Chamonix Bike Blog

Category: Road trip

Oh I do like to be beside the seaside. Finale Ligure.

It’s been a long snowy winter here in Chamonix and spring is yet to make much of an appearance. A trip away to the sun was called for, so the car was laden with people, tents, climbing gear, bikes, our best pizza eating bibs and we headed south to the Italian Riviera.

I try to keep road trip stuff to less than an hour from Chamonix but it’s only 3 ½hr down to Finale, and as it’s so good down there it seems fair to bend the rules. Besides, it’s Italy, the country made for bending the rules.

The last time I was here the SuperEnduro finals were in town, but it was a climbing trip so there was no space for the bike and anyway, the few articles I’d seen in magazines looked good but not MUST DO good. After checking out some of the race stages in person and seeing the footage online afterwards there was no way I was making the same mistake again. Alas work commitments meant all my mountain bike friends pulled out of the trip, leaving me to ride solo, thought Susie’s road bike made it into the back of the car.

Full of enthusiasm, I set out armed with a paper tablemat showing the route of the SuperEnduro trails. Very quickly an important aspect of Finale riding revealed itself. You have to pedal uphill. This could be avoided by using one of the many uplift/guiding companies in the area, but where would the fun be in that? Besides the views are too nice to miss out on by being stuck in a minibus and you don’t really have the time to appreciate them on the way down…

Once at the top of a hill, it was time to make like the grand old duke of York and go back down again. Navigation is very easy in Finale as the weather is always nice (saying that, the locals were telling us it had been raining constantly for the last month) so you can always see the Mediterranean, and as long as you remember which side of you the sea should be on to get home you can just follow a good looking trail and see where it gets you. Granted this approach means you may not hit the “best”, and only the best, trails of an area but best is very subjective and if that’s all you’re after, perhaps a more acquisitive pastime would suit you better, like stamp collecting.

Following a random trail with tell tale Maxxis Minion tracks on it paid off everytime for me. Based on photos in magazines I’d expected the trails to be more techy than flowy, but the opposite seemed true. The clay heavy dirt of the area berms up corners nicely when moist then sets like concrete, really helping you carry your speed with a few pumps instead of pedalling. Some of my favourite sections were almost flat, twisting through grass and aloe vera, with the Med and Finale town below me.

This isn’t to say that there wasn’t plenty of tech too! I’m not a fan of wearing pads and rarely use them, however down here I was feeling my knees a little exposed and will be wearing them on future trips.

With more time to spare, you could do this until your legs are too tired to pedal, your fingers too sore to brake or your mind too fried to keep up with the trail. I had some rock to climb as a distraction before the main purpose of the trip. Italian food. Finale Borgo has a few super nice wee cafes, but for ice cream we found the main town of Finale Ligure to be the best bet. Coffee is amazing no matter where you go, we couldn’t start our day without a trip to the campsite bar for an expresso. And whether you’re cooking food in the campsite or heading into town, the quality of the ingredients and cost make you wonder why you haven’t moved here already.

Of course, all that eating needs some exercise to justify it. Back on the bike it is. Despite my derogatory comments above about only riding the best trails, the stage 5 track from the SuperEnduro was pretty cool! It helped I’d got up at 7 on our last day to get a ride in before we went climbing, so the temperature was cool and the sun low in the sky above the med as I gained height on the road above town. With a few days exploring behind me I’d pretty much worked out the line from the map , but it turned out the combination of tyre tracks in the mud (I hadn’t expected mud, but it seems it had actually rained at some point in the last few days) and some very helpful bike trail signs meant I didn’t have to think too much about navigation and could focus on having a blast instead.

So there you go. Amazing food, amazing coffee, friendly locals, great scenery, world class trails, 3hr 30mins from Chamonix.

(and if I’d just written that last sentence first I could have saved myself a load of typing.)

23/04/2013
Risoul Deval (turns out the deval IS in the detail…)

Across the world, the end of the ski season is marked by weird races thought up by, usually drunk, ski bums who don’t really want the snow to melt, but if the inevitable’s going to happen then they might as well have fun doing it. Hence the “Peak to Pub” multi sport carnage which takes place annually from Mnt Hutt to Cairngorm.

