Chamonix Bike Blog

Blog

Val d’Allos Coupe du France 2015 #2

“Moasting” Verb: Signifying the combination of moaning and boasting, often employed by celebrities. cf: “Yeah Bro, around about my 12th lap of Brevent of the day my arms really started to feel the burn. etc”

Yes, you learn a new thing every day, and on Saturday that thing was the word moasting. Mostly because we were all complaining about how we had to ride a 20 or so minute mostly DH piece of singletrack, then ride some more pretty good trail (and 1 awesome trail.). It’s a hard life and I can tell your heart bleeds.

So goes Val d’Allos. Last year it was my 2nd favourite place I rode, alas this year for political reasons (the official line, general chat was the land owner had fallen out with folks) the upper chairlift wasn’t working and so most of the vertical was out of the way.

Instead, with only a few weeks notice, they came up with a pretty good new plan. Parc Ferme for the bikes at the top of the Col d’Allos on the Friday and Saturday nights (2250m, they were probably chilly, one Nomad owner put a blanket over his, presumably to stop the carbon getting a cold) then aforementioned looooooong trail, a liaison, another trail but this time only loooong to Allos, lift back up to the race village, food, another lift, 10mins liaison then down, before repeating the lift/food/lift/liaison for the final stage of the day back to the finish. And food.

This last trail had the most in common with the traces we raced last year, mostly because it was a combination of 2 of them. A huge, huge amount of fun, if you’re looking for somewhere different to go flat out on rolling singletrack, it’s hard to think of somewhere better.

The rest of the trails were pretty good too, lots of fun on Saturday practice where you could coast along the flat bits and push the ups, but everyone was a little concerned about how the ups and flats would feel come Sunday. Talking of practice, the rallye format is for 1 untimed lap with no stopping of each trace on the Saturday, then 1 lap racing of each on the Sunday, except they sneakily timed us on the Saturday and put the numbers up. Turns out Nico Voullioz is fastest even when going slow and, for perhaps the only time ever, I was 7 seconds slower than Fabian Barel on a 20 min stage (when he hasn’t had a crash or mechanical). And 42nd overall. Be nice if they could have just used those results…..

My weekend didn’t get off to the best of starts when a series of minor mishaps on Friday were crowned by me walking straight into a glass door, splitting my lip and eyebrow and dislocating my nose. I don’t know if you can dislocate a nose, but it went squint and made a good crack when I pulled it straight again. And hurt.

Saturday could only be better, which in good narrative fashion, it was. (Or at least it was for everyone but the poor kid who’s helmet started rolling down the hill from the start of stage 1, and didn’t stop for a long long time. You might need to zoom in to see him…..) Leaving aside the riding, come the evening as the mid-summer sun shone and the air stayed balmy a massive paella was cooking on the fire and the free beer was flowing. #enduro is serious business.

Sundayfunday. Have you ever seen someone practice a sport and realise you will never, ever be that good? Watching Nico Voullioz and Florian Nicolai on the opening straight of Stage 1 was one of those moments. I can’t explain just how fast they went down the hill, other than to say I wish everyone gets a chance to see their heroes do what they do best, then try and copy them.

Strangely having been put so firmly in my place I went on to have a pretty good run, if you discount trying a blind shortcut and going headfirst into a rock, cutting and bruising my cheek through the full face helmet and disturbing my nose a bit. My first top 40 stage time and just 10% shy of Nico. I think I’ve moved on from moasting to plain and simple boasting here.

The rest of the day went pretty well too. I’m here to have fun and there were some amazingly fun bits of trail. Every so often I even managed to go genuinely as quick as I think I can which one of the wee things racing can give you that riding trails just canny do. After Saturday’s worries that the first two stages would be too pedally they actually raced pretty well. Still physical, but not xc race physical.

