Chamonix Bike Blog

Category: Chamonix ride

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
Something old, something new. something borrowed, something tree.

“The first sentence is the hardest to write.” Once you’ve got a beginning then the rest of the piece should follow easily. I’ve not made this up, it’s been written about here and here, and they’ve earnt way more money than me from writering.

But that first sentence was pretty easy to write, nae effort at all frankly. The issue is the next bit, the quality content.

Charlie Brooker is a bit of a hero of mine. Many years ago he wrote columns for the guardian, which were brilliant because he is a god that moves amongst us mortals. The problem was he didn’t think the content was adding much to the discussion, so stopped them. One of the best writers currently putting finger to keypad stopped writing columns because he didn’t want to add to the piles of dross out there.

Which puts the rest of us in a bit of a shitty position. Just like Candide Thovex killed the headcam with his “oneofthosedays” series, Charlie Brooker essentially killed off all opinion pieces with that opinion. If you’re not improving on what they’ve done, what are you doing?

This concept of “infinite piles of dross” got mixed with the old “an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters will eventually write Shakespeare” idea and fleshed out into Jorge Luis Borges’ book “The Library of Babel” which describes an infinite library that contains not only every 410 page book that has been written, but every 410 page combination of letters of the alphabet.

Obviously though, things in fiction never cross into real life.

Except 2019. Go to http://libraryofbabel.info/ and you’ll find the Babel Library. Every possible combination of letters, commas, spaces and full stops, all archived and waiting for you to read it. All of Shakespeare. All of Romeo and Juliet except where they just spoke to each other rather than getting rash with chemicals. All of the entries of this blog. All of the entries that will ever be written for this blog. The story of your life in the style of your favourite author. The exact details of when and how you will die. All of this exists in the library. You just need to find it.

Which is, finally, where we pull this back to biking. See, in the above not-quite-infinite example are all the greatest pieces of writing (and the possibility for some very interesting intellectual property cases) but they are damn well hidden amongst an ocean of incomprehensible drivel. Though at least we now know where the (insert newspaper that least represents your political and moral opinions here) journalists get their inspiration.

In the hills above Chamonix there is near infinite possibility for trails, but very finite number of rideable trails. It wouldn’t take too much work to write a programme to scribble lines on the map (I suspect this is how some open source mapping works…though in the novel suicidal librarians scour the bookshelves looking for the index which, as all books possible exist in the library, must be in the library. Hence said mapping may indeed be the key.) but it takes a bit more effort to find or create them on the ground.

So. Blog needs good trails to create good content. Blog doesn’t want to repeat writing about trails it’s already done. Blog has pretty much exhausted the exploration of lines on the map. Conclusion. Blog needs to get off sofa and go and make some more trails.

Being a bit lazy, I figured it would be easier to take little used existing trails and just tidy up the bits inbetween, so after a fair bit of wandering about the woods above Les Bossons I’d found enough old hunters trails, cleared away enough bits of shrub and branch and moved enough stones around to call it a trail.

It just needed ridden top to bottom.

Enter Toby who, in good late season riding form and on a day off, agreed to ride one of my “it should be a good trail” ideas.

There’s a few easy ways to get up to the Mont Blanc tunnel. From there there’s an easy way to the Chalet Cerro. From there it’s just grunt work getting you and your bike up to 1550m, the start of the trail and the (current) end of the Bosson’s glacier.

You’re going up the same way you ride down for this part, which is good as you know what you’ll have to deal with on the way down, but which is bad as you know what you’ll have… etc, etc. I assume repetition takes up a considerable part of the 10⁴⁶⁷⁷ books in the Babel Library. In the height of summer there’s a fair bit of pedestrian traffic on the trail here but outside July and August it’s fairly quiet. You’re never going that fast anyway…

We’d wanted tech, and we got tech. Sitting at the top of the trail looking at the hills had been a pleasant wee interlude, but from the tenth meter in the trail demands concentration. In Toby’s words ‘you wouldn’t want to ride it everyday’ but once in a while is good to remind you what “technical trail” really means.

Toby was riding on good form, Toby got to the last trail feature before the trail mellowed to the Chalet Cerro. Toby committed to the line. Toby committed to the crash.

The full descent would need to wait, fortunately it wasn’t going anywhere.

