Public transport: Dorenaz.

Posted on 7th April 2014

Public transport: Dorenaz

Generally when you think of using public transport to ride your bike, it’s looking sheepish as you trail mud through a Scotrail carriage to hook your bike up by the toilet then sit getting cold on the way back home.

Switzerland is a bit different. In Switzerland the topography lends itself more to cable cars than trains so access to many smaller villages is by publicly run telepheriques. Dorenaz is one such place where the local bus driver also sells tickets and presses buttons on a 670m height gain gondola.

It's not quite the same as the bike rack on a sprinter train....

As Dorenaz is at only 450m and the hill faces SW, the trails are generally clear of snow most of the year round, but it can still be pretty chilly in winter. No such problems for Spence and I when we headed out of Chamonix for some t-shirt and shorts riding in low 20’s temperatures and clear blue skies.

Bikes are tough these days, but I think even that drop would end badly.

After hooking our bikes onto the underside of the gondola by their wheels and panicking most of the way up that they were going to clip the hillside and get knocked off, we arrived at the Champex plateau where it’s a short pedal up the tarmac to the start of the marked DH trails.

It being the first proper days riding (or should I say #pre-season training as this year I’ve gone ENDURO so no more riding, only #training or #set up testing for me now…) of the year I’d hoped for some flowing singletrack to get back into the flow of things.

A gentle ease back into riding for the summer

No such luck. From the get-go the trails are steep, fast and rocky. To add to the fun the lack of rain recently has left the track bone dry. Chatting to some locals later in the day we were told that the track runs better in the damp, giving much more friction. This did make us feel a bit better about our riding, but not much.

Dry and dusty, and it's only the start of April

After a lap of the DH trail and a few minutes at the lift to recover, collect our thoughts and steel ourselves for another lap, one of the other locals (at least, we’re assuming they were locals as they were flipping quick, turned up in a van with “Crossroad Cycles CH” written on the side, and that shop seems to sponsor the trails, I think Mrs Marple would come to the same conclusion….) took pity on us and said he’d show us some of the “easier” trails…

Dorenaz isn't only about steep and rocky

They were “easier” than the official trail, but certainly weren’t easy!

Back up and back on the official track we explored some of the variations marked on the trail map. Apparently these are graded from blue to black, but I’ve no idea how you tell the difference as they all felt just as interesting. Try them all and repeat the bits you like the most would be the recommendation.

But there is a lot of steep and/or rocky

It’s not too easy to find information online for Dorenaz, but if you want to head over and give it a go (and you should if you like the Vallorcine DH track, or techier tracks in general) then check out the Dorenaz facebook page and the telepherique website for more info. To get there from Chamonix, head to Martigny, follow the signs through town for Vernayaz, then the signs for Dorenaz once outside Martigny. Or look at a map.

Bike park/play park, Spence rules them all.

Posted in Road trip , tagged , ,

Last train to cold*

Posted on 13th November 2013

No no no, wrong way.

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.

Most technical part of the day, icy roads...

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.

Less tarmac, more traction

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.

Just like Scotland. Sort of.

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….

Skids. Not just for kids.

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.

Life could be worse

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.

A balmy summers day ride, if you're from the north east.

* 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.

Posted in Chamonix ride , tagged ,

Greatest hits

Posted on 4th November 2013

Oh look, autumn.

Even if you’re far too core to lower yourself to buying a greatest hits album, I’m sure at Christmas an aunt will have remembered your obsession with Cliff Richard and got you a copy of “The whole story” (I googled it)

Before you got the greatest hits though, you’ll have listened through albums, heard singles on the radio. Over time the songs became kind of familiar, a bit too familiar. They lost the urgency and freshness they once had and worse, you can even grow to hate them.

Spence taming the Brevent couloir trail

I end up listening only to a select few tracks, the best of the band, then even they don’t really grab me anymore and I’ll drift away from the band for a bit.

This is where the greatest hits album comes in, because the band has split up, gone to rehab, dropped off the scene, then got a tax bill, reformed and is touring off the back of the greatest hits album, out just in time for Christmas.

It's not all rocky, there's some nice trees too....

The tracks are on the radio again, you remember what was so great about the tunes and get back into the band, just hopefully not to repeat the same cycle again.

