A lovely thing of a trail. Starting up by an idyllic alpage, swooping serenely alongside a meandering river, in and out of copses of trees and meadows of alpine flower, round a mellow unsighted corner, into an obligatory gap jump drop over sharp spiky shale.

It was a slightly unexpected change in character, mibbies the unstable terroir explains some of the unstable mannequins? Eitherways, it was dispatched and photographed and we continued on past churches and yet more flow. A reminder that alpine trails pretty much always have a surprise of some sort for you.

If the morning’s trail was about getting footage, the afternoon was about checking out a promising looking line Emily had seen on the map. Without the shuttles you have when guiding it was going to be a bit of a pedal, but how bad could it be really?

Up some road, then some gravel road, then some 4×4 track, we should be able to pedal all the way to the top. And we could, but it was definitely a bit more than any of us had accounted for. Talk turned to trail snacks, peanut M&M’s, Bombay mix. All our food was long eaten.

No matter, the views were grand and we traversed happily round from the top of the climb to the start of the descent. What did matter was the trail had washed away. A work around was found, and lo, it was flowy.

It stayed flowy. From wide and open top, into thin, then thicker, trees. Snaking straights with sick hairpins. Seen just enough traffic to have a bike line worn in, but no danger of brake bumps. Banger all the way to end. Best trail I’ve ridden in a long time.

We got back to the van under cloudy skies and destroyed every unattended salted crisp, peanut and beer bottle in the van.

Another morning and blue sky again.

We were going for another explore, a look into the unknown, but with the comfort blanket of sections of the trail having been visited before. Known unknown’s if you like. After yesterdays unknown unknowns we stocked up on stoke, food and drink. That mistake wasn’t being repeated.

The climb was hot and sweaty, 1250m of up in the middle of the afternoon so you can summit in time for golden hour is only ever going to be hot and sweaty, but with some picture perfect wee hamlets to stop in and some stunning cols to admire the views from, it could have been a lot worse.

Even better, the trail to the 2500m summit that looked pretty marginal on the map turned out to be one of the most rideable bits of the climb. A rewarding bench cut track working its way round corners that kept revealing more views and more interest. The reccy bit of riding is where it’s at. What’s over the next ridge? The joy of exploring that got so many of us on bikes as kids.

No matter how agreeable a climb, 2545m is 2545m. A semi derelict observatory post was a fun distraction, but we all needed the rejuvenating powers of cheap sugar and e number laced sweets to get us ready for the descent.

And whit a descent. Bit loose up high on the grey rock, but fun. Contouring round the hill inbetween hairpins. From the Col de Fromage a wee traverse drops into a Queyras classic. Maybe a few too many rocks on the trail to truly call it flow, but shit tonnes of fast straights and just supportive enough corners.

Turning off the worn line to cross a bridge and the trail changes character. Less angle but still just enough for you to pump more than pedal. A lot more than pedal. Beautiful swooping balcon trail through a stunning forest with lush grassy forest floor. A briefest of shower from the clouds that had been building all afternoon couldn’t ruin the mood, just improve the light. Sunlight dappled through the trees with beautiful rain drops.

It ended back in the village, 10m from the ice cream selling gite. Result, best trail I’d ridden since yesterday.

We packed up the van and headed on out and up.

Camped nearly at the top of the Col Agnel, we were poised to be at the top of the climb in time to catch the light whilst getting started as late as possible. At nearly 2700m the air is pretty chilly and a little thin, so we were all a bit tired and grumpy by the morning. We pedalled up the last of the road towards Italy, then over bog, path and snow up to the Col Vieux and the col view.

This last big trail was one Emily and David knew well, so the surprises were all mine on the way down and with about 1300m to descend there was plenty of opportunity to surprise. Even once we’d left the high alpine and settled into what felt like familiar Queyras flow territory the trail turned into a cobbled highway. Not one of your nice flat cobbled highways either, a wall to wall wtf of rounded stones at all angles and heights. Pick a line and stayed loose.

We cruised back into Abries where we’d left my car days before and headed for morning crepes only the cafe was closed, so coffee it is and on to the next village for a boulangerie lunch.

The weather hadn’t quite broken yet, so why not try one last unexplored line highlighted on Emily’s map. Traverse for 20 mins then fast fun through a burnt forest reclaimed by a carpet of flowers. But with the odd (very odd) slab and tech to keep you on your toes. Fitting end.

Driving home the weather finally broke. Not far up the road to Col d’Izoard the thunder started to be accompanied by lightening, the spots of rain became a torrent became hail. The road went white. Or yellowy brown. The Izoard is possibly the most beautiful col I’ve been over, but not in a storm when the slopes get washed across the road. Where were those 300 days of sunshine now?

02/07/2020