Chamonix Bike Blog

Author: chamonixbikeblog

Continuous Professional Development

Hello, it’s been a while. Missed me? Not much content here of late but it’s not you, it’s me. Not that I’ve no been riding, just that I’ve been working.

I’ve had umpteen jobs down the years. When I sat at a desk trying to find ways to pay for those walking and cycling routes politicians said Glasgow should have, I didn’t find myself writing EU funding applications for infrastructure projects for fun at the weekend. Yet, with bike guiding, first chance you get to rest your calloused hands and you head off to try ride some trails you’ve never ridden before, and not get paid for it.

It all gets chalked up in the log book I guess.

Anyways, this is why on my week off I found myself hanging out with friends riding new trails in the Tarentaise.

And hanging out with friends riding new trails in the Valais.

And hanging out with friends riding new trails in Beaufortain.

This blog is about the last of those.

Beaufortain is the area you’ve not heard of. Unless you race ski-mo. Or eat a lot of cheese. Cows are definitely priority #1 in this area. Fortunately though, there’s not much number 2 (except courtesy of priority number 1 alas) so bikes are encouraged as a way to supplement the cheese-and-skiing financial model that so much of the alps seems to survive on. Yay for generous unemployment benefit.

So how do VTT get encouraged to join the vache? Lots of way-marked trails, some pumptracks, cheap chairlifts and free buses. Pretty good eh.

With a forecast as all over the place as a Prime Ministerial haircut, we met at noon. Well, we planned to. Everyone was late. It started raining, we put our jackets on, it stopped raining, and that was the weather fixed for the day. You learn these tricks at guide school.

Time to ride. Chris was meeting us down in Beaufort. There’s a free bus from Beaufort back up to Les Saises. Les Saisies is about 900 meters above Beaufort. You can see where this is going.

The “Adret’naline” (or something like that, trail building is stronger than trail naming out here) trail from Les Saisies to Beaufort is pretty good. The start’s a bit meh but once into the woods things start going downhill in a good way. As both Martin and me had spent the morning watching Val di Sole practice highlights we weren’t in the mood to be stopping for photos so you’ll just have to take our word for it, but as free uplifted trails go, hard to beat.

Next up, main course. We’d met Chris in Beaufort, had some quiche, got on a bus, headed up to Mont Bisanne (top tip, stay on the bus after the Les Saisies stop, you get a bit more vertical for free. Or buy a ticket for the chairlift if pedalling 150m of vert doesn’t appeal) and looked at the views.

The “Dev’Albertville” trail’s been kicking about my to do list for a few years now, so it was grand to finally get onto it. It starts a wee bit boringly with some fireroad and a bit of climbing, but once on the ridge proper, dropping down to Albertville 1600m below, it’s worth the effort. Plenty single track, some switchbacks but nowt too tight, bitta tech, bitta fast stuff, there’s even a cracking handbuilt berm-berm-berm-kicker-berm-berm-repeat section towards the end.

There’s also a couple of mid descent climbs, some tarmac and a badly signposted posh housing estate to negotiate, but if you can’t see past those flies to enjoy your ointment, well, this analogy’s not for you frankly.

Then, more buses. Not free, but €5 to get you and your bike from Albertville back to Beaufort then Les Saises again doesn’t seem too harsh to me, just mibbies bring something to help secure your bike with….

Due to not really reading the bus times in much detail, it was now 7.15 pm and time to head home, but with a just a wee bit more (ok, any) planning you could link up a lot of good trails here with the buses, returning to the fine cafes of Beaufort on most every lap. Something for the next week off I guess.

10/08/2019
Finale / Lads lads lads

It’s been a while since I’ve been down to Finale, but as the weather in Chamonix has decided to skip spring, and summer, to go directly to late autumn, it seemed a good way to escape the snow. Hence, lads, lads, lads go to Finale.

We looked at going elsewhere, San Remo, Molini, Sospel. But Finale’s just so easy. It’s easy to find out about the new trails, it’s easy to get around, easy to get somewhere nice to stay, to get pizza and glelato and coffee.

There’s quite a few folk saying that Finale’s a bit played out, there’s no secret trails no more, everything’s blown out and rutted. Aye, mibbies, but that’s half of what I love about the place. Smooth trails are easy to ride fast. Holding on through the ruts and craters of umpteen years abuse really makes you appreciate how fast you’re moving.