I was however. A few weeks guiding in Italy and a holiday later I was back in Chamonix ready to ride. By now winter made a return the the valley and the trail above Chalet Cerro was too buried to be worth the hassle. But, all this content was written and I felt the need to get something posted before the bike hibernates, who could I persuade out in the snow to finish it off?

Jesus is leaving the valley to go back to Malaga and if there’s one type of riding you don’t get in Malaga it’s snow covered trails following terminal moraine banks so he was game. The snow didn’t make the trail any easier but there’s still more grip than you think there should be so it pretty much all went as intended.

It turned out someone else had been in, seen what I’d started and run with it. The chainsaw owning trail pixie had cut out the trees that I’d had to leave to improvisation and improved riding technique and the trail is starting to wear in nicely through the more hidden parts. Flows much better now, cheers. It doesn’t make the top ten descents in valley list, but as 500m descents that start from the foot of a glacier and end by a motorway, passing almost all possible types of terrain (but only one full stop) on the way go, it’s pretty good.

The top half is pretty obvious. For the lower section, after a long traverse rightwards, look out for the second trail heading off to the right. Then just keep following the cleared trail, moved boulders, small benchcuts, occasional chainsawed fallen trees and tyre marks. Or search for “Cosmiques (fondu)” ‘cos the trail follows the melt of the line and is best finished with some IPA. The more traffic the merrier. For now.

The Library of Babel was formed complete, but the Trails of Chamonix are still evolving. There’s more building happening that ever before, which means the mental index of trails needs constant updating too. More reason to keep riding, but mibbies there’s some skiing to do first.

Confused by the title? Search the library.

14/11/2019
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
Abhorred monster.

Kids today, eh. Don’t know they’re born, eh. Handed to them on a plate, eh. Am I right eh? Am I right eh*!

So continues a theme that seems to have run since Greek times of when not complaining that the world’s about to end (turns out every era’s been sure theirs will be the last, so we’re not that special after all) the elders have whined that it was all much harder back in their day and that today’s adults of tomorrow are feckless, lazy and dim.

Thing is, sometimes they’re right. When I was 18 I was just about able to be mediocre at racing bikes downhills, skiing on a mud/heather based snow substitute and turning up for lectures. Paying attention at lectures was beyond me.

At 18, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

If you’ve not read Frankenstein, you might not be aware how mental that is. Frankenstein is not the jokey, hammer house of horror, novel some of the films suggest. It is page after page of misery and terror that finds new ways to shock you every chapter. Whenever you think the depths have reached a peak (I’d criticise the book for some of the writing, but people in glass houses and all that…), Mary Shelley would find another place to go and scare you more.

It’s not only an imaginative tour de force, her 1818** grasp of science and which of the competing theories available at the time would turn out to tally with 21st century thinking was remarkably prescient. Frankenstein is arguably the dawn of science fiction.

As well as being multi-talentless at education and sport, 18 year old me wasn’t exactly great at relationships. Mary Shelley on the other hand was hanging out with Lord Byron whilst being Percy Shelley’s lover. Frankenstein was written holidaying with them both on Lake Geneve, enjoying all night discussion and not going outside much (due mostly to a volcanic eruption the previous year that had resulted in the world getting a year without summer and the beach not being a great choice).

After a fun night round the fire reading German ghost stories in French (bloody european elitists, get back here and read the Daily Mail you turncoats) Byron suggested they all retire to write a short ghost story each. A couple days later, Byron had invented the Twilight franchise, Percy probably got some notes down about vegetarianism and atheism (bit ahead of his time that lad) and Mary had the beginnings of Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus.

Anyways (new drinking game, every time you read “anyways” on this blog, have a beer. Please binge drink responsibly) I seem to be veering far, far away from bikes again.

Or am I?

For the creature, monster, protagonist, wretched devil or hero (choose one accordingly on how you feel about a nameless animated cadaver) went through an awkward few months/years where he didn’t really want to speak to anyone (adolescence is hard to pin down when you’re conceived as a full grown adult) and felt that the best place he could hide out and get away from it all was…..Montenvers, Chamonix.

Obviously 200 years ago there wasn’t a train, so he didn’t have to deal with hoards of day trippers, but even now if he’d hung about to the evening he’d have found that the crowds disperse nicely and the trails are pretty quiet.

Two centuries ago the bike was a 1 year old patent so he didn’t have to worry about two wheeled peletons disturbing the peace either, but it’s about a 1hr pedal up to the buvette and another 45mins or more on top of that carry to Montenvers so the effort required limits numbers too. Until recently.

