Chamonix Bike Blog

Category: Trail conditions

An object in motion remains in motion unless…

How’s your memory on high school physics, up to Newton’s first law of motion? I’ll give you a reminder, save you the hassle of dusting off your copy of Principia Mathematica.

First Law: In an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force.

Or; stuff stays where you put it unless you give it a prod. Traditionally, giving things a prod then moved you onto Newton’s 2nd law where the object in question would accelerate in the direction it was prodded. Irritatingly some pesky scientists now went and (sort of) made a material with negative mass, so when poked it moves towards you*.

Having crowbared in a current (non political) affairs story, how does this swing round to bikes? Weeel, riders seem to react to their environment. If the local trail push in one direction, the riders tend to go with it, until something changes and then they get pushed in a new direction.

Not sure what I’m on about? If you live somewhere with a chairlift and bike park, you tend to ride a big heavy bike and hit jumps a lot. Live somewhere flat with rolling trails, you probably ride a XC 29’er. Live somewhere flat with no trails at all, you’ve probably bought a shovel and started digging trails (as in the proper definition of trails, jumpy ones). Finally, live somewhere with chairlifts and cracking natural tracks, you probably don’t both much with a shovel. i.e. Live in Chamonix, why bother building trails, there’s so many good ones already.

Only there’s always someone who want to be counter intuitive, to go in the wrong direction when pushed. And in this case, they’re building trails. The someone is really plural, as from Le Planet to Servoz folks are heading out and tweaking, modifying, extending or just straight up creating, trails.

I know who some of trails are made by, others I dunno, so it’s not for me to map out where the building is. But, if you get out a fair bit around Chamonix you should notice the more popular ones. The more hidden ones are an incentive to go and explore more, you never know where you might find the next gem.

I guess it’s also an incentive to go and add to the work that’s being done. Doesn’t need to be much, trail maintenance is as useful as making a new trail. The commune does grand work keeping the marked trails well maintained but there’s plenty of wee unmarked tracks that 5 mins work a ride to move fallen trees, kick clear drainage or push back encroaching shrubberies will make a difference.

And, if you all can do that then I don’t have to do anything and can just leech off everyone else’s hard work.

On the subject of getting something for nothing, the Chamonix lift accessed riding season started last week. Then ended after 1 day following the last minute change of mind by Compagnie du Mont Blanc to NOT keep Flegere running but fire up Brevent instead. Flegere lifties were happy with bikes, Brevent less so. Riding plans changed from lapping the Flegere trails to riding assorted valley trails under summer skies if not always summer temps. The pictures might look like they’re from August, but they were all definitely taken this April. Hence you’re getting a blog post about all the grand trail build work folk have been doing rather than how great it is to be riding off the lifts already.

The sun’s taking a wee break for a few days so I guess I should head off into the woods with a shovel and saw too. You never know, maybe the next post will be directions to the new greatest trail you’ve never ridden.

I wouldn’t get your hopes up but.

*Think how awesome negative mass materials could be in bikes! Tyres that roll uphill, pedals that accelerate away from your feet. It’ll be like an e-bike but without all that pesky attached stigma that you’re not a “real” cyclist just because you’ve got a motor in the downtube.

26/04/2017
Turning over

You might not be thinking of the same movie as me, but you’ll have seen the generic scene often enough.

Two men walk into a dusty and run down barn. At the back of a barn, below a dust sheet soiled by several years of dirt, lies a car shaped object. The dust sheet is whipped off in a cloud of said dust and a disturbed chicken or two to reveal an outdated but none the less impressive sports car. The ‘hood’ is ‘popped’ (it’s always an american movie) and, after a brief tinker with the engine, the main protagonist turns the key. The engine turns over once then bursts into life, settling quickly into a purposeful V8 growl. Cue line about being back in the game.

Anyone who’s done anything similar in real life knows that nothing will happen until you give up and put a new battery in, then once the engine catches it dies pretty quickly as you discover a rodent has chewed through most of the filters. Even once you manage to get it ticking over, it takes a couple of weeks until all the problems get found, fixed, and the engine starts emitting anything close to a purr.

Starting the bike blog up in the spring runs much closer to real life than the movies. Despite this, it’s the start of April and, like a normally aspirated 4 cylinder plant from a family car, things are running reliably enough and it looks like everything’s going to survive to the next MOT.

Might as well crack on, when do the lifts open?

Chamonix (usual CdMB caveats apply)
Bellevue: 10th June – 24th September
Brevent/Planpraz: 10th June – 17th September
Le Tour: 17th June – 24th September
Flegere: 17th June – 17th September, then 21st October to 5th November
Tramway du Mont Blanc: 17th June – 3rd September
Grand Montets: 24th June – 10th September
Prarion: 1st July – 3rd September
Vallorcine: 1st July – 3rd September

Those of you with a memory, or the wherewithal to use google, will have noticed that most of the lifts are opening a week later/closing a week earlier/both, compared to last year. Chamonix’s Marie is also looking into ways to encourage more cyclists to visit during the summer. Go figure.