Risoul’s been running the Deval for 9 years now, which involves an off-piste ski from 2500m down to the resort at 1800, then a 10km ish enduro bike down to the River Durance at roughly 900m where the wild card of an 8km river canoe is added to the competition. Competitors descend in teams of between 2 and 6 with pretty much any form of snow and bike equipment allowed. The ever competitive Jan knew this was the race for him, and I wasn’t quick enough to think of a way to say no…..

Our 5hr drive from Chamonix to Risoul in a VERY laden small car started perfectly when I lifted the lightest bag I had to put it in the boot and tweeked my back. By the time we arrived I was barely able to walk upright and had to hobble into registration like an 89 year old and sign the documents proclaiming full fitness for competition without looking the official in the eye. After discovering that Risoul is actually very very small, we ate some pizza, and returned to our gite in the zombie proof fortress of Mont Dauphin Fort.

We were up bright and early, or at least early, on Saturday for the qualification. There wasn’t a huge amount of information before the race about this, though we knew that it was purely a ski stage and your performance dictated your start time. With a lot of narrow singletrack on the bike section, which was where we expected to perform best, we needed to get an early start number to avoid being stuck behind slower riders. Expecting an offpiste timed descent we discovered it was a gate race mix of DH, giant slalom and slalom radius (here’s a go-pro from one of the other teams if you’re interested ). With a belly full of ibroprofen and fairly normal skis I’d be ok, but Jan had fully rockered, 112mm underfoot Katanas. Things were looking even worse when some of the locals turned up and looked decidedly like they were actual ski racers….

Either way, we did our best, got a clean run down the track, tried to ignore the gnawing desire to find out where we qualified and went to get changed before the compulsory VTT track inspection. This was when you realise just how much effort goes into the organisation of the event. The bike park was a carpark, secured and guarded by the local mohicaned gendarme with entry only on presentation of your race bracelet. For every stage away from the town itself, you had a drop bag which would be waiting for you at the next stage with your change of clothes or equipment.

Taking it easy to avoid damaging the bikes or ourselves, we set of on a leisurely descent of the mountain. The first few hundred meters were on easy road, then a hairpin right, steep muddy slope and…………snow. Lots of snow, knee deep, soft and completely covering the trail. A path had been cut through by use, but there was no way it was going to clear before the race. We experimented with riding, running, walking and swearing, but in the end fastest (or perhaps least slow) progress seemed to be by holding onto the bike and sliding down next to it using your trainers as skis!

Eventually the snow eased off and we could ride the trail, and very enjoyable it was too. Lots of nice singletrack through trees, a good mix of surfaces and the occasional fireroad section that would be vital for overtaking on the Sunday.

Eventually the gradient slackened off and the last kilometre or so were flat with short, but painful, climbs. We were both feeling pretty smug with dropper posts and pedalable bikes, a lot of the field were either on XC whips or full DH rigs.

After checking where our transition cage was for changing from bike to canoe we used the bike wash, handed over our bikes to the transport team and got on the bus back up to Risoul where the qualification sheet was up.

4^th. Which we were pretty happy about. Looking at the times there was about 8 seconds separating the 2^nd to 6^th places, but 1^st was the all girl team of twentyforty a country mile ahead with 12 seconds clear on 2^nd place. That would be the GS racer and her trainer then! Feeling fairly happy with our performance, we marched off to the bike park to check on our competitions steeds. Spirits were further lifted by finding a mix of XC and DH bikes, with only Gachette Heureuse on matching top end Cannondale Jekylls. This concerned us, but there wasn’t much we could do so we started on our race strategy.

On race day, teams start at 10 second intervals from the top of the hill. Although the Deval is won or lost purely on time, the first team across the line in the canoe has always had the fastest time, so basically we needed to get to the front and stay there! We hoped that as all the teams infront had local knowledge, we could just do our best to stay with them and let them lead us through the ski section, then do everything we could to get past them on the bike. As for the canoe, well, I’d at least been in a canoe before, Jan had seen a picture in a book once, so we would just have to work it out as we went along.