And this is important. Presence, being acutely aware of the moment, the here and now, is a skill we’re losing. If you’re flicking between driving a car, chatting to the passengers and texting on the phone, none of the above are getting your full attention. Our ancient monkey selves had to make sure that lump in the bushes wasn’t about to jump on you as you tried to dig out a particularly tasty looking potato, and if it did, that you got up the tree quick enough. Plowing through the chunder on Little Champery, either you’re in the moment or you’re in hospital. It’s a steep relearning curve to get those primate synapses firing, and if you don’t, you might miss out on the potato at aperitivo.

In fairness, things have changed a lot since my first visit in 2013. Back then trail info was hard to come by, my main technique was using old Superenduro race cards and riding to the trail heads then following the Minion traces. Like we used to do anywhere new really. Now you just fire up Trailforks and check the GPX trace. I do miss some of those days, you could have hours of fun directly above the town just pedalling up and riding down fairly fresh trails with no real idea where you were going. But you can’t deny that the network that’s available now is way better. And it has Little Champery, which is blown out and rutted and well good.

Not everything’s blown out either. Ingineri from below NATO for example. Raced in 2015, it was good then but even more fun now to ride than race, so many rises into bends where the bike gets set light as you’re about to turn in. So many corners with a little shimmy left before the right encouraging the scandi flick. And so much variety too!

Din gets in on the act too. We’d headed for Toboggan. Toboggan did not look like a good idea. A few trees down I can handle, but when you can’t see the trail for the wood, nah. Explains why the guided groups were being dropped 1/2 way along the trail. So we rode Rollercoaster instead. I’d not ridden here since 2017 when it was a bit greasy from overnight rain and it was one of my first rides back from injury.What a difference a more or less working body and a load more grip makes! The trail swoops. That’s ‘woop’ sandwiched between two sets of curves. The trail swoops.

In and out of natural rolls in the terrain, around natural features that seem perfectly placed for the flow. And a wee bit of braking bump chunder here and there too, just to keep you on your toes.

There’s another way to get round the feeling that some of the trails are a bit past their best. Go further afield.

Backcountry Finale’s Luca took us by the hand and bundled us into a Pajero then, after shoogling us about on a variety of ever rougher and narrower 4×4 tracks, proceeded to throw us down all manner of trail we’d never have ridden otherwise. Partly because they’re a bit hard to find, but mostly because the logistics would be a complete nightmare and we’d have taken 2 days to ride the same using the knotted pipe-cleaners I call legs to pedal about with.

That and it had pissed it down the night before, so Luca mixed and matched trails. Maybe we missed out on some gems early in the day, but it meant we didn’t freeze and get covered in mud. And Lorne and I got let loose on Little Champery in the primest grip I’ve ever ridden it in, so that was nice.

Finale’s one of the economic models that gets chucked on the table when riders are trying to argue the financial case for building trails, or even just not getting banned from the trails. Riding around Mallare, the new frontier for Finale trails, with Luca was trickle down economics in action, where 11 riders and a few guides and drivers arrived at the door of the hamlet restaurant for a slap up feed.

It might cost more than a simple 10 euro shuttle up to Din or NATO, but you’re definitely getting your dollars worth. Cheers to Luca and Alessandro for the work they’ve put into helping open a new area of riding as well as their shuttling and guiding, and cheers too to the Swiss crew we were riding with for putting up with our complete lack of German.

The bike scene in Finale has changed in the last few years, but then the bike scene as changed everywhere. Nostalgia might not have killed anyone recently. Actually it’s not killed anyone for a century, the last record of it as cause of death is for an American soldier in 1918. I digress, as usual. Finale’s trails are evolving, so you can enjoy the change or stop going. We’ll be back.

20/05/2019
Anything for an easy life.

Do you want it all, and do you want it now? Genuine achievement just takes so damn long and so much effort. Wouldn’t it be easier just to want something then get it with out all the hard work inbetween?

Well, aye, it would. So rather than put the long miles in getting ourselves back to biking fitness and riding our way into some sort of form, we’ve just looked at where we can hop on the lift and get dropped off at the top of the hill instead.

First stop. Pila.