How about another way of looking at it. After a below par winter for snow, where are the lifts already open? As well as the usual all-year suspects (Saleve, Dorinaz, Bex…) you can right now, right there, go play uplift bikes at Verbier and Pila until the ski season ends and they shut for spring maintenance. The Chamonix train should be in there too, but it closes 2nd April until late June for (more) works and the replacement bus service doesn’t take bikes. In defense of the train, we did have the cheeriest conductor on the ride back from Servoz a couple days ago who let 2 of us away with no paying saying “you’ve forgotten your Gen du Pays, yes….”

There’s more to the alps than Chamonix, what other dates are there:

La Thuile: 24th June – 3rd September (probably, dates not up yet, check here for when they update it) http://www.lathuile.it/datapage.asp?id=404
Megeve: 1st July – 17th September. When I say Megeve, I mean Jaillet. None of the other lifts, including all the lifts you need for the bike park, are open this summer. http://www.lesportesdumontblanc.fr/fr/2017/03/27/previsions-douverture-ete-2017/
St Gervais: Not up yet, but probably 1st July – 3rd September http://www.ski-saintgervais.com/fr/ete/tarifs-ete/remontees-mecaniques.php
Les Contamines: 1st July – 3rd September http://www.lescontamines.net/home_calendar.html
Grand Massif: Assorted start and finish times across the area, and they’re not online yet, but basically between 1st July – 27th August http://ete.grand-massif.com/les-tarifs
Pila: Not up yet, spotting a theme yet, but probably 24th June – 10th September (mibbies longer….) http://www.pila.it/en/pila/estate/stagione-estiva/
Portes du Soleil: Also still not up yet, but likely 23rd June – 27th August with some earlier and later http://en.portesdusoleil.com/summer-lifts.html
Verbier: All weekends in June (but the Le Chable-Verbier leg is closed) then 3rd July – 39th October http://www.verbierbikepark.ch/horaires_fr.php

Anyways, until the dates above, it’s mostly trips to the south and pedalling uphills. Around Chamonix anything south facing and below 1700m is fine to ride, north facing you’ll still be finding snow from 1300m but for the most part the trails are clear a fair bit higher.

Lets go play on bikes.

02/04/2017
Moving pictures

Three and a half months since I last mountain biked and, I’ll admit, it’s getting tricky to write anything even tenuously linked to Chamonix biking. But, adversity is the mother of invention, (or maybe it’s necessity, I’m not sure, will check the family tree later) so in the time honoured tradition of injured bikers looking for something to do, I’ve been out with the camera again.

When I say I’ve been out with the camera, what I’ve actually been is out with someone who knows what do do with several cameras at once and I pointed them in hopefully the right direction at the right time. Toby of seventwenty fame (aye, the dunkin donut advert, that yin) had an idea for a wee edit he wanted to shoot and I was keen to wander along, try and learn a bit and help steal the souls* of Lorne and Angus who had the honour of being the talent for the shoot. See, picking up the lingo already, darlings. Could well be in the movie busyness.

This was back at the start of December (I find skiing more fun than writing just now, don’t judge), but as the weather’s been on pause for a month now, what you see then is what you get now. Dry trails, some frost and ice low down, warmer up high, and a lovely layer of pollution trapped in the valley. Prime riding conditions.

I should probably take this as the public information bit to squeeze in, that as well as the usual winter uplift suspects (what, you’ve still not registered that there’s mtb accepting uplift all year round in the alps?) you can get your bike out to play in Les Gets, Pila and Verbier. And the big surprise, Flegere! Cheers to CDMB for letting that happen after the last few years of knocking bikes back.

Anyways, enough procrastination, Toby’s done the editing of the edit, have a gander:

The last post for the off season break is generally just before xmas, so on past performance this is probably it for the next few months. The weather looks likely to break in the near future bringing a return of winter, and it’s going to be a wee bit longer yet before I’m riding properly. But then again, it’s been an odd year so lets not rule out anything yet**.

Whatever happens, merry christmas, happy new year, so long and thanks for all the fish.

*I’ve been trying to find out if this is actually true, and I’m really not getting much evidence from google, and google’s apparently the home of fake news as well as real news so you’d think there would be some evidence at least.

There’s some vague references to native American Indians refusing to have their photo taken lest it “steals their soul”, but then there’s plenty of photos of same indigenous peeps taken seemingly with consent and there’s no indication of links between physical image and the soul that I can find in their culture, so I’m not sure about that.

