Chamonix Bike Blog

Category: Chamonix ride

Awesome. Le Tour and more.

I like tea me. There are few things in life better than a cup of tea, but even better are those 10% of cups of tea that just push up to the next level of tea. Awesome.

I like riding bikes me. There are few things…. And this ride was one of those 10%. It’s not as if the average ever drops that low about here, but that combination of some of the best of a good crop of trails, perfect weather, dry ground but only a couple days after a good soaking and a bunch of mates to share it with. Awesome.

It started with the potential to go either way, meeting for the 0925 bike bus up to Le Tour. When they work well the bike bus is amazing, but when the driver seems more keen to load it up with walkers than riders, leaving you at the bus stop, or the UCPA gets there first with 20 odd stormtrooping pupils and you can’t fit your bike in, not so good. Today, it all went smoothly and we were on the lifts for 10.

Looking down from the Autannes Chairlift you could see the new section of trail built into the upper VTT trail. It looks pretty good too, but we had plans on the bigger descents into Switzerland and, as the Vallorcine gondola closes between 1230 and 1345, there was a schedule to keep to.

Unsure if we’d be quick enough on a full Trient lap, we started up with a shorter lap from the Col de Balme to the Catogne chalets and down to Vallorcine. Of course when I say shorter, you still get 1000m vert over 9km of the finest riding in the alps. Alpine pasture, dusty singletrack hugging the side of gorges, some fast fireroad to drift about on and a finish down rock rooty singletrack through pine forests with that dappled light that makes it so infuriating to photograph!

Some time, and much amusement, later, we’re getting back onto the Vallorcine gondola. A short pedal over the Col des Posettes and a blast across the hill and we re-set on the Autannes chair. This time though at the Refuge de Balme we stay in Switzerland and head up towards L’Arolette. There’s still a few patches of snow to negotiate round the back here, no apparently the hill doesn’t know it’s August, but they’re all pretty easy to cross. Except for Luke…

We reached the col by hot o’clock, so stopped to drink water, eat a bit and shoot the breeze. Sated, we dropped into the descent across the bowl. You can see 90% of the trail snaking across the hillside here. The bit you couldn’t see turned out to be another patch of snow across the steepest and rockiest section of the mountain. Everyone stopped in time.

From here the trail just keeps giving. There are better natural trails out there, but not many. Like the Catogne descent that it runs near to there’s every sort of riding covered on your way down. Well, every good sort; I didn’t notice any tussocky grass, brake bumps, motocrosser ruts etc.

Eventually we cruised sweaty and dusty into Trient, another 1000m lower and immeasurably higher. Even better, the trail ends but 20m from a(n ice cold) water fountain. Less good was the switch from trail to road for the next wee while, but even that wasn’t too bad. A fast blast downhill to nearly the border then a 20 minute or so pedal up hill to Vallorcine, with the baking hot sun cooking you from above.

Once again we head up the Vallorcine gondola, up to the col and across the mountain, but this time we keep heading down on the ever excellent lower Le Tour DH track. The construction of the new upper section’s obviously taken a fair bit of the shapers time as the trail was running quite loose, you can complain, or you can get on with it and learn to drift. Or your bike can have a tantrum like Ally’s did. It started with a quick stop to fix a puncture (not mine for once, and the only one of the day). Then the fixed wheel couldn’t go back in the frame. Closer inspection revealed that the disk brake return springs were performing more of a braking duty than the pads. Undeterred by the lack of material, Ally affected repairs, and we got going again, headed for Petite Balcon Nord.

PBN doesn’t get ridden at this end of the valley anything like as much as it does lower down, which is strange as it’s my new favourite section of the petite balcons. Not going to complain mind, we all had a blast down to Argentiere and the Grand Montets lift.

Josh had to keep going for home here, so it was only 5 of us that boarded, probably just as well given how grumpy the other passengers were at our presence, ho hum. Another quick break to drink and eat and we were off on the last descent of the day into the Lavancher bowl and then on to Le Bois. This is another anomaly of the Chamonix bike ban, being a totally natural trail, fairly tech in places, reasonably popular with walkers, and yet we’re encouraged to use it. Not going to complain mind, it’s a grand way down the hill. Once in the trees the light was useless for taking photos, so the camera afflicted amongst us were able to just keep going and going and going, as was everyone else having been freed from “wait there a second” “ok, ride now” “can you go up again, I missed it”…. Though the flip side is that it’s a very long way down and you better have strong fore arms if your brake fingers are going to survive.

Eventually, 5 riders rolled into Le Bois and collapsed by the water fountain. These granite and wood vats of ice cold drinking water are up there with tea and bikes in my “things that are great” list, and the Le Bois one is definitely in the upper 10%, especially on a day like this.

Sunshine, friends and over 4km vertical of dusty alpine descending. Awesome.