As Frankenstein’s creation was a marvel of science that the world wasn’t ready for, I see no parallel at all with the Chamonix communes decision to make the trail up to the Mottets buvette an official e-bike route.

A creation, formed between the dissecting room and the slaughter-house, made from the discarded parts of others. From a distance the silhouette is the same yet up close the hideous differences, the rough joining, are all too apparent. More powerful and capable than its natural predecessors and yet shunned and ostracised for being not pure, subsequently lacking identity and being unsure where it should exist in the world, or if it should even exist at all.

No parallels.

Still, the trail’s good, no controversy there. The Caillet trail’s featured in the blog before, but I felt it was time to take an evening spin with the camera, make some pretty pictures to go with all this and encourage folk to maybe give the full descent a go occasionally instead of just sticking with the classic Caillet.

You can climb to the Mottets buvette then carry through the boulders to Montenvers, which does mean you get to play on the moonscape of rock up by the end of the 4×4 trail, but it’s harder going after that point. Alternatively take the normal route to Caillet then turn uphill and keep going till you hit the top, or till the light starts to run out and you need to turn round and head home, confusing a wedding party along the way (though that might just have been on our visit).

Whichever way you do it, you’ll be treated to a fine old descent.

Well, I say a fine old descent. It goes down hill, the path dates from before the building of the railway which opened in 1909 so counts as old, and we rode all but a 10 meter section of the trail. That adds up to fine in my book, but it is a bit rocks and tech in places, so if you’re not a fan of either of those you’re probably not going to have a great time of it.

If you’ve not read Frankenstein I’m not going to ruin it for you by telling you how it ends. Mibbies they all hug it out and ride away hand in hand on unicorns towards a rainbow, mibbies the pit of misery gets mined so deep they’re finally consumed by the molten core of the earth. It’s not much effort for you to find out, and when you do, have a think about how it applies to e-bikes. Then stop thinking about that because it doesn’t matter and have a think about what it says about humanity, which does.

*I’ve been re-watching Spaced recently. In the DVD (which I can’t watch because DVD’s aren’t the future anymore) there was a handy “homage-o-meter” feature which would click up with the homage being homaged on screen at that moment. At some point I will write one of these blogs and flag up the same. This blog is not that blog however.

**The timeline gets a bit blurred for the sake of an easy post here. Frankenstein was conceived of and mostly written in 1816 & 1817, first published anonymously in 1818, published under Mary Shelley’s name in 1822*** and remixed by Mary Shelley for the most widely read version published in 1831.

***Obviously at this point the critical reception of the book changed tone a touch: “The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment” The British Critic.

30/09/2018
The Ignoramus.

I’ve spent most of my life thinking this was an insult, one I’ve received and sent. Turns out it’s a compliment. Or at least, was a compliment.

Ignoramus from the Latin “we do not know”. As in, we don’t know everything so we need to learn. More importantly, that what we do know might not be correct and needs to be constantly reassessed with each new bit of information we receive. Or basically the foundations of modern science and critical thinking and what the whole shoogly enterprise of the twenty first century technological world is based on. How we arrived at Space-X, Man on the Moon, nuclear weapons and the hydraulic dropper post. And why Donald Rumsfeld truly was an ignoramus when he said “there’s things we know we know…”

Of course, there’s a difference between the enthusiasm to embrace the unknown as a catalyst for learning more about what you don’t know and shrinking your view to the point that everything you don’t know is ignored and you just focus on the area you think you’ve got down (until new knowledge arrives and it turns out the world IS flat after all. Or that ignoramus is a compliment) I’m not sure exactly what it says that populist politics has brought us to a point where many influential persons in the world have a less liberal, less intellectual outlook that the Romans, but the broad brush of it isn’t very uplifting.

Anyways, this reveling in the things we do not know is what’s been sending us to try the next line over for the last few years. The trail we found last week was good, will the trail a little further along be better? Often no, no it’s not. Sometimes it is considerably worse and we emerge from the undergrowth several hours later, bleeding profusely from thorn scarred shins, with grooves on our shoulder from carrying the bikes for 80% of the descent.

But all that just makes the sweet trails taste all the sweeter. No, really. Science says so. A study in 1971 found that pigeons which were trained to peck a button to be given food would do it more enthusiastically when they didn’t know if it was going to work out with a tasty treat. It’s the rewards that ain’t guaranteed that seem to do it for mammals and mamils alike.