Settled in our plan, we headed off to the evening briefing before more food, ibroprofen and bed.

Race day! An early start as we needed to drop off all our bags for the various transition zones, check the bikes were still working (you never know what gremlins can strike at night!) eat more ibroprofen, drink more water and get up to the top of the hill. There was some concern from the organisers that the rapid warming forecast was going to make the ski section too dangerous, however the start was cool enough that it could go ahead as planned, despite the avalanche risk rising to 4 during the day. A mild panic that we were going to miss our start time due to pre-race pee requirements proved unfounded and after our ARVA check we joined the throng of skiers warming up.

And then it was on. We started with a brisk walk up the boot pack, trying not to beast the legs or lungs too much. By the top of the bootpack we’d made it to 3^rd and clipped into the skis just behind the lead 2. Relying on their local knowledge we speed checked where they speed checked and held position into the first steeper section through gates. At which point we realised we were much much faster off piste than on! We tore past and headed blindly into the trees relying on the occasional gate and some go-pro footage from the briefing the previous night to guide us. Entering the village we were clear in the lead with no one in sight behind us. Unfortunately we now had to run about 500m through town on concrete in ski boots.

After changing boots and ditching a layer we started cycling back up the hill through town against the flow of skiers running down. Gachette Heureuse played a blinder on their transition (by cunningly freezing to death at 2500m in only cycling jerseys!) and we were splitting each other’s group. I don’t use a go-pro, but if I’ve ever wanted one it was for sprinting down the road out of town, leading the group, with a helicopter filming 50m infront of me flying sideways down the road!

After turning off the road and into the snow we discovered a local team had made a cunning shortcut through the town and got ahead of us. Fortunately we could fall out of control down snow whilst holding onto out bikes faster than them, and again 1^st and 2^nd was split between us and Gachette Heureuse. Jan pulled clear of the trailing Gachette Heureuse team member and once we were in the lead the 2 of us did our best to keep our excitement in check, whilst still pushing on. Our aim was to get clear of Gachette Heureuse in the hope that they would ease off when they couldn’t see us, but despite slowly increasing the gap, we couldn’t quite shake them.

The final section of the bike was mostly flat or climbing. Knowing we weren’t going to need our legs for the canoe we gave it everything we had and gasped into the final transition with a reasonable lead. Alas we were now in the unknown. We got the wet suits on fairly quickly, but bibs under or over the buoyancy aid? Different officials shouted different instructions. Then my buoyancy aid had a missing strap and had to be fixed. We leapt into the canoe and headed off downstream, but something wasn’t quite right.

I was sitting very low at the back of the boat, with it slowly filling with water. We were paddling hard but still about ½ way down the river, Gachette Heureuse came past cruising serenely down the Durance occasionally dipping a paddle in the water. This wasn’t going to stop us and we kept pushing until I got bounced out the boat by a not very submerged rock in a rapid! Quickly back out the water (even with a wetsuit on it was cold) and it started to dawn on me what the problem was. We had the boat back to front! Too late to turn around before the next white water, we kept going, switch to the end.

Gachette Heureuse got across the line a well deserved 1^st, we were just behind, then a bit back was Les Razmokets. The Deval’s a timed race though, so we wouldn’t know everyone’s final place until the prizegiving in the afternoon, so began the long wait to see….

Getting back to Risoul I wasn’t expecting Jan to turn round and tell me there may be a problem but, Jan turned round and said there may be a problem. The car was in Risoul. We now needed to drive down to the bike-river transition to clean and pack the bikes. The car keys were in the bike-river transition. Jan hopped back on the bus down to the valley and started the series of hitchhikes needed to get the keys back, I went and laid down in the sun watching the local gendarmes guarding the bike park, whilst having a BBQ and playing football. I can’t see that happening in Glasgow….

Jan made it back, we packed the car and went to enjoy the final bit of the Risoul package, free lunch on the terrace. The Snowboard Café deserves a mention here for having a rubbish name but a brilliant competitors package of starter, pasta main, dessert, beers and coffee. All this and on the slopes next to the prizegiving.