Which brings me to riding bikes (yes, eventually, but you try writing semi interesting copy every week…)

But mostly, you notice the rocky bits.

Brevent’s been open, and that’s kind of it for uplift here. Despite the weather being generally pretty good, the upper sections of Brevent have been slow to dry or melt when it’s rained/snowed and not much fun on the bike, so every day’s been more laps of the front face trails of the lower gondola.

It’s a fair argument that there’s plenty of other trails about, but that would involve pedalling, like, all the way up. You get lazy when you’re used to lifts, so we mostly rode Brevent.

Sometimes it's easier just to miss out bits of the trail completely

There’s a huge number of ways you can link the many trails on the close on 1000m drop you get from each lap up the gondola, but after a while you end up on the best 3 or 4 ways down.

You can see where this is going, but with some of the best riding in the world on the door step, I’ve still managed to get a wee bit over it and I’m strangely happy about the lifts closing today meaning any riding will now have to be worked for (well, except for trips to Saleve and Dorenez…) with worsening weather and riding partners getting ready for skiing.

Everyone's got a trail nemesis, mine's the drop on Plan des Chablettes

And when you find yourself moaning about getting to lap amazing trails in t-shirt weather with hardly anyone about, you know it’s time for a change! If you’re looking for any info on the trails at Brevent, check through previous posts and/or buy the bike book. Instead of describing them again I’ll just let you look at the photos, all from assorted rides over the last week.

Posted in Trail conditions , tagged

Open for business. Still.

Posted on 27th October 2013

The end of October?!

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.

Spence & Lorne dropping in on the upper sections. Did I mention that it's quite rocky?

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.

This'll be the rocky techy rather than fast flowy...

With the upper section of Brevent running this weekend after staying shut for the 1st 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.

For once I managed to press the shutter whilst the rider was in the light

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*

Textbook cornering technique from Spence

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.

This is the less photogenic trail

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

Just to prove it's autumn, some trees.

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

And a ego massaging shot if me dropping the Merlet trail drop. Because it's my blog and I can if I want to.

Posted in Chamonix ride, Trail conditions , tagged

Tricot two

Posted on 5th October 2013

It's a single, err, track.

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?

Spotlight for the pedal up to where the lift should go.

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.

Roll up roll up, get your warm sunshine whilst you can, limited time only

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.

I tried to ride it again, I failed again.

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.

That'll be Col de Tricot then

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?).

Would this view tempt you into finishing lunch and getting back on the bike?

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!

Still before the Miage chalets.

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.

And more photos of the prologue descent

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…

Finally! A solitary shot of the flowing Miage chalets - Champel shot, and that's your lot too.

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.

My new bike's so light, it actually floats over the terrain...

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

Posted in Chamonix ride , tagged , ,

Two trails

Posted on 29th September 2013

No octocopters where used in the making of this shot

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.

Climb with a view

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.

The call of the col. I'll get me coat.

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.

They used to test jet engines here apparently

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.

Obligatory riding past a chalet shot, trail 1.

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.

Gonny no fall there

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….

You don't HAVE to be able to endo turn to ride in Chamonix, but it helps

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

Oh look, a corner, best get ready to endo.

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.

Good singletrack + old lift tower = photofun

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.

It might have been the "easy" trail, but it still had it's moments

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.

Picture this

Posted in Chamonix ride , tagged

This is mountain biking.

Posted on 26th September 2013

Big hills wee rider

You hear “Epic” describing a lot of things about Chamonix. Surrounded by deeds of derring do from alpinist, skiers, parapontists and such then as a lowly mountainbiker you really have to work to earn the title “epic” for a ride. You could try having horrendous weather to battle through, major mechanicals that required ingenuity & creativity to overcome and make it back. Distance, height gain, length of time riding are options for epic. Injuries can count too because after all, epic doesn’t have to mean good.

So why do I think this ride should count as epic? It wasn’t particularly long (30km) or high (800m up, 2900m down). We were about 7 ½ hours door to door, so not even a full days work. Injuries? Lorne had bleeding shins, but I don’t think I’ve ever been out on the bike with Lorne and he’s not had bleeding shins. Mechanicals? I noticed the dust cap on my pedal was coming loose, stopped, tightened it, and kept going. Not exactly a snapped frame is it. Weather? Well perfect blue sky and t-shirt temps is epicly good I guess….

