Chamonix Bike Blog

Category: Chamonix ride

New term, new toys

The skiing might not be over for everyone, but most of us have put the planks away now and are looking at pinkbike instead of TGR, or endurotribe instead of skipass depending on your nationality…

Of course, new season means everyone has spent their money on new toys and group rides are a smorgasbord of shiny bits. 650b, pikes, BOS, 1xwhatever and wider still bars. Ruaridh hasn’t had any upgrades (unless that’s a new collar), but still seemed to be the quickest up the hill.

With no bike lifts running in town, a quick lunchtime ride meant pedalling up the 4×4 track towards Montenvers then hitting the Caillet buvet trail back into town. There’s only one small patch of snow on the way up, and one on the way down, so I’ll count it as completely clear, though there were a few walkers out already.

Most of the lower valley trails are clear of snow now. Below the tree line on the Aig Rouge side of the valley there’s only small patches of snow on the trails in the more shaded gullys. On the colder side of town the tracks are clear from about 1600m, with increasing snow and snow melt above there. The trail above the Chamonix ski jump has some “entertaining” downed trees to hack your way through….

Plenty to ride then.

09/05/2014
Last train to cold*

Winter’s turned up again in Chamonix, only this time she’s brought her luggage and it looks like she’s staying for a while.

Normally the easiest way to escape her clutches is to head down the road to Saleve, only a quick glance at the website showed they’ve closed until the end of March for works. Valley trails under our own steam it is.

Down the valley and past Vaudagne the geography of the valley changes from the granite boulders and steep coniferous lined slopes around town to mellow slopes with deciduous trees and loamy ground, perfect for the icy conditions.

Before we could hit the loam, we had to contend with the road from town to Vaudagne. As they don’t really grit the roads here (stops the chain getting rusty I guess) the only time we got a break from the black ice on the road was when it was a sheet of inch thick actual ice. Somehow or other, Sandy & I both got there without hitting the tarmac.

Once on the off road, traction improved considerably as long as you stuck to the band where meltwater flowing down the trail had removed the snow before freezing the ground. Sandy couldn’t believe his luck at getting to ride in such warm and easy conditions after spending most of his life MTBing in Aberdeenshire.

The last section of the trail dropped us down to Chatelard just outside Servoz (there’s only one trail on the map that drops you down to Chatelard, you can work out the rest from that) and it’s pretty good even by local standards, a natural bobsleigh run covered in a thick layer of leaves. Skids might not be big or clever but for once you’re not doing much harm, so why not….

Alas the camera succumbed to the cold at this point so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

As we sprachled over the path above the motorway, the next problem presented itself: the train went by en route to the Servoz station 500m up the road.

We were planning on catching the train to save us having to pedal back to Chamonix.

The path over the motorway is hewn from a cliff face and has a fixed rope to help you over.

We weren’t catching the train.

Riding a bike up hill is bound to be good training for something, today it seemed to be good training for being hungry, cold and scared of ice, which pretty much sums up winter climbing for me so that’ll save me having to get the ice axes out the cupboard again. Every cloud has a silver lining etc.

Is this the last ride for the season? Probably not, but if it is chamonixbikeblog will be out of hibernation in the spring.

* If you were into BMX in the early/mid ‘90’s then hopefully this is a hilariously witty play on a tee-shirt design, if not then you missed out on fully rigid bikes that weigh more than a DH rig, and my hilariously witty play on a tee-shirt design.

13/11/2013
Open for business. Still.

With the lift closing for summer at the end of September it seemed there was 2 options. Ride up the hills for once, or leave Chamonix until the lifts opened again for the French ½ term break. I chose the latter.

Back in town almost 4 weeks later and the leaves have changed colour but otherwise it seems to be business as usual for riding. Only the Brevent lifts have been opened mind, so if you don’t like steep techy rock sections and/or fast flowy but narrow singletrack, then tough I guess.

With the upper section of Brevent running this weekend after staying shut for the 1^st week of the holidays, there were plenty of riders heading up for the various delights of the bigger rides across towards the Aiguillette des Houches and on to Les Houches, Servoz or Le Fayet depending on your appetite.

Lorne, Spence & I were no different and also made a relaxed ‘traverse’ down and up a few hundred vertical meters of hill to the Aiguillette. Instead of the amazing aesthetics of the ridgeline trail we headed down towards the Merlet animal park before taking the Chamonix classic from there back to Les Bossons. Not as visually appealing as the other options, but probably the best riding you can get off the top of Brevent, and therefore, in the world*

It might be the very end of October, but it was still warm t-shirt weather as long as you were out of the wind, and even the wind was helping to clear the snow (apparently it snowed here a bit in mid October….) from the few parts of the trail that hadn’t seen enough sun.

So, to summarise. End of October, riding lifts, in t-shirts, on amazing trails, with mates. Chamonix, what’s not to like?

*Maybe not, but it’s got to be better than axle deep mud through a field.

27/10/2013
Tricot two

Who said September’s the best month for mountain biking in the alps? I did, and I submit this last week as evidence. Stable weather, cool temps, blue skies and quiet trails. We’ll just ignore the snow of a fortnight ago if that’s ok with you.

Last big day off the Chamonix lifts for the summer, where to go and what to do. Well THE Les Houches classic ride from last summer was the Col de Tricot down to Le Fayet. None of us had repeated it since so we figured, why not?