We wandered over and waited for the announcement. Sure enough the top 3 was as we crossed the line, 2^nd overall 6.46 seconds back on Gachette Heureuse. Realising how daft it was to be disappointed in 2^nd, we cheered up immensely, possibly because we now had a big cup and several kilos of Haribo.

19/04/2013
A Saleve for the uplift blues?

After 2 weeks of pretty poor biking weather (grand for getting the ski season going though) whilst the Brevent lifts were open, the skies have cleared and there’s been wall to wall sunshine.

And frost.

It is November after all.

Unfortunately the Chamonix lifts are closed so, always keen to let someone else do the hard work, we loaded up and headed out of town for some mid November lift access mountain biking. Got to love the alps.

45mins to 1hr from Chamonix and on the outskirts of Geneva is the tourist lift “la Saleve” You can buy a single uplift for about 6euro or for 43euro get a book of 10 passes which you can share amongst a few riders and are valid for 12 months from purchase. Bargain. The front face of Saleve doesn’t look too promising for biking, unless you’re filming for Where the trail ends but there’s a network of trails winding down from the top through some fairly unlikely looking terrain.

When we arrived it was cloudy and freezing cold in the carpark, irritating as it was sunny and freezing cold back in Chamonix, however heading up in the lift we got through a cloud band 1/2 way up and into the sunshine. Still cold though.

Once at the top tracks head off in all directions with several popular XC bike loops around the top. We were here to ride down though, so crossed the road and followed the traverse path for a few minutes to where the proper trails start. Despite looking like unofficial tracks, the trails are marked with little bike symbols. Nevertheless, the turn-off from the road can be easy to miss. It’s about 100m down the tarmac road, on your right and a sharper turn than it first looks. Once onto the trail though, just keep following your nose! There’s a huge number of variations, if you want to get to the best of them, speak to a local (there’s plenty of them about!)

The top half of the main trail is a great example of what good trail building should be. Fast and flowing, despite the damp and slidy conditions, with well constructed jumps which look intimidating but ride smoothly if you commit. It gets pretty tight in places with tree gaps little wider than your bars, but the berms keep you on the right line and in the gaps. The limestone geology also makes a change from Chamonix’s granite with a bit more grip in the wet than we were all used to.

The lower section is very good in the dry… it wasn’t dry today. The claggy mud was sticking to everything it touched, leaving everyone with semi-slick tyres. Low speeds meant none of the many, many crashes were serious and generally it was easier to slide down on, or at least near, the bike than try to walk.

As a contrast to the fast, full-face style tracks that take the more direct line down, there are some enduro-style trails that take a less steep line further east to the village of Monnetier. These don’t get ridden as much, and you can tell. The entrance, roughly 200m down the start of the main trail, which breaks off right was covered in leaves and without Wayne’s local knowledge we’d never have found it. Once on the trail the line was a little more obvious, but still well covered in leaves. Hopefully next time it’ll be easier to see where we’re going as it did mess with the flow a bit! To get back to the lifts, head through the village, cycling uphill (wouldn’t be much fun with a DH rig this bit) for about 10 minutes till you round a left hand hairpin and see the gravel road which you use on the main DH tracks on your right.

The last section back to the gondola is common to most of the tracks. The trail starts as a walking path with singletrack cut-throughs to avoid steps made for walkers. Then you get to a long series of rock stairs cut out of the cliff with a fair sized drop to your right. fine in the dry if there’s no one walking up, but not even the local heros were riding them today! After this the trail gets interesting again, with yet more great trail building work.

After a summer of riding trails in the high alps, Saleve feels almost like going back to the riding in the UK. Lots of trails built by locals with whatever materials are available, damp slidy dirt despite it not having rained for several days, lots of trees, except here you have a gondola to lift you 660 metres rather than a farmers trailer or pedalling.

Cheers to the trail builders for a great days riding.

20/11/2012
Velo Ferrata

Most people imagine life as a Chamonix bike bum as a daily routine of getting up, selecting a bike from a quiver of top end steeds, being carried to the top of the hill by train/tram/chairlift/gondola or helicopter before ripping down on the finest rocky/rooty/buffed trails known to man then finishing the day quaffing fine wine with nubile bike groupies. Alas the truth couldn’t be more different.

