Chamonix Bike Blog

Category: Road trip

FIN

Another interseason, another trip to Finale. Following the annual MTB migratory route to the Italian Riviera (except the bit where you head back to the frozen north after a few days, seems we’ve still some learning to do from them birds).

It’s good to get in on copying your favourite pro’s social media which, until recently, will have been filled with #preseason #shakedown and #testing in the sunny south. Or even your friends who will have been busy with #newbikeday and getting some dust in to try out their new whips.

I saw the trip the other way round, a last chance to ride my bike before it goes to a new owner. I try to avoid unbridled enthusiasm, or even any enthusiasm, it’s just not what the cool kids do, but my Canyon Strive has done me well for the last 2 years and I’m pretty sad to see it go. Through races, bike parks, mud, dust, rock and root it’s just rumbled along not complaining and, except for the odd puncture or crash squinted saddle and pulled cable, never have I had a mechanical. Well, except the first shapeshifter unit, but it just got left in DH mode all the time anyways.

But, it’s sold and gone now, so I’ll save you any anthropomorphism of an object and get back to the more interesting bit of the trails.

Last spring we rode Isallo Extasy and declared it the pure bestest trail ever in Finale, so figured it would make a grand first trail of the trip this year. Only it’d been raining solid for the previous three days and our shuttle driver asked us no to ride it. A bit of guessing later we headed down an only slightly slick roller coaster, which was good but not as good as Isallo.

It also turned out not to be as good as Toboggan which too goes from the Din drop off point and was mibbies all four of our favourite trail. Rohan because he didn’t have me getting in his way, Gabrielle because she didn’t crash on it and didn’t have me and Spence getting in her way, and me and Spence ‘cos we managed to have a conversation the whole way down. And didn’t crash.

Completing our three days of shuttle to Din we final(e)ly went and rode Insalo again, only to discover later on Strava that our previous favourite trail is, in fact, called Fast and Furious. The names don’t really matter anyway, I wouldn’t want to declare which is better and fortunately we’re not in some contrived tv gameshow where we have to choose, so I’d say go and ride them both, 2 great ways to start your day. Or, if you’re like our new friend Rainer who we met at the base of Toboggan, him having arrived from Isalo looking very not-covered-in-mud, ride them both in the same day with just a few thousand meters of pedalling up inbetween.

I find the closer I get to Finale town the less I enjoy the trails. Not the the trails closer to town are bad mind, more that the style of the trail becomes much more physical and, if I’m honest, more like it’s trying to break your bike. As my bike was no longer actually MY bike on this trip, I was more keen than usual to avoid breaking it. Breaking myself is something I can manage anywhere.

The exception to the rule would be the trails leading back into Orco Feglino town itself from Chiesa San Rocco which, like the nearby Pino Morto trail, don’t bother with any of that pesky mid-trail uphill rubbish or require any great finesse to ride. Just lots of holding onto the bars and not the brakes fun, swing the hips about, look where you want to go and holler on through.

Trails that are so much fun, when we went to do a few shuttle laps on the last day before heading home I got all anti social and just kept doing top to bottom laps rather than sharing the fun. It was my last play out on the Strive, let me have my moment. I’d never ridden Little Champery before this trip (no idea how, I’ve ridden past the entrance often enough) but it got the questionable honour of being the last trail I rode on the Strive, a fitting last blast.

Time for a change.

Off to Scotland now for some mud and ALE.

Cheers Spence, Gabrielle and Rohan, and Canyon, for yet another grand trip. FIN

05/05/2017
It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine): Lift (not) closings

Already another summer winds down. Chairlifts are turning for the last time until the snow arrives and we’re faced with the very real prospect of having to actually pedal ourselves to the top of the hill.

So, just like on a night out when last orders are called and, despite all evidence to the contrary, part of the group insists that more drink is needed, an increasingly desperate search for somewhere open commences.

First port of call, Chamonix:

Bellevue: 25th September
Le Tour: 25th September
Grand Montets: 25th September
Flegere: 18th September but re-opens 20th October to 27th November
Brevent/Planpraz: 18th September
Tramway du Mont Blanc: 18th September
Prarion: 11th September

A slight issue this autumn is the Chamonix trains which have closed until 30th November and the replacement bus doesn’t take bikes.