Through the tunnel, past the open border and into Italy. Pila should be 45 minutes drive from Chamonix, but for some reason every trip there involves getting lost in the maze of streets surrounding the lift station. We got there in the end. Obviously. There wouldn’t be a post here if we were still trying to achieve escape velocity from the city.

For the enormous outlay of 3 euros, you and your bike can be lifted up 800m to the Les Fleurs station. For the cost of a cappuccino more you can go 400m higher to the Pila ski area, which we did on our first lap then didn’t bother with afterwards. The first few hundred meters of the trails are still under snow and really not worth the hassle.

Back to Les Fleurs and a short ride/push up the hill outside the lift station, followed by a couple minutes coast along the road, gets you to the main Pila Bike Park home run. Keep going along the road and you’ll find walking trails dropping down to your left which deliver varying degrees of interest, varying on your early season tolerance to damp greasy rocks…

The park trails are in pretty good condition just now. A few braking bumps but nothing terrible. A couple trees down but easy passed. No dust but, wait, what!?! No dust is a first for all of us in Pila.

Next day next venue. Chamonix to Verbier is less distance yet longer time driving than the trip to Pila, but still easy under the hour to Le Chable. Like Pila you usually go skiing by parking in a huge valley base car park, taking a lift to the ski area, then another lift to the skiing. Hence, the bikers get to use that first stage lift then drop back down to the valley floor. Simples.

Unlike Pila, the lift doesn’t cost 3 euros a go. But if you’ve got a Chamonix season pass you can use one of your wee free vouchers. Free. How often do you hear that in Switzerland?

There is still a wee bit of snow on some of the highest trails from Verbier town, so we were dropping down a couple hundred meters on road first before traversing onto some summer guiding favourites. Nuthouse, Church, Comfort Zone. Grand to be back out on the trails I worked on last year with the rest of the Bike Verbier crew, even if we probably spent more time standing in the sun chatting than riding. Surely all these games are just about the people not the sport itself?

Where else? Les Arcs ticks the valley floor base / ski area shuttle lift box, and it’s open until 28th April. Then there’s La Saleve. Open all year (well, except when they’re fixing it, what is it with France and broken telepheriques?) and rumour has it there’s been lots of digging going on there.

In an ideal piece of narrative one of these would form the third tangent of the triptych, neatly tying three countries worth of riding together and letting me make all sorts of subtext about different places achieving the same thing. This isn’t the ideal though. The weather wasn’t looking so inspiring and I kinda wanted to go skiing still and there’s work to be done around the flat and, and, and. Honestly, why is everything so much effort?

17/04/2019
Ccccchanges: Lift openings 2019

Another winter has passed, another few months of snow is melting away, another post trying to collate all the lift opening dates for the summer gets cobbled together.

This year the theme is “oops, that lift’s broken as well”. Yes, not been a great year for Compagnie du Mont Blanc. Starting with the multiple cable failures on the Aiguille du Midi cash cow/telecabine, there’s also been problems with the Planpraz telecabine, Col Cornu chairlift, Bochard telecabine, Grands Montets telecabine, and the Charamillon telecabine.

How this pans out for summer MTB action is:

Grands Montets. After the slightly careless burning to the ground of the mid station in October 2018, current chat on opening is 2021. The Plan Joran telecabine is open this summer, but whether they let dirty bikers into their shiny new(ish) cable car is another question.

Brevent. The issue with Planpraz is apparently fixed, but we’ve heard that before in Chamonix this year. And there’s absolutely nothing to worry about for the Brevent top station, 100% no issues with that at all and no chance of short notice closures for repairs…

Flegere. The main gondola up from the valley floor has come to the end of its life, so is getting removed and replaced this summer. You can traverse to Flegere from Brevent easier than Brevent to Flegere, so that’s good news. Assuming the Planpraz lift doesn’t break again. Less good is the news that all the trails under the cables will be closed until 30th November for the works.

Le Tour. The Charamillon telecabine is overdue replacement but, due to assorted local issues, this keeps getting knocked back. Currently looking like 2020, but who knows. If it breaks then access from Vallorcine is easy enough and it’s likely the opening dates of the Vallorcine lift will be extended to accommodate this.