The Mayans apparently believed that mirrors were portals into the otherworld letting Gods and dead folk wander between the 2 worlds. They also believe that when praying the soul leaves the body, so if you pray in front of a mirror your soul could bugger off to the otherworld. Hence, as cameras used to (well, some still do I guess) use mirrors, taking a photo whilst folks are praying in church would result in grand larceny, and so is banned. But that’s the mirror, not the camera.

Following on from that, turns out quite a few spiritualists and niche religious branches have a suspicion of mirrors, and that looking back at yourself somehow liberates the soul. The earliest form of photography, the daguerreotype, involved creating the image on a silver plated copper sheet polished to a mirror finish. Yeah, mirror finish, you ahead of me already aye? So mibbies some of the idea comes from that, but I’m not convinced your average undiscovered tribe had awareness of the history or printing techniques of photography.

Again, I’ve spent more time on a distraction than writing the article, at least I’ve not wandered off into the concepts of photography and personal identity in the 21st century…I’ll leave the last word with the well known and much referenced Australian cultural masterpiece, Crocodile Dundee:

Aboriginal: “You can’t take my picture…”
Journalist: “Why? Are you afraid I’m going to steal your soul?”
Aboriginal: “No, because you still have the lens cap on.”

** Big hello and welcome to all my new Russian readers who’ve joined me since my last post. Amazingly your views of that blog were numerous enough to have displaced the UK and France from the top of the “top ten countries what read this blog” list over the last 30 days. Perhaps if I wrote the names “Drumpf” and “Putain” correctly on all my blogs I’d end up with even better reading stats….

19/12/2016
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
St Gervais / So that was the first big crash of the summer

“starts Thursday as usual with a canteen quiz and again no-one wins the big cash prize” Means nothing to you? No, well, your loss.

It’s been hard to keep track of events recently. The constant state of flux between what’s in and out, who’s calling the shots, behind the scenes negotiations, false promises. The dust seems to be settling now though and it seems the state of play is this:

Brevent & Flegere. No playing on bikes, or at least no uplift for bikes, until the bike ban ends at the start of September.

Megeve, Les Contamines, St Gervais & Combloux. All good and all included on the Mont Blanc Unlimited lift pass.

Nowt for it but to skip Brevent and Flegere, pedal down the valley to Prarion then over to St Gervais for some exploring.

Conveniently, getting to St Gervais involves riding Who’s Way, which is maybe my favourite trail off the lifts in Chamonix. Certainly one of the more complete. Today it was even more complete with 2 sidewall slits in my possibly a bit past their best tyres. Lessons learnt being 1) tyres have a finite life span 2) when the sealant is pissing through the sidewall, it’s not going to plug itself 3) remember to put your tyre plugs in the rucsac you’re taking with you on that ride and 4) Lorne’s Lezyne minipump is infinitely better than my Specialized minipump.

Anyway, slightly slower than usual, we make it to St Gervais, where the next hold up is the unique shuttle timing system of the St Gervais lifts. They run for 5 minutes every 30 minutes. Don’t expect to get Pleney style fast laps here.

The next main difference to Pleney is when you get to the designated blue “whizz” trail (honestly, what possesses folks to give trails such awful names) and discover a complete absence of braking bumps. A hardtail would be a better weapon than a DH bike. A BMX bike would do the job pretty well if the dust isn’t too loose.

This is a good thing mind. Being based in Chamonix means I read commentary on t’interwebz about the death of “real” riding and the takeover of flow trails with a hint of bemusement. We just dinnay have anything like that near to us, so it’s a grand wee treat to get to ride a well sculpted flow trail where we hardly had to pedal or brake for 6km and just pumped transitions and found things to hop over.

After a lap for photos, it was still lunch time at the lift. (oh, aye, forgot to mention, closes 1200-1330) so we had an icecream (Lorne being well pissed off that there were no Calypsos) then went up for another lap with no stops before exploring other trails.

It should have been no stops.

There’s a bit of boardwalk about a third of the way down where I was just thinking “this’d be bloody lethal in the wet” then I was sliding across said boardwalk using my skin as a brake. I’d also tried to impale myself on my bars, which wasn’t apparent at first, but got worked out by not being able to breath for a minute or so, my favourite bike t-shirt being ripped open pretty much nip to nip, and a line of broken skin from sternum to my left bicep.

And that was pretty much the end of my day really. I was blinking sore, felt like I’d been kicked by a donkey and didn’t have the spirit for exploring. So instead of me now getting to tell you about the pure super-sick-gnar-fest of megarad natural singletrack we then found…..we cruised back to Le Fayet on easy trails, took the tramway back to Bellevue then the “easy” way down of GR5. Which is still a fair bit of good riding.

Plenty more days to explore this summer, so we’ll be back with something more useful before long, but until then, give the St Gervais trails a go. It’s not going to keep you entertained all day, but it’s pretty good for a bit of a change.

11/07/2016