Outside of the valley the options continue, but tend to get a bit pricier:

Zermatt the mountain railway just keeps running. If you can afford it….
St Luc bike park is open until 2nd November
Verbier bike park goes on until 30th October
Saleve is presumably open all winter as usual, though the website is only going as far as 13th November for the now
Crans Montana’s bike park, and perhaps more usefully, non bike park trails too, are available up to 16th October
The Dorenaz telecabin and SwissPost buses all count as public transport and keep running through the year, use your imagination. Or google.

All this is a bit irrelevant for me however, having dislocated my wrist. For once I’m listening to my inner adult and am going to stay off the bike for the recommended recovery time, which has scuppered the best time of the year for biking, but them’s the breaks etc. Boredom will no doubt mean I keep writing things.

12/09/2016
Gone surfing: La Clusaz

Everyone’s favourite non-surfing surf band (no, not Weezer, the Beach Boys) said through the medium of song to tell the teacher they’d gone surfing for the summer. Well, schools back in and summer seems to be over as most bikepark lifts (except in Chamonix, obvz) closed at the weekend.

As the last chance to ride somewhere new I dodged several hundred roadies tracing the Tour du France routes over the cols from Chamonix to La Clusaz to meet Spence and shred some gnar. Or some dust.

It’d not rained for a bit in Haute Savoie and though the La Clusaz website claims 180 odd km of trails, the actual DH trails are concentrated near the lifts and seem to get a fair bit of use. As a result, you were surfing about in a couple inches of loose dust.

This is pretty good fun and both Spence and I had (mostly through laziness) both got damp conditions tyres on (shortys and magic marys for the rubber fetishist out there) which work well in dust, the main issue was not being able to see where you were going if you were riding second.

The enjoyment you get out of flicking up trails of dust at every corner or braking point more than makes up for this minor inconvenience. Not sure if the failure of our lungs in a couple years from dust inhalation will be viewed the same way, but hey, who thinks of the future these days. #yolo #etc.

How were the trails then? Not bad. It’s not La Thuile or Pila (despite the dust) but the riding was still pretty fun on natural feeling trails with some nicely built up catch berms mixed in with more standard “bikeparky” blue trails. Pretty much every feature could be hit blind on every trail we rode, which means if you like jumps you’re going to be a bit disappointed, but for most folk it’s fine.

Lift pass is 17.50 for the 3 lifts, so it’s not going to break the bank either. Small French bike park oddity of the day went to the lift pass mounting where everyone was insistent that the pass had to be stuck to your handlebars. A first for me but somehow it stayed there all day, a good crash could see some problems though….

The best riding? We preferred the stuff off the Cret du Merle & Cret du Loup chairs, the black Encarnes piste got the most laps but there were plenty of variations between the official blue, red and black lines what with walking paths and unofficial add ons.

Over on the Beauregard gondola side of the hill the La Feriaz trail was a bit more “freeride”, but that was mostly because it had some northshore. Spence has a similarly dislike of riding on wood to me, also believing it to have a pathological desire to kill bikers, so one lap was enough. I reckon there’s some sweet trails in the woods on this side but without a tame local to show us, we just headed back over the the other side to laps the easy to find stuff. It’s been a long summer and it’s not over yet, we can get to be lazy if we want.

Time for a bit more riding at home then. Chamonix lifts start to close on the 18th September and the last to go is Bellevue on the 25th. And in case you missed it, Flegere and Brevent are taking bikes again. If you’ve been missing blogs about riding in Chamonix, I have written a bit, but it went on Pinkbike instead because shameless self promotion. It’s here anyway.

05/09/2016
Enduro des Belleville

I’ve been wondering what the point of going racing is recently. It’s great pushing yourself to be faster/higher/stronger/whatever (I think there’s some other big global sporty thing on at the moment) and all, but there’s not that much excitement in the battle for 58th place, I doubt anyone else cares any either. This is probably why I’ve not bothered writing owt about races much this season (I took my start number 256 or last-man-to-start to 58th last week in Samoens, but as mentioned already, it’s just not that interesting)

Fortunately, as in all the best bits of story telling, along comes something to save the day and provide me with a bit of content I want to write about.