Train. The train, or year round uplift as we otherwise know it, isn’t running between Le Fayet and Chamonix from 1st April to 21st June. The bus replacement service doesn’t take bikes. Or often dogs.

It’s not all bad news. A fairly average winter for snowfall means that the trails should be snow clear nice and early this summer, and you can already play bike off the lifts at Pila, Verbier and Les Arcs. Woop, etc.

Chamonix opening dates (as ever, usual CdMB caveats apply, check montblancnaturalresort.com for the latest):

Bellevue: 8th June – 22nd September
Le Tour: 8th June – 22nd September
Prarion: 8th June – 16th September
Brevent: 8th June – 15th September (Then Planpraz only 19th October – 3rd November)
Tramway du Mont Blanc: 15th June – 22nd September
Grands Montets: 15th June – 1st September
Vallorcine: 29th June – 1st September
Flegere: Closed to be made into a 10 person telecabine

There’s more to the Alps than Chamonix, what other dates are there:

La Thuile: 29th June – 1st September (is an educated guess, as ever, dates not up, but that’s the usual) lathuile.it/en/bike
Megeve: 21st June – 15th September. A mix of the Jaillet, Mont d’Arbois, Rochebrune and Petite Fontaine lifts opening dates. If you want the all open it’s July and August, more details at: lesportesdumontblanc.fr
St Gervais: Bettex and the alps’ best flow track, open 28th June to 1st September ete.ski-saintgervais.com
Les Contamines: Simple to navigate and with all the information for the coming year displayed, other areas take note. Please! 29th June – 1st September lescontamines.net
Grand Massif: Assorted (very assorted) start and finish times across the area, and they’re not online yet, but based on past seasons between 15th June – 1st September summer.grand-massif.com/mountain-biking
Pila: On the ball this year, website all updated and with 2019 dates on it already! 22nd June – 9th September pila.it/en/summer-season/
Portes du Soleil: 22nd June – 8th September for the most part, with Les Gets open at weekends 30th May to 16th June. Website a bit slow on info this year, so here’s just the Les Gets bit, you can work out the rest. lesgets.com/envie-de/vtt/tarifs-et-horaires
Verbier: Weekends & Holidaydays only from 8th June then all the days from 1st July– 27th October verbierbikepark.ch/horaires_fr

CCcchanges? Aye, so going with the old adage “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, guide” I joined the ranks of the French qualified MTB guides this winter, so I can now work anywhere in Europe that’ll accept my burgundy passport. At some point soon I’ll have details and prices up so you can pay for the pleasure of riding with me instead of just reading about it for free (*Edit, that’ll be the details you need here: Alpine Flow MTB ). I’ve already got a wheen of interesting work planned, so I’m pretty excited really.

Dinnay fret, there’ll still be assorted content popping up here, it just might be increasingly tenuously linked to Chamonix. The Chamonix bit of the title seemed like such a good idea all those years ago. So did lumberjack shirts and baggy baggy jeans though, so perhaps looking backwards and harking to bygone eras isn’t the best idea.

This blog isn’t the only bit of bike related content I’ve done this year. Airdrop have brought out a new bike. As Airdrop is a company that doesn’t do things the normal way, Ed thought it would be good to put some content up on their website about their now superseded Edit V2, showing it having been abused and explaining why you shouldn’t buy one of their new bikes. Which is yet another reason to like what Ed and James are doing. So, here’s a wee link to the bit I wrote explaining why I like my Edit so much. And it’s got a grand title photo that makes me look way more gnar than I am.

Cheers Lorne and Toby for the photos, and welcome back to bike season then everyone, I’m off for a ski.

11/04/2019
How to ride a bike in Chamonix.

“There’s no such thing as a new idea”. A phrase well kent in magazine journalism. You pretty quickly wind through the various permutations of articles you can write about bikes and, unless you are a genuinely talented journalist (and if you are, then the $ ain’t in blethering ’bout bikes), you start repeating yourself.

Even this intro is a repeat of an intro I used in 2014 to explain why I was repeating myself.

To save it getting too meta, I’m not going to repeat the rest of that article, instead I’m going to spear off on a new well trodden tangent.

The ‘how to’ article.