Sometimes we have to pedal up the hill first.

Then there’s also the exploratory rides, where we go looking for the mythical perfect trail…. Acting on a couple of tip offs and a promising looking squiggly line on the map, Tom suggested we head down the valley to St Martin sur Arve to take a look at a loop below the “Tete du Colonney” cliffs. If you check it out on the map you’ll see that most of the 900m height gain can be done on a tarmacked road before moving to the 4×4 track to the Chalet du Meyrieu, leaving only about 250m to be done whilst pushing. Unfortunately what we didn’t notice was the gradient of some of the tarmac and 4×4 track. None of this slowed Twix the dog down any, but if you’re wanting to drive up to the car park, probably best to take something with some ground clearance and a fairly low 1^st gear.

Eventually pushing up the 4×4 track gave way to pushing up singletrack, which at least was a change of scenery. The French IGN maps use a selection of colours and lines to give you a clue about what to expect on the trail. We knew that up ahead there was a section of red dots. This could mean that the trail got narrow but still rideable, or it could mean you have a full on climb with fixed ropes and cut foot holds. We were hoping for the former, it turned out to be the latter. To be fair, having seen the size of the waterfalls and gullies that cut through the cliffs here, we could probably have guessed this, but it’s amazing what optimism does for you.

Through some stroke of luck the trails into each of these sections were rideable (sometimes easier to ride than walk!) which meant we just had to shoulder the bikes for the climbs out. This did leave us with one hand holding the bikes, one hand holding the wire, and no hands to spare for making upward progress, but we got there in the end. Twix was having no problems, despite her lack of opposable thumbs

Eventually we reached L’Achat d’en Bas at 1482 which meant the good stuff should start. Shouldn’t it?

It did, at first at least. The trail down to Chavan was fast and flowing. Tom was destroying it on his shiny new 29’er with Twix not far behind. I kept being drawn to the views of the Arve valley far, far below, and as a consequence kept spotting the drainage ditches at the last minute! The trail then gave way to some fairly hardcore 4×4 track then, at a very easy to miss junction, we turned off right to contour back round to the inspiration for the ride, the switch back squiggles leading down to Besseray

After a few interestingly narrow sections getting over, the switchback started off promisingly. Not too steep to be worrying, but steep enough to be challenging and with the option of blatting straight down the middle if your ethics allow. Then it got steeper. And tighter. If you can’t rolling endo round corners, you’re really going to struggle on this trail. After a while we gave up, some corners the consequences of a near inevitable fall were just too much.

Even once the corners opened up again, there were some pretty gnarly outlooks, with a not-quite-as-high-as-I’d-like fence between the trail and a very long but very fast approach to St Martin sur Arve.

As ever, Twix couldn’t see what our problem was and bounded back and forth with the enthusiasm of an animal that hasn’t been told how long it is till the next nap. Once out of the switchbacks our enthusiasm returned too. If that section had been designed to be as unsuitable as possible for bikes, then next was the opposite. Given some of the banking of corners, presence of little rock lips and use of the terrain, I’m almost sure it WAS made for bikes. Either way, an absolute corker of a singletrack blast to finish the ride off.

Some rides are instant classics, some you know you’ll come back to with more skills (or failing that, more travel) and others, well, you’re not going back. I’m not in any rush to ride the trail again and I can’t see Tom putting it in a guidebook anytime soon, but there’s plenty of other tracks down there which look like they could do with some exploration, so maybe that mythical ultimate trails IS waiting down there somewhere.

Anyway, time to get back up to Chamonix, there’s some fine wine and bike groupies waiting….

27/09/2012
Singletrack heaven: La Thuile

With the best trails in Chamonix busy with walkers and trail runners, a (nother) road trip was in order, this time through the Mont Blanc tunnel to La Thuile. The trip’s an easy 45 minutes (if you don’t get stuck in traffic….) and stress free once you’ve found the chairlift (look out for the “bikers welcome” sign on a café, and turn next left!)