Last weekend was the Enduro des Belleville. A wee (weel, 150 odd riders, no that wee) enduro race near Les Menuires over in the Savoie, run in the most relaxed manner possible and with 4 close to perfect stages. Throw in a Saturday night downhill street race, local friends to put you up in (unfinished) luxury chalets, beer at the feed stations and blue skies from start to finish: you’ve got a winner.

Even breaking the car on Saturday morning and making Nina detour a couple hours worth of driving to pick me up didn’t kill off my enthusiasm.

Saturday passed in a series of mishaps that for most races would have me far grumpier than even my standard background level of mild irritation at the world. From my car putting us a couple hours late getting to Les Menuires, then finding we actually wanted to go to Saint Martin des Belleville (I’ll read the full text of where sign-in is next time….), to heading up the hill to meet Sam for practice…..and going the wrong way so we ended up in Les Menuires. Again (though this did allow for a no-pedal drag race and a flashing “trop vite” warning sign on the road back).

Fortunately Flo Arthus was about to show us stage 4 (and how to get to stage 4, probably our bigger issue) which was good, as stage 4 was pretty sweet and getting to follow a shit hot local like Flo down it is even betterer.

It looked like we were going to be too late for the 2nd chair up to stage 3 (how could that be possible, everything had run so well till now) but a couple minutes late is the new just in time, so we got to play on that too, another great trail, maybe my favourite of the weekend.

Some more general faff later it was time for the street race. One lap to have a look-see then one lap with the clock running down through St Martin des Belleville, where it seemed like every inhabitant had turned out to heckle. The general Saturday theme continued with arriving at the start line to find I’d brought 2x left gloves and Nina’d forgotten her go-pro. With no UCI officials in sight I rode gloveless and Nina had to rally back to the chalet in the couple of minutes between runs.

After surviving a little over 70 seconds of concrete edges I was a bit surprised to hear “second place” at the finish. And more surprised as no one seemed to go any faster…..until newly met English rider Rob Newman arrived 0.23sec faster than me, followed by Julien Roissad 0.12 sec faster than that.

I’m not bitter at all about missing my first podium in a couple year and definitely don’t think world cup podiums of 5 should be introduced. Here’s Antonin Gourgin’s head cam showing what 0.26sec slower than me and last step on that WC podium looks like. Congratulations to Emmanuel Allaz for taking the win, and Nina for adding to her champagne collection with the win for the ladies.

And then there was food and beer. You never got that in my DH days. Well, not included in the entry fee anyways.

The race: Thanks to Sam, I’d been given a start number of 16, and even better I had Sam infront of me so, combined with the 30 sec intervals between riders, I would have to be motoring 1 minute quicker than a quick rider to have to worry about passing anyone. Just as well given the dust.

The first two stages were completely blind for me and anyone not local. It’s been a whiles since I got to ride walking trails (these stages are normally interdite fae the VTT, yet another cheers to the organisers for getting them for the race) blind and flat out. It’s one of the most entertaining things in my life to ride just on wits and intuition that there will be a landing behind that rock, or that the corner is going to open up instead of cliff out. Perhaps that should be most terrifying now I think about it.

Even better the taping was deliberately vague in places. I know #endurolines are a sore topic but sometimes it’s just cool as to take a guess on what’s about to happen and batter across some open ground to giggles or screams, depending on how it all works out.

The final 2 stages kept the same theme, albeit with a little more idea what was coming up. Even a return to yesterday’s levels of competence where I broke my shifter on the first real corner of stage 3 didn’t really ruin the fun. If anything not changing gear was one less thing to worry about.

Racing over, the A4 print out put me 10th senior men, with my 30 second target Sam (watching him stand and sprint up climbs into the distance was just a bit demoralizing on the final stage) in 6th. So neither of us would have made it on a WC podium. Here’s some proper race reporting and the event video to give you a better idea.

Racing to get into the top ten is much more fun than the top 100, but better still is when you get handed beer at the finish line by the race organisers, the restaurant next to the finish line is providing food, you’ve gone through the day knowing that arriving late to the start isn’t really a great issue, when the craic sitting about in the sun at the start of each stage for is one of the best parts of the day.