At least this one is covering newish ground. I don’t think anyone’s written a how to go play bike in Chamonix piece before. So, without further ado (as in I’m boring even myself now), here is all the info you wanted to know but couldn’t find on the crime-against-marketing that is the compagnie du mont blanc website.

Lifts.

These are the lifts you can take your bike on, you can find roughly when they are open here.

Le Tour/ Vallorcine: Lift info here Mellow angled flowy riding on the whole, with some great stuff down into Switzerland

Grands Montets: Lift info here Limited riding, but some good trails worth a look none the less. Limited is a relative term in Chamonix after all. A wee fly in the ointment. The GM lift burnt down in autumn 2018 and is not scheduled to be rebuilt until 2020 or later. We wait with baited breath to see if the Plan Joran lift opens for bikes….

Flegere: Lift info here If you don’t like rocks, tech, or big views you’re unlikely to enjoy Flegere.

Brevent: Lift info here There is a LOT of riding from Brevent, but it’s all on the steeper, more technical side of things.

Les Houches: Lift info here The much overlooked, underappreciated hotspot of Chamonix biking. Huge amounts of trails with more being added all the time and also the gateway to the larger Portes du Mont Blanc area.

Tramway du Mont Blanc: Lift info here 100 year old lift infrastructure that works great for bikes, getting you back into the Chamonix valley

Then, not actually Chamonix, but covered by the “unlimited” Chamonix lift pass as well as the local lift passes you have:

Mont d’Arbois Petite Fontaine & Rochebrune: Lift info here The Portes du Mont Blanc are a bit like the whole Les Gets/Morzine area, but without any people and only a couple of purpose built trails.

Jaillet: Lift info here Riding out of Megeve, and with a maze of great trails underneath it.

Bettex St Gervais: Lift info here Home to one of the best greeny/blue flow trails in the alps.

Les Contamines: Lift info here Hidden away at the top of a long dark valley, doesn’t get the attention it deserves from aficionados of lift accessed big mountain scenery riding.

Lift Passes.

So you know what lifts you can use, but what lifts can you afford to use? In 2018 you had 3 choices.

1) 22.00 euro VTT day pass which gives you a day unlimited use of the lifts at Le Tour OR Les Houches OR Grands Montets (except Grands Montets was closed to bikes for 2018, then burnt down, so really just the first 2 choices).

2) 32.50 euro gives you all of the above on the same day, but you need to get between the areas yourself.

3) 65.00 euro everything pass which means you can use all the lifts listed above, and the non bike accessible lifts too, so also the Midi etc. If you’re fitting bikes around tourism then this pass is for sure the best bet, and if you’re out for a week then the full area summer pass is actually pretty good value at 126 euro for 6 days, and worth getting for the access to the Tramway Mont Blanc and Portes du Mont Blanc region alone.

The lift pass prices page is hidden on the CdMB website here. Another option if you’re riding here a lot during the summer is the rapidcard, which is a one off purchase of 25 to 50 euro for the card, then every day you use it is much reduced compared to the normal daypass price, with the added advantage of covering the lifts that aren’t on the VTT pass so you can easily ride the Brevent/Flegere/Tramway lifts without a fight at the ticket desk….

If on the off chance you’ve accidentally gone to Chamonix for a full season, you’ll probably want a full season pass. Info for that is actively hidden on the CdMB site, it’s actually part of the residency test to work out how to buy the pass. Here’s the start of a breadcrumb trail for anyone who think’s I’m joking.

Trails.

There are some restrictions on where and when you can ride a bike in Chamonix and surrounds, but it’s really not that hard, you just need to ask yourself one question: Is it July / August or not?

No- then you can ride anywhere that isn’t the Aiguille Rouge National Park. The park is well marked on the IGN maps and with little posts on every trail that goes over the park boundary. Simples.

Yes-, then Arrete du Marie 008576/2018 comes into force and you can only ride those listed tracks in the valley. This isn’t really an issue. All those other trails are covered in walkers and trail runners and you canny get any flow at all. At either end of the valley, Les Houches and Le Tour, you have some different rules. Les Houches only limits bikes on the “Grand Sentiers”, so the GR5/Tour du Mont Blanc trail from Bellevue. Fine, just use the recently resurrected DH track. Le Tour has the same limits on the Chamonix side, but the Vallorcine side is a different commune, so no stoppage, and the rest of area accessed from the lifts is in Switzerland where again, bikes are allowed on all the trails as long as you give way to walkers and don’t damage the trails. Saying that, the Tour du Mont Blanc route from Tete du Balme round to Trient has an unofficial ban (think like the voluntary Snowdon ban) during the busy periods of the summer. Fortunately it’s also not the best, or even second best trail round there, so it’s no great hardship to miss it out during July and August.