Epic enough backdrop?

I’m claiming epic because how often do you reach the top of your climb, step over the crampon and iceaxe adorned rucsacs of climbers 1/3 of the way up the highest mountain in the alps to look down at the ribbon of singletrack you’re about to follow as it winds its way past seracs to a glacial lake 600m below you then disappears into the trees where another 1000m of vertical awaits you before you finish descending. THAT’S epic. Well that and the number of photos we took and I’ll now subject you to.

The plan to ride the trail from the Nid d’Aigle came from Tom who had seen the trail on a training run and realized it needed ridden. He was supposed to be part of the team heading up, but the evening before was attending the Neverest girls charity ball. The 4am message from him confirmed what Lorne & I already suspected, he wasn’t going to be up the hill for an all day ride.

Little Lorne, awesome aiguilles.

Instead the two of us pedalled down from Chamonix to Les Houches, hopped on the Prarion gondola and cruised across the hill to the Col du Voza where we had to wait 20 minutes for the next tram. It would have been quicker just to start pedalling up towards the Bellevue, but we had a cunning plan of trying to hide our bikes and 6 foot plus frames by the piles of rucsacs and so not have to get out at the Bellevue stop.

Tramway du Mont Blanc. Not carrying a MTB'er

It didn’t work, we got out at the Bellvue stop.

Our cunning plans continued as we failed to find the track marked on the map running parallel with the tramlines and instead had to carry over the top of Mont Lachat via the brutally steep and slippy trail straight up from behind the Bellevue lift.

At the top the friendly Swiss/French walkers we were to spend the rest of the morning bumping into explained that the dotted red line on our map that contoured round Mont Lachat to the Col du Mont Lachat was infact a wide easy track. At least we got some good photos.

A quick bit of urban riding, at 2100m

Descending down to the Col we met the next surprise of the trip, an olde abandonned building. I have no idea what it was in a past life (google reveals it was for testing jet engines), but I really wish I had a proper bashguard on the bike so I could have played on it a bit more.

Inner Chris Akrigg sated, we continued up to where the map once again claimed the footpath ran parallel with the tramline. The tramline was pretty obvious, being hewn from the cliff face, but there wasn’t any sign of a path. After much humming and hawing and a chat with the walkers who had caught us up again, we decided that as everyone’s maps said the trail went this way, we’d just walk up the side of the tracks and hope there was enough space if a tram came down.

This worked fine until we got to the tunnels where we found a perfectly good path hacked out of cliff face around the tunnels, so I guess the trail does actually just go up by the tramlines. The path was well made, but there was plenty of evidence of rockfall down the chute, I put my helmet on and didn’t hang about going through….

You know you're in Chamonix when you put your lid on to carry the bike uphill...

Past the rubble chute, we turned the corner and arrived, slightly surprised, at the top of the tramway. We’d kinda expected a bit more climbing, but here we were and with the Aiguille de Bionassay above and umpteen thousand feet of singletrack below us we ignored the view and sat down for some food.

Hunger sated and recovered from our disappointment at not getting to plod uphill any more we dropped saddles and rode for at least 5 metres before having to dismount and carry the bikes over an awkward rock step.

How does several kilometers of this grab you?

One of the wee problems of BIG scenery rides like this is often the actual riding is a bit of a let-down, you can only hope that the environment, ambience and views around you make up for it. We had all 3 of these in abundance, we just kinda hoped that we were going to get good riding too.

There were a lot of big scenery/wee rider photos taken

And so it turned out, the trail was technical, but not in any way desperate, for the first few km and although you didn’t want to be falling, you’d have to have been pretty unlucky to get seriously hurt. At the back of our minds though was the section lower down marked “eschelles” (French for “not much fun on a bike”) on the map.

As we approached the ladders, the trail got techier and, more importantly, the consequences of an over the bars, or even a slight slip were increasingly serious, actually about as serious as it can get at points.

If you're going to fall, try to fall right.