As a result of being the anglophone with the lowest number board, if not fastest finishing, (Meg Bichard turned up and gave Isa Courdurier a run for her money taking the win, whilst Kiwi Mike Cowlin nabbed 29th in mens) I even ended up being interviewed at the finish line. I look forward to my interpretation of the French language becoming a regular comedy act…

Sandy was on his first outing with the new bike, and turns out having a fully functional bike does make a bit of a difference to your enjoyment of racing, and finishing. For other peoples results, try looking at the result page or event video, I’m not doing it, what do you think this is, Pinkbike?

A week to turn up work occasionally then racing again next weekend. It’s a hard life (see opening paragraph)

25/06/2015
Border.

It was the Les Gets opening weekend last week and I got a bit excited at the prospect of a whole day in the bike park chasing down Nina & Spence’s new local friends on their DH bikes. As a result I ended the day with an old thumb injury flaring up again and needing to take it easy on the bike for a couple of weeks.

This seems like a perfect time then to go and explore some new trails, with a guarantee of a maximum of faffage and a minimum of actual downhill riding time to aggravate my ulnar collateral ligament.

One of my favourite ski tours from last winter was the little known Barberine Couloir near Loriaz so what better than to try and repeat it in summer.

Obviously this was a stupid idea as the places that give the best skiing are rubbish for the bike (Champex-lac) and the best riding is poor skiing (Les Houches) and to save you the bother of reading on, the ride followed this theme with predictable accuracy, so you can just look at the pretty pictures now.

Still reading? Must be a slow day in the office.

To be fair, the ride started pretty well. Train with no conductor hassle to Buet, painless climb to the Loriaz chalets then starting across some fun traversing single track with amazing views in front to Switzerland and behind across the Mont-Blanc Massif. There were a few short sections that were a little to tricky to ride with a dodgy thumb, but nothing too harsh.

Some trailrunning friends had said that the traverse across to the Emosson dam was mostly rideable, with only a couple of technical sections with chains. This was much the case and as Lorne pointed out, most of the best trail have rock climbing with chains somewhere along the way.

Once over by the Emosson dam (obviously it would have been easier to have just climbed the road to the dam carpark, but where’s the fun in that?) we had a break for me to discover I’d forgotten to pack any water and to pop pads on for the main event, the descent down below the dam to Barberine.

We’d been getting glimpses of the trail below us on the traverse, which looked good. Alas we’d also been getting glimpses of the steep upper slopes covered in scree where the trail emerged from. Turned out for the first 100m or so of vertical we were carting the bikes down a rubble filled gully. Not ideal, but not so bad if the trail below is worth it.

Which it wasn’t. Quite. There were lots of great sections, but the flow was constantly being interrupted by awkward rock steps and slow speed boulder runs where you were constantly fighting to stop the front wheel getting hooked up. Not ideal with a bad thumb.

The lower third gave the best riding as we traversed on fast trails through the forest, which was kinda the theme of the ride. Traversing trails good, descending trails bad.

Eventually we arrived at Barberine, the collection of houses masquerading as a village, and started the long spin up the road to the Col du Montets and home, after a much needed stop at the random buvette before Vallorcine for a can of coke.

Not a ride we’ve got plans on repeating, but nothing ventured nothing gained and there were some excellent wee sections that we’d never have ridden otherwise. I’ll be back with the skis but.

08/06/2015
Loriaz v1.5

Big fan of the Loriaz ride, fairly easy up, great views, few people and an excellent descent. Hard to fault really.

But it’s easy to get complacent about these things, it’s good to mix it up a bit. What if Neo had chosen the blue pill?

So, after a run in with the SNCF’s grumpiest conductor who wouldn’t let 1/2 the cyclists at Chamonix central onto the train and a little over 60 minutes of climbing Lorne and I stood ready at the Croix de Loriaz ready to eschew the truth of the red pill/normal Loriaz trail and explore the illusion of the blue/turning right onto the other way down the hill.

In truth, we both kinda knew where we were going, having been up the trail several times in the winter on ski touring missions. But then, things generally look a bit different with a couple foot of snow on them and this was particularly evident above the tree line where the trail snaking through the undergrowth was strewn with boulders.