If all that’s too much hassle to deal with, you could always just hire a guide: Alpineflowmtb, guiding you to your new best trail ever.

Trail etiquette. Guess what. You ain’t that important. The town, authorities, lift company, none of them really give a shit whether you come here to bike or not. The biking euro is useful, but compared to the money brought in by walkers, trail runners, alpinistes and skiers… it’s nothing. So if one user group is going to get banned, it’ll be bikes.

Simply put, we are worth the least to the valley. So we kinda have to play nice and not give anyone the excuse to extend any of the existing restrictions. For 99% of the folks biking in Chamonix, this isn’t a problem but there’s always someone who doesn’t quite get it. A refresher if you need it; Say hello (or bonjour, salut, ciao, whatever you’re comfy with), smile, make eye contact, slow down when passing other trail users, slow down to a stop at the side of the trail if it’s narrow, don’t skid every. damn. corner, don’t make cut lines. And some of you really won’t like this but outside of the bike parks, maybe don’t wear a full face helmet. If you’re riding quick enough to think you need the extra protection, you’re probably going too fast for a shared use trail. If you are worried about the trail being too technical and you think you’ll be crashing lots on the way down, perhaps an easier trail will be more fun for you, and most folks walk at least one section on a long descent. A full face lidded, goggle wearing rider barreling down the trail is pretty intimidating and freaks folk out. But, if folks can see your face and make eye contact, conflict is way less likely. Almost everyone you meet is going to be friendly and encouraging, so please don’t give the 1% any more ammunition than they can already make up.

Or to summarise: Be nice, say hi. Don’t be a dick.

Public Transport.

Sometimes you want to take your mode of transport onto another mode of transport. In the Chamonix valley you can use both bus and train with the bike. The bike buses that ran from 23rd June to 2nd September in 2018 (similar dates each year) and are in practice free (best carry your carte d’hote) and take you from the town centre to the lifts at Prarion and Le Tour. You can also fit up to 5 bikes on the trains, or considerably more if no one is being a jobsworth, but don’t count on that. The train is free between Servoz and Vallorcine with your Carte d’hote, you have to pay for it from Le Fayet up to Chamonix or from Vallorcine onwards to Switzerland. You can check the train times here.

What’s a carte d’hote I hear you ask? Well, when you stay in a chalet/airbnb/hotel/campsite/whatever, the proprietor will charge you “tax de sejour” or a day tax for being a tourist in the valley. Part of what this tax gets you is a business card sized, umm, card which is for free transport in the valley. If you don’t get given this either your accommodation provider has forgotten, is cheating you out of money, or is not paying tax. Either ways, you should get a card. If you’re staying with friends the tourist info office will happily sell you a card for about the cost of 1 train journey, so it’s a fairly simple cost/benefit analysis to make.

Bike hire and repairs.

Sometime you break your bike and it can be fixed, sometimes it can’t, sometimes that super lightweight rigid singlespeed fat bike just ain’t gonna cut the mustard, sometimes you decide you want an e-bike. All and more of these issues can be dealt with at the following places: Slash, Zero-G, Legend CHX, Echobase

Other stuff.

What is the best bike to ride in Chamonix? Any bike you want really, but the Airdrop Edit is hard to beat… DH focused geometry without being a DH bike, 150mm travel at the back with a bit more at the front, solid reliable build but more than capable of going up the hill under your power too.

I’ve finished riding, where do we toast a successful day shredding the gnar? Anywhere that sells Sapaudia beer. Obviously. Which just happens to be Bighorn, Le Vert and Beckett & Wilde, with more to come…

Yeah, pretty blatant, but Airdrop and Sapaudia have both believed in me and this blog enough to help out when they have plenty of other things to be cracking on with (like making excellent bikes and fine ales), and that in turn is helping you out, so why not support them a bit too for the help you’ve just got.

03/12/2018