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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
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
Post truth biking

If US president elect went to Chamonix, rode one of its best trails, then talked about it….

Wow, autumn. I am so glad to be back in autumn. The season that has a very, very special place in my heart. I love autumn and together we are going to win the best trails in November.

And the best autumn trails, where are they? They’re here in Chamonix people, right here in Chamonix.

But I have to tell you. I have to tell you people, there’s a problem. The system is corrupt. The officials, the lift company. They have a conspiracy against us. The out of touch media elite won’t tell you about it. Nobody talks about it.

They won’t let us on the trails. July and August, they won’t let us on the trails. Won’t let us on the trails folks. And the Aiguille du Midi lift. Won’t let us on the lift, won’t let us on the lift. It’s terrible, very bad.

So if we can’t ride the trails and we can’t ride the lift, what are we going to do about it?

Number one, are you ready? Are you ready?

We will build a great trail in Chamonix.

And the lift company will pay for the trail.

One hundred percent. They don’t know it yet, but they’re going to pay for it. And they’re great people and great leaders but they’re going to pay for the trail. On day one, we will begin working on intangible, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful trail.

I will build a great trail – and nobody builds trails better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great trail, and I will make the lift company pay for that trail. Mark my words.

But before then. Before the trail is built. Before then, when crooked Compagnie du Mont Blanc closes the lift for November, We can ride then. All we gotta do is walk up. Walk all the way up to the top.

Long way. Very long way. Took us two hours.

Now, just so you understand, the existing trails, who we all respect — say hello to the existing trails. Boy, they don’t get the credit they deserve. I can tell you. They’re great trails.

And bikes. Bikes too. My bikes are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body. Let’s here it for enduro bikes too.

And the existing trails that are already there. Already there. And they’re great. The best. By far. So let’s ride those trails.

We start at 2400m near the Aiguille du Midi lift station. The trail is broken, but we’re going to make the trail great again. Just as soon as we find it. It’s rocky and technical to start, I call it extreme trails right? Extreme trails. I want extreme. It’s going to be so tough, and if somebody comes in to ride that’s fine but they’re going to be good. It’s extreme.

Then things change, we get change. By les Grands Bois the trail gets more flowy. The trail is so beautiful. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful… I just start skidding on them. It’s like a magnet. I just blow the trail up. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the roots and rip out features you can’t do. You can do anything. I moved on it very heavily in fact I took it out furniture shopping.

But nobody has more respect for the trails than I do.

We descended. 1340m, 1350m, 1360m. Maybe more, I don’t know. The government doesn’t know, they say it’s less, but let me tell you folks, it’s more. We descended so much. And all on dry trails. No need to drain the swamp. The gradient and trees do a great job. Let’s hear it for the topography and flora, lets hear it for the environment folks. No wait…

Yet still the media claim the trail ended. Why should we accept the trails ending? The trail can keep going. Why do riders deny what is going on? So naive. I need to tell you, it’s not pretty, but everyone’s too politically correct to say it. Gravity is rigged. It’s a con. The Chinese and immigrants, you don’t see them stopping descending just because the trail no longer goes downhill. Lets have the courage to stand up to these stupid people, and make trails great again.

Les Grandes Bois descent, straight above Chamonix. A very special trail … I never had a bad second with it, it’s an unbelievable trail …. But would the trail be so good if we took the tram to the top? Is it better because we had to work to ride the trail. And, by the way, I worked very hard, perhaps the hardest. I look very much forward to being here again to ride this trail in autumns to come. Hopefully at the end of two years, three years, four years, or maybe even eight years, you will say that so many of you worked so hard to ride this trail… something that you were very proud to do.

Autumn, it’s a great season.

Most of the words are plagiarised straight out of Trump’s 31/08/16 Arizona immigration speech (hey, don’t knock plagiarism. If it’s good enough for the first lady…) the rest from his victory speech and assorted proclamations during the last 18 months. All photos from 1st November when Lorne rode Les Grandes Bois and I ran about taking photos. Yes, injury has made me this bored.

12/11/2016