So it seems that’s what the point of racing is for me at the moment. Getting to go somewhere I probably wouldn’t have gone, see new mountains, ride new trails, meet new people and enjoy it all with friends. Maybe I’ll get competitive again next month.

Huge thanks for everyone involved in organising the weekend, Flo for showing us the trails and putting up with Scottish, Nina for saving me from a very long cycle to the race and usual high standards of conversation and Sam for putting us up and doing plenty to make a good weekend even better. And everyone else I met too.

16/08/2016
La Thuile EWS, Veni Vidi Perdidi*

Amongst the many, many things that annoy me (unnessecary repetition, spelling necessary, etc) is the phrase “have a good time all the time”. The idea that you can have only the good and positive with none of the bad. The yin without the yang, the single market without free movement of people…. Life needs a balance to work.

Hence the crackingness of the La Thuile race weekend; the courses, the weather, the friends, the kicking about in the pits in the sun…. all had to be balanced out by a negative, which in my case was arm pump.

I thought I knew arm pump. Turns out I was wrong. Six stages of average 800m vertical drop of steep and technical terrain showed me what arm pump really was. Fortunately pretty much every racer was getting embarrassed by the leaders of their category (U21 Men being the exception) so I was in good company with my disappointment at stage results.

All pretty much irrelevant anyway as, outside the top 10, no one other than you gives a shit about where you finish, so might as well relax and enjoy the experience. Easier said than done admittedly, but with some grand company from a Canadian infront and a Kiwi behind me on the hill for pre, during and post stage chat, it was still a pretty chilled out affair.

The practice days were probably better than the race days to be honest. The courses were without exception exceptional but better enjoyed in sections with stops to session the more entertaining bits. Practice was in a multi national crew of (probably) Denmark’s fastest enduro racers of the weekend, Nina and Frederik, plus Melanie Pugin who is France’s (probably Europe’s) fasted female enduro racer without a proper deal. Seriously, bike companies, why will none of you support her?

It’s kinda a shame we have to have races to ride like this, it would be good if you could get huge groups of riders together to rag about some trails, share the fastest/funnest lines with each other, then kick about in the sunshine after.

I’m no expert on van life, but the privateer pit area laid on seemed pretty good. Flat car park, fresh running water piped in, toilets, restaurant playing poor quality covers of pop tunes at high volume, views of massive mountain. Not much more to ask.

Well, a van would be good, which fortunately I got upgraded to when photog Tom Gaffney got upgraded from his van to a hotel, and let me use his Transit. Cheers!

There’s more than enough media out there to explain the racing and give a better idea of the trails and I was just taking snaps with the phone all weekend so try these: A proper race report day 1 and 2, Preview of the stages, and the full video thingy.

Rude & Ravanel are making it all a bit boring this year for the who’s gonnay win, but there’s plenty of interest in the rest of the field. Melanie Pugin in 6th for example. Also, I’m not getting the surprise at Sam Hill doing so well. Enduro is all about cutting the inside line, and who’s the king of the inside line?

But (other than my apparent need to keep sticking content up) the main point for the this post is this: Away over to La Thuile for the day to ride your bike. The lift pass is cheap, the trails are incredibly good, well laid out. Even if the EWS tracks aren’t on the bike map yet, the race map is easy to find (see, I just found it for you) and all of it is worth raggin about on.

Cheers to Nina, Frederik, Melanie and Tom for practice day entertainment, shuttle sharing, pit company and for lending me somewhere to sleep, Canyon and SRAM for saving me (or rather the bike) from my mechanical ineptitude and the La Thuile bike park and race crew for putting on such a great event.

*Aye, so turns out Latin is quite hard. I thought this title was just going to be a case of lifting the “Vici” and going on google translate for “vanquished”. Which is “Victus”. Except that means to vanquish, not to be vanquished, which I was, or were, or something. So after a fair bit of research and some help from other non-Latin speakers (cheers Antoine) ended up with “Vini Vidi Victus sum”, or “Wine, I saw I am conquered”. So that got changed to “Veni, Vidi, Victus sum” which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue and looks a bit odd, so a bit more searching about came up with “Perierat”, or lost, and then some conjugation and stuff later, boom, a blog title.

It’s possible I should put more effort into riding my bike and less into writing about it.

21/07/2016