Far from unridable, but tricky to master with any flow.

From the tree line down things were much more agreeable, unsurprisingly pretty similar to the normal Loriaz descent. Not better mind, but still a fun trail.

The main reason for never giving the trail a go before is that it spits you out onto the ascent track about 40% of the way up, and no one want to coast down the same fireroad they sweated up.

Fortunately there’s a selection of trails that mean you only need to ride a few hundred metres on 4×4 track, so no great loss. Choosing the line signposted to Le Nant for no reason other than it went in the opposite direction to the road we continued down.

I know you shouldn’t anthropomorphise animals let alone trails, but this section of trail did have slightly schizophrenic tendencies. Lulling you into a false sense of security with swooping single track you’d attack a bend behind a rock only to discover hidden rock gardens or off camber roots. Alternatively an innocuous 90 degree bend would suddenly plunge you straight down the hill through rubble.

Still, all good fun.

Popping back out on the road half way twixt Vallorcine and Buet we considered a re-match with the conductor, but instead pedalled up over the col and cruised down a selection of valley trails back to Chamonix.

Which is better then, reality or illusion? The original trail I’d say, but there’s no harm in a bit of a change every now and then.

31/05/2015
Blausasc, Coupe du France #1

It must be summer, we’re going racing, and like last year the Coupe du France enduro series opened in the heat of the Alpes-Maritimes coast at Blausasc.

Unlike last year’s races though, Spencer was injured and Nina racing DH in Sweden so Sandy had the honour of co-piloting for the relaxing short drive down to Nice, through Nice, out of Nice, round random villages trying to find where we were, back into Nice then on to Barre des Alpes, the closest place we could find cheap digs.

When organising ourselves back in winter we’d anticipated the usual Chamonix spring of occasional biking interspaced with snowfalls dragging you back to the skis. Hence we booked an apartment for a couple days before the race to give us some riding around Blausasc’s awesome trails. Chamonix’s pretty much clear of snow below 2000m now, but we weren’t going let that stop us getting out in the dust.

We had planned just to follow random trails, Fabian Barel lives in the village so surely they must all be good, but the retired lady of a certain age who’d rented us the apartment casually mentioned that she’d been vtt’ing here for the last 20 years, and the best trails were…..well, dotted about, but here try this website!

For the most part though, someone else had chosen the trails we were riding and marked them out for us. In the new “rallye” format for the series gone is the Friday trail walk, replaced with the rule that the trail map will be released on Friday evening, the trails can’t be ridden from the Monday before the race nor walked from the Friday when they get taped out. All a bit existential, how do you not ride a trail you don’t know is in a race?

The blind racing on Saturday is now untimed, letting non-locals get a feel for the trails, and everyone get an idea of how the liaisons will go without the stress or effort of doing it at race pace.

This turns out to be a great innovation and for me probably is the best balance of all the enduro formats I’ve raced to negate the advantage of local trails and prior racing on the tracks without having mid week practice sessions that the 90% with jobs can’t make.

It also means you get to just chill out and enjoy the trails. Which was good as I completely failed to do that on the Sunday race day, riding terribly and generally questioning whether I enjoy racing and what I was doing here.

Until stage 3.

Stage 3 on Saturday was everything I hate about French enduro races. Designed to break your bike, or your body, or both, and with a brutal off the bike pushing climb followed by a steady incline to destroy you completely.

Come Sunday it reminded me why racing is so good. It was flat out, desperately holding on to the bars and hoping you got through each section intact, ready to sprint out the end then do it again into the next pile of rocks.

Of course, then I managed to crash and pootled down the rest of the stage with my tail between my legs. But for those few minutes when all your focus is on going as fast as you possibly can it was worth it.

At the end of a day of riding mostly mediocrely I was 71st, which is quite a bit further down the list than I wanted to be, but really it doesn’t matter. For most of us the racing isn’t about being the best, it’s about being better and about going as fast as you can without worrying about some family wandering up the trail round that blind bend.