The next 15 minutes were a mix of short sections of riding interspaced with pushing or carry the bike through sections either too serious or too difficult for us to ride. Fortunately the marked ladders we’d been concerned about turned out to be metal stairs bolted onto the cliff rather than actual ladders, so not much hassle with the bikes (anyone who’s had to deal with “real” ladders whilst carrying a bike will know how much of a relief this was….).

Sky, lake, rucsac, lid. This is how you do colour coordination folks.

Once past this section the slope slackened off and the trail opened up. We’d not seen many walkers all day, and those we’d seen were predictably amazed to meet a bike, but down here with more visibility and absolutely no one about it was great to let the bikes run after so much slow technical terrain over the last week or so. The trail kept opening up until we reached the junction with the paths that continue up to the Col du Tricot and back to the Col du Voza, but we chose the middle way, down towards Bionassay.

Then the trails got even faster

With over 700m of vertical already desceded we were expecting the track to start dropping in quality but no, once again we were treated to amazing singletrack down through the woods to La Chapiot, finally ending in some warp-speed riding across a meadow where Lorne lawndarted into a bank and tried to imitate a tortoise by pushing his head into his body….

Just when we thought the fun was over, back to tree lined singletrack

We had a bit of a break whilst Lorne cricked his neck back out and took what would surely be the final section of singletrack and onto the 4×4 trail to Bionassay.

Obligatory riding past chalet with mountains behind shot

Again we were wrong, though this time by accident, as we followed a path marker off the road through the village and found ourselves fleeing down a rolling path clinging to the side of a riverbank. We didn’t really know where we were heading at this point, but the trail was fun and there was a signpost, so what could go wrong?

More singletrack. Will it never end? The misery.

Fortunately we lucked out and although the trail abruptly stopped going downhill at a bridge, a short push up a hill later we were on a fireroad heading rapidly to Le Champel. Hitting the road at the village there was 1 more trail we could have taken, but time was ticking for the last tram back up the hill and we were keen for an ice cream stop in St Gervais so instead we got our aero-tuck on an proceeded at speed.

We probably had time to have ice cream AND ride the pipeline trail down to Le Fayet to get the tram from there, but it was sunny out and we didn’t feel like rushing. Besides, as ever with the tramway, you still get another 800m of vert to ride once back up to the Chamonix side so we could forego the trail, fun as it is.

This is about 1/2 the total descent, just to give you an idea of the scale

Back up to Bellevue we decided that there just hadn’t been enough vertical meters of singletrack logged today, and dropped into one of the more hidden lines from back when the Les Houches bike trails ran from the top of the Bellevue lift. It’s not getting the traffic it used to, but it still made for some entertaining riding to finish the day (I’m pretty sure whoever made it rode a proper DH bike…) and it’s always good to make down to Les Houches village without having to ride on a road.

Hidden trail back to Les Houches, it gets a bit junior kick start in places....

Can I call it an epic ride? I don’t know, it was good but.

Posted in Chamonix ride , tagged , ,

Last chance to ride ___________

Posted on 23rd September 2013

Winter's a coming.

Normally “where shall we ride today?” is a tricky question, but for the last week it’s been a bit easier to get an answer.”We’ll ride wherever the lifts are about to close”. So that’s Brevent, Flegere and Le Tour, in that order.

An alternative answer has also been “I’m not going out in that, it’s snowing”. Which is true, winter made its first appearance of the autumn resulting in a fair bit of snow down to 1700m or so and some purty looking north faces once the clouds finally lifted. It didn’t do the biking communities enthusiasm to ride any good though.

Brevent couloir and some hill behind Spencer

For now autumn is back in control so there’s been some great riding under crisp blue skies on quiet trails. Except perhaps the official bike trails at Le Tour which, as one of the only well know places left in this end of the alps with uplift, have been hoaching with bikes.

Brevent & Flegere were the first to close this week, so last weekend was a tech-fest of rocks and roots and steep switchbacks. It also turned into a bit of a puncture-fest. Lorne & Spence managing 5 between them. Tubeless, DH inner tubes, normal inner tubes, it didn’t seem to matter, the puncture gods were out and they wanted some sacrifices.