02/08/2013
Les Houches, So hot right now…

You might have noticed a bit of a love/hate relationship between residents of the Chamonix valley and the Compagnie du Mont-Blanc. When it involves bikes and the trails for them, then it’s often not their fault, CdMB is just the entity with a name that can be blamed for the myriad land owners barring access for tracks and other interested parties wanting to sell more of their “VTT interdit” signs.

Other times, they could probably try harder.

Well, today CdMB is in my good books. And why is that? Well readers, it’s because the long awaited replacement bike trails from Prarion have started to open. And they’re great!

Currently it’s just the blue run, and even that still has a few sections that are being worked on, however you can see the harder detours have had work put into them and based on how well the blue trail flows, I’m confident they’ll work too.

The trail’s not particularly well signposted from the top of Prarion. Actually, it’s not signposted at all really. There’s a vauge VTT/Pietons shared path sign pointing you onto the downhill trending 4×4 track. Follow this, through the tunnel and on for a another few hundred meters and there’s the start.

$Angus about 300m after crashing and fracturing his scaphoid. The track's so good he just kept going.$

From here it’s lots and lots of nice berms, rollers, tabletops, doubles, roots and loam. Lots and lots of loam. This does meant that if it’s wet it’ll be pretty muddy, and the track will probably cut up a fair bit, but for now its dusty, loose, fast fun.

You have to stay on your toes, there are some awkward ditches that need a quick manual to save your forks and some of the corners are sharper than you expect, but the berms catch you well. It only takes a couple of laps to learn the quirks.

The track certainly isn’t a secret and was getting hit by a lot of riders, probably as many as I’ve seen on one hill in Chamonix. This makes it sociable, yet because the Prarion lift takes 2 bike in each gondola, the laps were still pretty quick.

If pictures aren’t enough, then there’ll be some video footage soon from Chamonix Bike Rental.

16/07/2013
To the ends of the valley

OK, it can get a bit insular here in Chamonix. The steep valley walls cut off any sight of the outside world and, as long as you’re only paying attention to mountain sports, then everything you want is on your doorstep. It’s a bit of a change to look out of the valley occasional and be reminded that the outside world exists, but to do it twice in less than a week, madness.

To cut a long intro short, the bike ban’s started, so most natural trails are now out of bounds thanks to Arrête Municipale (n° 124/2004) which prohibits bikes from all trails other than those listed on it. You can get round this a few ways (click on the “bike ban” tag to see other posts) but pretty much the easiest, most sure fire way is just to leave the Chamonix commune and hit some other trails, hence the trips to Les Houches and Le Tour.

Les Houches was wet, and as a result, so were we. The trails down at this end of the valley are particularly clay like and things get pretty slippy pretty quickly when it rains. This wasn’t putting us or a couple of Welsh lads on holiday with big Lapierre DH rigs off, you just need to blink a bit more often to get the mud out your eyes.

After a few front face laps group-think decided we should drop off the back and down to St Gervais on one of the longer “enduro” style runs. Great for us locals on our “enduro” style bikes, but hard work on a DH bike. Lorne & I had ridden “Hugh’s Way” last summer, getting lost near the top but finding the lower section fine. This time we found the upper trails (see photo above, it’s very easy to miss) but completely failed to get the turn off we’d managed fine last time. Go figure. Either way, it’s a good trail down to St Gervais and great to see some different scenery on the way down.

With 30 minutes to kill in St Gervais before the last tram we went to hit the skate park. If you’re in a similar situation here’s a top tip. Don’t bother. It’s surfaced with a frictionless surface and bikes are apparently not allowed.

With the Bellevue lift not running this summer due to cable damage the tramway is the easiest way to get up to that side of the Les Houches hill where the old DH trails started from. They’re in a fairly bad way now, but still worth the blast if you’re up that way. The new trails should be open in a week or so though. Hopefully.

Fast forward a few days and Lorne & I are up at Le Tour. The weather is hot and sunny, the trails are dusty. All in all a pleasant change. We head up the gondola & chair, traverse round past the Col de Balme refuge to the Tete de Balme chairlift and are in Switzerland, neutral in the face of war, gold and bike bans.

The Catogne descent which drops down from here is one of my favourites, even more so at the moment as so much of the riding this summer has been deep in the trees, the alpine riding only recently escaping from the snow.

The pictures do the talking again here, narrow singletrack through open alpine terrain, before plunging into the trees. What’s not to like? Well if I’m being picky I’d say the Vallorcine DH track being closed, along with most of the land under the Vallorcine gondola, for the whole summer whilst work is done and that once back up on the Vallorcine gondola and having pedalled up to the Col de Posettes you can’t ride the Aiguillette de Posettes trail due to the bike ban. But that’s just me being picky.

Instead the Le Tour DH track under the gondola is a reasonable substitute. It’s had some work done on it which has baked in well and it’s riding very well at the moment, definitely worth hitting for a few laps, just watch out for the livestock…

Finally, the bike bus has started back up for July & August, so if you want to save driving up to Le Tour, or just want to be able to ride back down at the end of the day, details are here.