A quick summary if you just want to look at the pictures: if you’re on a DH bike, best to stay on the main road till you hit Aosta, then ride Pila, or keep going over the pass and ride the Val d’Isere track, there’s nothing we found that warranted a big bike. There’s no big drops, jumps, rock gardens or braking bumps. If you’re on an enduro bike then best to visit Via Marcello Collomb and look in the estate agents window for a flat as your bike is pretty much perfect for every trail here. Hardtail riders needn’t worry either, the trails aren’t buffed smooth, but you’ll not struggle.

So, 17euro later and armed with the tantalising looking piste map (is it piste or trail? Either way, track names and letters below) we hopped onto the Bosco chair and gained 617m to discover that it were a bit chilly, and perhaps we’d better head back down and grab another layer. The black run “Garin / B” was the first to be found so followed that. We were disappointed. Heading back up (with long sleeves for me) we continued up another 261m on the Chalet lift and dropped back down on the red “Freeride / H”. Again, it’s not that the trail was bad, just nothing on a par to what we have here in Chamonix. Back up again we headed off to do a longer loop back down to town. This was more like it, fast and flowing singletrack through alpine scenery, getting more and more tech and tight as we dropped into the trees, before finally cruising back into town on the road. From here on in the day was on!

We kept doing top to bottom laps on all manner of excellent singletrack, very rarely climbing but generally requiring enough pedalling to make a full on DH or freeride bike too much work. Most of the trails are man-made, but with a really natural feel. The advantage of this is that they don’t seem to get too cut up. Occasionally the trails are obviously man made with berm and kicker sections, but these are few and far between.

I can’t think of another uplift area with such easy enduro riding, just get on the lifts, pick a trail, ride down, & repeat! A quick look at the piste map shows that you can easily mix and match sections of trails creating even more variety. And as with all bike areas, there are lots of locals trails cutting off the main paths but we never felt the need to check any out, this time….

Rather than describe how gosh darn awesome our day was and explain each lap in detail, here’s a breakdown of most of the trails we rode:

Black Garin / B, average, dusty, bit rooty but not very hard.

Red Freeride / H, average, bitty, some braking bumps

Blue Foyer / I into red Argillien / J then black La Joux / C. More like it! Super fun, more open at top on Foyer & Argillien, very natural feel despite being mostly man made.

Red La Tour / P. Great again, though some muddy bits…. feels very natural till an out of character, but great, berm/jump section.

Touraisse / S. Faster of the 2 tracks leading on from La Tour, with some very very good drifty corners through just wide enough gaps in the trees.

Black Le Volpi / D. Good, much faster and more flowing than Garin, the other front face black, but probably a nightmare in the wet!

Blue Laghetto / L is mostly undulating double track with a very Scottish section on open heathland. Not a particularly interesting trail, but very worthwhile to access….

Black Maisonnetes / K & Ponteilles / K2(deviation). K for Killer! The turn off from Laghetto is easy to miss, but keep an eye out on the right after the left hairpin and you’ll be fine. Trail of day with a great mix of all terrain, views, some tech and lots of fast flowing riding.

Red Verney / T. Other option for continuing on from Le Tour. More loamy than rest of trails, but could do with a bit more gradient in sections to improve the flow, track a little indistinct through meadows, but still good. Black link closed at Pont Serrand, so a short climb on road onto Le Volpi is needed of you don’t want to follow the tarmac down.

Bike park. Above the Bosco lift there’s a small bike park with dual slalom course (2-0 to Angus) some larger tables, a kiddie north shore and a (deflated) airbag. Nice way to finish off a lap, but it’s not Leogang.

Whetted your appetite? If all this riding isn’t enough then remember, it’s Italy, so don’t bother with a sandwich in the bag, just buy some panini, drink some coffee and the day will have been worth it no matter if you didn’t enjoy the riding (or your bike had a tantrum and got 4 punctures….) There’s even a “MTB Lunch” deal where you get your lift pass, lunch and a swim in the mid-mountain pool for 25.50!

See you there next year.

02/09/2012