There’s not much more I can say about the front face Brevent and Flegere trails, I think they’re great, not everyone agrees. I did try exploring a bit more at Flegere in the hope of finding that mystical lost trail that no one has ridden before and can become an instant classic that no walker wants to wander up. Instead I found some great bits of trail interspaced with cliffs and mud shoots, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. Apparently.

Having a wee explore in BC/Flegere

With those closed, focus shifted to Le Tour. The Vallorcine lift closed at the start of the month and the train still isn’t running between Argentiere and Vallorcine (next year, probably) so big laps off the back into Switzerland were out.

Robbie getting distracted by the view

Instead we’ve been exploring the variations on the Posettes trails and those off the Autannes chairlift as well as hitting a few laps of the actual bike trails. The new variation on the upper green trail is (was) O.K. but it ain’t Whistler, the lower DH track remains (remained) cracking.

Posettes trail. Good to ride, great to photograph

The riding off the back at Le Tour and off the Posettes is so good I’ve never really explored the trails on the front face. Lorne, Robbie & I did our best to redress that omission by systematically ticking off every ribbon of single track we could find.

Heading up to the find of the day

New trail of the day probably goes to the climb and traverse from the top of the chair to the Albert Premier refuge trail and the descent of it back to the mid station. The traverse across looks like it should be a sweaty climb, yet you coast along barely pedalling. Just how all climbs should be! The descent is nothing too technical, but meanders nicely across the hill and over the top of the Vormaine couloirs with grand views down the valley.

Heading down past the Vormaine couloirs

All the other trails are worth doing as a distraction, but beware of drainage bars and cows.

Le Tour has more than it's fair share of Chamonix's quota of flowy singletrack

So there it goes, another summer riding the lifts almost over. Next week, we shall mostly be riding…..Les Houches.

Jumping into the next season

Posted in Chamonix ride , tagged , ,

3.10 is the magic number

Posted on 13th September 2013

up, up, up, up, up and up.

And why is it the magic number? Because that’s when the last tram leaves Le Fayet for Bellevue, but I’m getting ahead of myself, back to the start.

The sun did appear briefly. Very briefly. Posettes trail.

Every spring I start with the intention of riding all 10 bike friendly lifts on the Chamonix lift pass in a day, and every autumn arrives without me having done so. It’s a trickier challenge to complete than it first appears as the window to get it done is pretty small. Most of the good riding from the lifts is on trails off limits during the July & August bike ban, and with a challenge like this, you DO want to do it on good trails….

All 10 lifts are only open at the same time for a few days either side of the bike ban, so by the time you factor in work, weather, injuries, visiting friends and in the case of this year, broken lifts and winter not finishing until part way through summer, you can see how easy it is for things not to happen.With the window missed yet again this year, I still felt like having a bit of a challenge, so what the heck, lets try the 7 lifts still running, and just to make it more interesting, we’ll do it by the techiest trails off each one. One further, crucial, complication. The last tram back from Le Fayet is now at 1510, not 1740.

Let the games commence.

The quintessential posettes shot, minus the full backdrop

An early start was vital to our plans. I don’t do early starts and Lorne had to go to the post office so we were fairly impressed that we were only 30 minutes behind schedule and 1st ‘bin at Le Tour. The meteo had said that the overnight rain would clear early and the clouds would part giving a good sunny day, which combined with a moderate to strong wind we hoped would dry off the trails nicely leaving hero traction in the dirt and great backdrops of the Chamonix Aiguilles with fresh autumn snow. Unfortunately the weather was also a bit behind schedule and we ascended in the cloud to the top of Le Tour.

Traversing to the Col du Posettes the weather failed to lift and I’ll be honest, stoke was low and we were pretty chilly. The descent from the Aiguillette des Posettes is back in season again though and we hoped that by the time we’d knocked off the climb we’d be a bit warmer and the sun would have come out.

Welsh trail centre or Chamonix trail?

One out of 2 would have to do. As is the rule when it’s damp and cloudy, I then got a puncture. If anyone’s interested, tubeless sealant in a slightly leaky tyre with an inner tube still gets punctured more easily than a full tubeless set up. Whilst I was busy sorting that out, Lorne had time to have his first crash of the day resulting in some fairly impressive cuts to the arms, shoulders and back.