Nico Vouilloz won (and you can see how everyone got on in the event video here complete with not 1, but 2 appearances from me. And neither whilst crashing this time! 1.24 and 4.06 if you need help). Nico is the rider I worshipped as a gangly youth racing DH, amazed at how he could make the best riders in the world look like amateurs in the mid to late 90s. For me he’s the best gravity bike racer of all time and on Sunday he was 17% faster than me, which actually, I’m ok about.

13/05/2015
Saleve: The trail strikes back

Saleve is not that well known for it’s biking, but on the off chance you meet someone who’s ridden there one of the things they’ll tell you is it’s a bad choice in the wet. Slick and slippy mud coating roots and smooth limestone with steep gradients to maximise your travel from the trail and bike if/when you fall.

It’s wet just now, but Sandy and I figured it couldn’t be more wet than Chamonix where May started with the average monthly rainfall dropping on the 1st, then the 2nd and 3rd not being much drier. As a result of the sky falling, the mountains started falling. Huge wet snow slides coming off the Chamonix Aiguilles reached as far as the valley floor, and rockslides on the Aiguille Rouge side did the same. Lots of trails cross under these avalanche corridors, so the Petit Balcons Nord and Sud, and anything above them, have been closed by the Mairie until further notice.

Which doesn’t leave many options to ride a bike.

So we went to Saleve.

Unsurprisingly, with the cloud level being about 1/3 the height of the hill and the rain still falling lightly, there weren’t many other people waiting for the telepherique. The first lap was down the usual well built official(ish) trails towards the front of the hill, though we opted for the network of tracks down towards Monnetier as they’re less built so we wouldn’t trash saturated berms or jumps……and they’re a little less steep so we had a little more chance of making it down attached to the bike.

Surprisingly the trails weren’t too bad. With so much water about the mud was pretty thin and didn’t clog you or the bike too badly. The trails were even grippier than I’ve ridden them in places where they’d washed the bedrock completely clean.

Back to the carpark we rinse off the bikes and head up for another lap. Just as we reached the top telepherique station we broke though the cloud, blue skies above and extensive views of more cloud but below us instead of above.

Heading down the hill meant we’d lose this rare opportunity to top up on vitamin D (when you leave Scotland, your ration gets taken away from you. Aye, you thought it was methadone everyone was queueing for outside Boots, y’ken noo eh). Also, I’d heard there were good trails in the other direction than we normally take so we chose not to choose dh, but chose something different. Pedalling up the hill.

Turns out there’s a Buddhist retreat and an observation station up there. And some roads, the odd field, cows etc.

Might also be some views but all we could see was a sea of clouds stretching out into the distance. There’s also lots of handy direction signs, one of which suggested we head for the Telepherique (Gare Inferieure) via the Grande Gorge.

I will now suggest to you that you don’t, but we didn’t know that at the time and dropped in. To be fair the trail was pretty good at first, a little on the narrow and exposed side, but nothing too bad. Then however we reached the gorge bit of the name, which was less than grand on a bike. Steep and narrow on a mix of rubble and slick rocks which would have been challenge enough just downclimbing normally in the current conditions, but whilst trying to hold onto your bike was pretty tricky.

Fortunately it didn’t last for the whole descent and, despite some false starts where we thought the difficulties had ended buuuut they hadn’t, we were back on some good trails again.

In fact, as we got further down the hill they went from good to great (grand even? Too much, ok.). Surprisingly reminiscent of Finale with undulating trails snaking through deciduous forest and peppered with limestone rocks that could either be a risk to your dérailleur or something to pop off and over depending on how confident you were feeling.

The biggest difference was the vibrant greens of the forest which you can only get after a good downpour.

More exploring to be done, but not today. Might try and go in the dry too next time. And not on May the fourth. Saving you from poor titles it will.

04/05/2015