What next to escape the clutches of the gendarmerie? I feel a road trip coming on.

09/07/2013
Just…a….bit….longer…..to…wait

Lifts open next weekend. Which is nice. There seems to be a bit more of a buzz about town than usual for mountain biking this year. I don’t know if it’s the long winter making everyone over eager for summer activities, the rise of “enduro” racing in magazines and websites making everyone excited about shiny new toys or what, but basically, we’re looking forward to the lifts opening. A lot.

Of course, folk haven’t stopped riding just because they have to get up the hill themselves. The snow lines been slowly working its way up the hill and the trails on the north facing side of the valley have been getting hit.

The trail down form Plan d’Aiguille is good from about half height, although there’s still little patches of snow here and there in avalanche corridors. Less well cleared is the trail down from Montenvers. A group of us rode up to the Rochers du Mottets then pushed up towards the top from there. We ended up heading down from underneath the viaduct as there was just too much snow on the ground to be worth going further. The trail quickly cleared and all was good, we thought, until hitting the main avalanche corridor where the trail was well and truly buried. It was easiest to descend to the paravalanche tunnel and follow the railway back to the trail. Dave gave it a pretty good go at riding it, the rest of us took a more circumspect approach… Probably best to turn round at Caillet for the next few weeks yet.

24/06/2013
Known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns

I grew up riding in Scotland and sometimes, just sometimes, I can really miss the riding there. Don’t get me wrong, Chamonix trails are ridiculously good, who wouldn’t want to be quickly whisked up 1000m to ride off on trails, almost every one looking and feeling like it’s from a movie, all in great weather. Or at least great if you’re Scottish.

But despite this, or perhaps because of this, I miss having to ride up singletrack roads, fire roads, push up muddy sheep tracks and, when all else fails, just sprachel straight up the hill with the bike all for an unknown descent. Or by unknown, I mean you’ve seen the trace on the map so you know roughly where it goes, and you know it’ll be muddy because it’s almost winter, but more than that, no idea!

That the weather is pretty Scottish right now probably helped, but the trails above Servoz are about as close as I have found to the Scottish ethic. With skiing still not quite there in the valley, Jan and I headed out to beast the legs one last time (probably…) before the snow properly arrives.

Heading up from the town to the Trois Gouilles carpark on the road is pretty easy, and gets you the first 300m climbed without too much effort. The next 200m up to the Lac Vert parking are on gravel road and definitely take it out of you a bit more. From there, it’s a mix of easier fire road and occasional singletrack (which is great in the other direction) to the Chalets du Souey, about 770m above Servoz.

So far, so Scottish. A long climb, grey skies, intermittent drizzle and heathery moorland above the treeline. The only clue we weren’t just outside Oban was the occasional break in the cloud giving views of the Domes du Miage. This much of the trail I knew, but from here down all we had was a line on the map and some optimism.

Setting off down the trail we made it about 20meters before spying a natural rock wall ride.

Another aspect of biking back home I really miss is the stopping to play on cool features on the trail and making the most of what you see, rather than riding hundreds of vertical meters in a single go. We played for a while, until my imagination exceeded the level of grip available on the wet rock and I limped off with ripped shorts and a hole in my leg.

Back off down the trail and we were impressed. It’s perhaps not the most flowing or consistent track in town, but you get plenty value for money. Fast bits, slow bits, tech, tight, open, simple. It all seemed to be in there. Normally I try and let some photos do the talking (it saves over a 1000 words each time) but a combination of poor light and having more fun playing on the trail slightly scuppered that. Suffice to say, if you’re riding something between a cyclocross bike and a twin crown freeride rig, you’ll have fun and be challenged but in a good way!

Two hours after leaving town, we rolled back into Servoz, muddier than when we left. At which point Jan, who is already in training for the 2013 Marmotte, suggested another lap.

Merde.

Filling our bottles from the fountain just past the Gorges de Diosaz hotel, we started pedalling up, noticeably slower than the first time! We still managed to stay on the bikes until the Trois Gouilles carpark, pushed up a wee bit further, then headed down.

The hillside here is littered with bike trails, natural and purpose built. Several of the Servoz youth used to build freeride trails here which have been gradually getting rediscovered and reworked. It’s not Whistler, but it’s a good sign of a healthy local scene.

All too soon we were back onto the old Servoz – Passy road, saddles back up and spinning round to town. With a little over 1100meters climbed on our enduro bikes, the legs were for sure feeling the burn. After a days “Scottish” riding, a raid of the fridge gave me only one option for lunch. Porridge and a mug of tea. Braw.

Looking outside the snow’s on the ground and the buzz about town is definitely for winter, not summer. Guess it’s now time to go skiing to give the legs a rest.

28/11/2012