As the trail dropped into the trees there was less wet rock to contend with, but rather more wet roots. This seemed most amusing to all the French walkers we passed who without fail would stop to see how badly it could go wrong…

We survived with no further damage to bikes, bodies or egos and cruised down the hill towards Argentiere. The original plan had been to continue on Petite Balcon Sud (Grand Montets having closed a few days earlier) however to try and get back on schedule we battered on down the promenade des Arve trails instead and rolled into the Flegere lift station at about 1130.

Aiguille rouge, the sunny side of the valley living up to it's name

All my favourite Flegere tracks head back east towards La Joux. For our purposes today though, we needed to keep going west. Fortunately second best is still pretty good at Flegere, so we dropped into the initial section of the old “Elfe Secret” DH trail (which is holding up just, with 1 of the 2 north shore sections having been repaired by the trail elfs, the other now missing completely) before joining the root covered switchback-fest of the trail down to the Floria buvette. I’d run this trail a little over a week before as the final stage of the CCC, and it was amazing to see how much damage the weekends rain had done to it since then. Still an awesome wee descent though.

We pushed the bikes through the grounds of the buvette, then headed down on fireroad towards our next lift. Brevent.

By not faffing with mechanicals or photos on the last stage we’d made up plenty time and got on the first stage of the gondola a little after midday. Not everyone was on message though, and the second stage of the lift didn’t share our urgency, it was almost 1245 by the time we got out. Still quicker than riding up mind.

Rocky.

The initial descent from the Brevent towards the Aiguilette des Houches can only really be described as rocky. Or perhaps tech and rocky, but you’d really struggle to communicate the nature of the riding without using the word “rocky”. I quite like riding rocks, but ain’t such a fan of falling on them. Lorne seems of a similar mind so we took it fairly slowly on the way across. Still a whole lot of fun, and we provided the usual levels of entertainment to the walkers.

Page break. En route to Aig des Houches

After the photogenic fun of the descent came the short push up to the Aiguilette des Houches itself. From the 2285m peak you get an amazing view of the ridge line, the drop down to Servoz and, for us, the full height of the descent to Le Fayet station at 580m. 1705m of descending without any real ups!

Ridgeline. Putting the "pic" in Epic

There can’t be many trails that look better than the start of the ridgeline, it’s an absolute classic alpine MTB shot. Shame that the trail doesn’t ride as well as it looks, not that it’s a bad trail, just compared to other stuff about here it lacks flow and some of the sections of trail suddenly get overgrown in low scrub & heather.

Somewhere near the tree line Lorne decided to get a closer view of aforementioned scrub. He’d already stubbed his toe earlier in the day, but this crash seemed to have done something a bit more serious. Walking was pretty painful but fortunately he seemed to be able to stand on the pedals without too much problem, so with what later turns out to probably be a broken big toe, we keep going.

Rocky too. The tech-fest continues

The trail never really relents until you get to Montvauthier (or at least, not on the line we took) and conscious of the ticking clock, our riding was getting more and more speed based, carrying over trialsy sections of the trail when on a more relaxed day we might have stopped, scoped out a line, then probably carried over the trialsy section of trail. With 30 minutes till the last tram left, we slid down the last steep section onto the Montvauthier road.

Perhaps not the best riding trail in the valley, but the views are ok

Of course we could have called it a day here and just got the train from Servoz, but where would the fun be in that? From here the trails are fast and open all the way to Le Fayet, we might just still make it.

And we probably would have, but less than a kilometre from the station we start seeing diversion signs. Normally not something you need to worry about on a bike, but even pedestrians were diverted from the straight line around the houses, Arve, railway line and back again. At 1512 we stopped at the tramway station.

There was still plan b fortunately, the 1606 train back into town. The game was over for another season but we’d given it a pretty good go, just under 50km of riding and just under 5000m descended in just under 6hrs, if just not quite enough under 6hrs…..time for a coffee.

A very successful failure

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Who’s way?