If I’m honest, the weather was a wee bit better last year. Cooler for a start, and without the sense of menace that humidity in the air and building clouds brings after a long period of good weather in the alps. Getting to the start of the route was also easier with the Bellevue cablecar running, but it’s an easy enough ride over from the top of Prarion so I won’t grumble.

The initial descent down to the snout of the Bionassay glacier has got a fair bit more washed out than last season, with all of us choosing to walk some parts that we hardly hesitated on the year before. Conversely other sections had got easier with the worst of the loose rubble cleared away.

The bridge still hasn’t been upgraded to modern 750mm bar standards, but Robbie’s slightly older, and hence narrower, set up did make it further along the bridge than most.

The ascent to the col hadn’t got any easier either, though fortunately for me my bike’s a lot lighter this year so I didn’t have to work as hard!

The putting green surface of the col encouraged a leisurely early lunch and suncream application, it’s probably just as well the descent looks so inviting from there, it’d be virtually impossible to leave otherwise.

Once we had mustered up the enthusiasm to get going we found the descent to be in great condition, the section that had been removed by landslide has been repaired and the whole line was ridden feet up (unless you count stops to take photos, what are the ethics there on claiming a dab free descent?).

We knew though that the initial section to the Miage chalets is just the prologue, the teaser. The real reason for doing this ride comes next, fast flowing singletrack all the way to Champel.

It was just as good as we remembered it, just as flowing, and we stopped just as few times as we were enjoying it just so much. It says a lot about the riding in this area that the last man in the group got shouted at by a group of walkers…….for going too slow and to get off the brakes and speed up!

Of course the slower you go, the longer you get to enjoy the ride. Fast or slow, the trail still eventually comes to an end. With ice cream once again calling further down the valley and us all being keen to ride the pipeline trail into Le Fayet we missed out the fire road section down from Champel and just blasted straight down the tarmac, into St Gervais, past the lift station and on to the start of pipeline. I went off ahead to get photos and waited. And waited. And waited. Lorne & Robbie had missed the turnoff. I could have followed the other trail back to the road and caught up with them, but I’m selfish and I wasn’t going to pass up on some singletrack just for the sake of friendship.

We all met back at the tramway where we had a few minutes to spare till the 1410 tram. As the 1410 tram wasn’t running, this meant we had just over an hour to eat ice cream at the station café. Result.

Whilst enjoying our assorted ice creams (and very good they were too) it became apparent that we weren’t the only riders making the most of the last of the uplift as mtb after mtb came into the station. Chatting to the riders it also turned out that no one was doing very well at finding the turn off to Pipeline! Still, great to meet some new riders and new faces for future missions…

By the time the tram was setting off, bikes and riders onboard outnumbered walkers for the first time I’ve seen. I can’t imagine that 100 years ago when the tramway opened the operators of 1913 envisioned bikes being strewn through the carriages!

Last lift, last descent and what could it be other than the classic line near the Bellevue cables down into Les Houches.

Three weeks of pedalling everywhere awaits. How will we cope?

05/10/2013
Two trails

It might be the last week of proper uplift in the valley before the end of summer but it certainly doesn’t feel like the end of the season.

Les Houches is where it’s at right now and after the success of the ride from Nid d’Aigle it seemed a shame not to check out some of the other lines on the map.

The dotted red line that traverses round rather than over Mont Lachat was the first, and whatdaya know, turns out it is a quick easy way round to the Col Mont Lachat. There is one short section with wire railings in place but it doesn’t warrant the dotted red line.

From the col there’s then 2 ways to descend back into the valley, one taking the fall line through some very tightly spaced contour lines, the other meandering across the hill and missing anything cliff like on the map. In my mind I imagined the first trail being a techy nightmare, but hopefully in a good way, and the second being a continuous band of singletrack working it’s way through forest and open meadows.

Of course, that’s all in my mind.

The steep line was up first. Sandy & I pedalled and pushed round Mont Lachat in the afternoon sunshine, questioning whether it was late September or late July, to the buildings at the col. Our rapid progress was slowed by me discovering the doors were open and insisting I got to go and have a poke about. This, and the obligatory hop about the outside on our bikes, over, we could get on with the trail.

Pretty good on the top part, open and flowy before going into tighter rocky sections. At the split we turned right into the woods, where it was mostly open and flowy with tighter root sections, then suddenly death exposure.

If you’re feart of heights, or even slightly concerned about heights, or have an active imagination regarding geological stability, this trail probably isn’t for you….

It is good though, that’s all I’ll say.

Day two trail two.

This time Lorne is along for the ride. From the map I thought this trail had more potential to be fun riding, but after breaking left at the junction I was a bit disappointed. The gradient was right, but there just hadn’t been the traffic to stop the vegetation encroaching a bit much over the track. After a while the trail became more defined, but flow was still thwarted by fallen trees or collapsed sections of trail.

In between stops the riding was fun enough, and finding derelict lift infrastructure is always a bonus (if you’ve got a mechanical engineering degree at least) but it just lacked that certain something.

Lower down the trail went from lacking an undefined “something” to lacking an easily defined “downhill gradient” I’m happy to ride uphill, but constant changing from steep down to unrideable up gets a bit weary.

I was wondering if I was just having a bad day and the trail was better than I was crediting it but rejoining the previous days trail near the village for the final few kms it was clear where the best riding was.

Two trails, one that’s absolutely brilliant, none I’d recommend.

29/09/2013