The search for new trails isn’t blind though. Just as science draws on the discoveries of the past to leap forward, we let others do as much of the hard work as we can before taking the last step and claiming the glory. If you want to find the next greatest trail ever, have a look through old maps and see what farmers tracks and mining routes have fallen into disrepair and dropped off the radar. Or just look for the bits where people tend not to go with bikes and see where the terrain then matches up with bike friendly angles.

I’m not the only person to be rocking the ‘look at the clues and use what you’ve found’ technique. Ash ‘Trans Provence’ Smith (to pigeon hole him far more than he should be) and his itinerology series show this ways better than I manage, and the TP race showcases the results of his searching ways ways better too. But, just because you canny run 100m like Bolt doesn’t mean you shouldn’t run.

Following last years trip to Whistler, I returned to Chamonix full of enthusiasm to bring that trail building culture here and create some #sickgnarshreadbroloamfestflow trails. Very quickly I realised I had neither the time, talent, brawn, materials nor dirt to do this. What I DID have however, was a promising looking worn line going off into the trees near the end of a load of great descents in Les Houches, where you had to start using the tarmac to get down to the road….

A bit of scoping later revealed an old walking trail heading down through the woods between Les Houches and Vaudagne. And quite a few fallen trees. And enough shrubbery to keep the Knights of Ni happy. And some of the best rideable rock slabs in the valley.

I’d be lying if I said I then invested hour upon hour of my time into carefully clearing and crafting a new trail, but there’s been a few pissing wet afternoons spent in full waterproofs cutting back undergrowth to reclaim the old trail and drier days spent running the line in and tweeking the alignment. All so I can present to you a trail called…

Squam-ish

Because it’s just like all the amazing trail building work in Squamish. Ish.

Take your choice of trail at Les Houches to end near the Ecole Physic. About 200m BEFORE you reach the tarmac’d Ecole road there’s a 90 degree right bend. At that bend the entrance to Squam-ish is up and a little to the left. I’ve deliberately left the first few meters quite overgrown to minimise the chance of conflict with other users. The trail is fairly flat for the first wee bit, then on an easy rock slab rolling to the right, the interest starts. If I’m honest the trail still needs a fair bit of running in and some substantial work to the last 100 meters or so before it becomes a classic, but the start’s there and if anyone with more time on their hands than I wants to help it evolve, crack on. Otherwise, it’ll get finished off in late autumn (unless winter comes early or I gain meaningful employment).

Other folks have spent less time pontificating and more time digging (the pen may be mightier than the sword, but it’s not got much on a backhoe) and as a result there’s a web of fresh trails starting to spread around the valley, mostly in the Les Houches/Coupeau area but also Les Bois and Planet.

Focusing on Les Houches, some of these trails use the old bikepark trails from the days when it was under Bellevue, others pick up abandoned trails that we’ve been looking at on the IGN map for years, but never got the traffic to stay clear. Then others, like the new finish to the Alpage Respect bikepark trail under the Prarion lift, are just straight up brand new.

It’s got to the point where I didn’t ride Les Houches for 3 weeks, came back, and rode brand new trails every lap for an afternoon, there’s that many new things appearing. For the most part they’ve been made in the fine tradition of old school French DH tracks. Raw and steep. Really steep. They’re also often not that weather proof, so heavy traffic in the rain will ruin them, but in the long hot summer we’re still having the loam is just perfect. Almost powder skiing esque.

The summer lift season is almost finished at Les Houches now, but it’s going out with a bang. By this weekend the Prarion lift was hoaching with riders from across France and beyond. The long queues might have been a bit irritating, and the way the trails were evolving from one lap to the next entertaining, but it was pretty amazing to feel like Chamonix was an actual bike town for once, a vibe I’ve only felt a few times before in Finale, Whistler or Morzine. I don’t want that to last mind, we can go back to grumpy locals and empty trails for the other 11 months of the year.

Most of these new trails are very much unofficial and not mine to advertise, but as the entrances are generally not hidden, all YOU need to do is look and reap the rewards. A couple of these trails will become official trails once finished but until they’re on the map it’s up to the park crew as to how well advertised they get, so again, I’m not telling until next summer when I can use it for a whole new bit of content.

It’s not Whistler, it’s not Squamish either, but the bike scene in Chamonix is looking pretty healthy.

Have fun, be an ignoramus and play nice.

16/09/2018