Posted on 7th September 2013

Hidden, but not that hidden, trails

Five weeks is a loooong time to be off your bike in a Chamonix summer! In the past bikes have given me plenty of broken bones (which did generally heal) and scars (that chicks were disappointingly uninterested in) that have kept me away from sports for longer, but 5 weeks with what is basically a sore thumb has been pretty annoying. Still, thanks to the excellent work of the consultants and surgeons at Chamonix & Annemasse’s hospitals, and the brilliant physio from Neil at Clinique du Sport (what percentage of Chamonix residents go through their doors every year?) I can ride again.

Sunshine, trees, singletrack, roots. What more do you want?

Every cloud has a silver lining. recently that’s been that as trail running is the only sport I’ve been able to do, I’ve had a chance to explore lots of trails I’ve seen on maps and in photos and wondered if they’d work out for the bike, without the worry of having to carry a bike for a vertical km back up a hill if they don’t.

Previously Hugh’s way from the top of the Prarion lift to St Gervais has been our agreed best way down off the back of Les Houches, but from my running I now had a new idea, and despite having been on exploratory rides with me before, Lorne & Robbie thought they’d come along for the ride too….

The lifts are starting to close around the alps just now, but the Prarion’s running for another week yet, and the Tramway du Mont-Blanc is going until the end of the month. Of some concern to the hordes of DH riders milling about the base of the lift was the news that the new DH tracks are currently closed, though no information was forthcoming on why or how seriously the closure is being taken. Not an issue for us though as, following a scenic pee stop, we were dropping down towards Le Fayet.

Pee with a view

After not being eaten alive by the dogs that guard the livestock around this area of the hill, we took the hidden entrance to the singletrack. I’m going to be really irritating and not tell you where it is, or give you any GPS traces (though it tells me we started riding at 1842m and finished at 587m, with 61m of climbing along the way), but if you look at a map (IGN or Google), and have a wee think, you should be able to work out where it is. And it IS worth the effort having a look.

"Who's trail" Not a bad start to the ride.

The trail starts off not too steep and a really nice mix of loamy ground, roots and rocks. Unfortunately the roots and rocks were still a bit slick from last night’s rain, and Robbie took a wee tumble. With two 1st aid kits between 3 of us though, his main danger was overtreatment rather than bleeding to death.

Like BC, but blurrier

After the initial warm up, you get a brief respite traversing north on a fire road trail before diving off into the woods again on a very easy to miss bit of singletrack. I’ve not ridden in BC, but I’m pretty sure it’s similar to this next section. Wet but grippy, vibrant greens and deep brown hues all around and flowing singletrack but with drops and root gaps that you need fluent body English to negotiate without losing momentum.

Again, this eventually comes to an end and you have another short fireroad section. Good to give the mind a rest and a chance for a chat though, it’s not a race.

Leaving Montfort, by air.

The final section came from Tom of Chamonix Bike Book fame. Leaving Montfort you turn right off the main track on to an uninspiring looking track through a field. Very quickly you’re back in the trees though, and for the next 450 vertical meters or so you’re transported back to the best trails from the UK. Steep and fast singletrack though dead leaves and natural berms, with enough root sections to snap one of Lorne’s spokes and knock the chain out of his chain device.

Robbie getting loose

Before you know it you’re on the main road between Le Fayet and St Gervais. We could have just headed down on the tarmac for a fast burn back to the tramway station, or pedalled up the road to St Gervais and then taken pipeline back to Le Fayet. Instead we took the 650b choice and pedalled 5 minutes up the hill to join a trail down to Le Fayet by the tramway tracks. It’s not the highlight of the day and with more time I’d pedal for 10 minutes more and hit pipeline, but it’s still fairly nice riding and got us into Le Fayet with 5 minutes to spare before the tram departed, so pretty much perfect really.

Just like Scotland, but not.

As ever with the tramway, the days riding’s not over with the trundle back up as you still have about 700m to drop from the Bellevue station back down to Les Houches. With the old DH trails from the Bellevue lift station now had over 2 years without maintenance, they’re getting harder and harder to ride, so we opted for our usual choice of starting on the old DH track then leaving it after the berm section to join what is allegedly Cedric Gracia’s favourite Chamonix trail back to the centre of Les Houches.

"Who's trail" keeping the riding quality high to the bitter end.

It’s good to be back.

Boom, I'm back. (I was told not to put in portrait shots, but this one's too good to miss, cheers Lorne for shot!)

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