Chamonix Bike Blog

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10 minutes from the front door is one of the only bike friendly uplifts running in the alps and from the top of the Brevent gondola an embarrassingly large number of trails work their way down the sunny side of the Chamonix valley.

So obviously we dingied that and went and pedalled up a hill for 1200 meters.

Last summer I injured my thumb and couldn’t ride. Instead I had to run about trails with a branch in my hands making bike noises. One of the trails I found looked like it would make a grand wee ride, if a fair bit of effort to get to, but you canny really tell until you try with real wheels instead of a branch.

For some reason folk seem to be more reluctant to join me on rides to unknown trails these days but Wayne’s got an unrivalled wealth of experience in carrying bikes up hill just to carry them back down again around Chamonix, and Sandy prefers winter climbing to sport limestone so is actually happier if the ride is brutal and everyone is miserable.

I digress. We pedalled and pushed and pushed and pedalled from Servoz to the Refuge Moede Anternne where we then sat in the sun and ate sandwiches.

Last time I was here was in the spring with Spencer and the snow forced us to change our plans. The first autumn snow fell about a week ago and some of it was looking like it was here for the long haul. Fortunately it wasn’t too deep and we were able to keep going along the Promenaz plateau towards the collection of lakes.

Trail quality > views for me 99% of the time, but the backdrop through this bit of the world is pretty hard to beat. Dolomite esque towers behind, the biggest hills in the alps in front and purty wee lochans to your side.

There’s an awkward section leaving the Lac de Pormenaz when your running, but with bikes the rocky scramble nicely topped in refrozen compacted snow is decidedly tricky. We were all glad of the insitu ropes to help haul us up, feet spinning on the ice like they were still turning the pedals.

Once back onto the plateau you get some great riding along the thin bands of singletrack winding over the heather, grass and bedrock. You don’t get much of this around Chamonix, mostly you’re either going up (preferably courtesy of Compagnie du Mont Blanc) or down. Instead here it’s technical traversing, Tech-C perhaps? Everything needs a hashtagable name now.

The other great thing about this style of riding is it’s much easier to stop and grab some photos without disturbing the flow of the ride. Which is why you don’t get many photos of the descent from today, far too much flow to break the ride too often.

We stopped at the Chalets de Pormenaz to grab some water from the fountain and change mindset from mild mannered trail riding to SUPER GNAR DH. Or something. The chalets are pretty perfectly located to both be a marker you can see from where ever you ended up on the plateau (there’s a lot of trails, the chances of picking the right one are slim) and of the change in nature of the riding.

From here it’s downhill, initially rocky and loose and more like the Alpes Maritimes above the Med’, but with some big drops to your side reminding you that it’s Chamonix. Despite the size of the drops as you start the trail the exposure is never too bad and there’s far more intimidating riding around here.

As you got lower the rocks got smaller and less loose, then the trees thicker and the ground more dirt than stone. Then more rooty and so on until you eventually end up on a fireroad having covered most sort of trail in the last 1000m.

The fireroad isn’t the end of the fun though, a detour towards the Buvette de la Fontaine yields another section of forest, this time ticking the loam box before a km of fast fireroad brings you to an even faster trail and final flurry through the suburbs of Servoz to the carpark.

A trail worth going back to for sure, but I’ll stick to milking the last of the uplift for the next few days I think.

02/11/2014
Hallowed ground

Every game has its Mecca. A site that unless you visit you can’t call your self a true believer. For Elvis fans it’s Graceland, gamblers have Las Vegas, alpinists Chamonix, Muslims err Mecca. For #enduroist (or mountain bikers as we were known before the number symbol was misappropriated) it’s Finale

And just like Mecca at hajj, mountain bikers must go Finale for the superenduro/EWS finals.

So we did. And lo, it was good.

The reason to head at EWS finals time (apart from Nina racing in it) is that a bunch of new trails get made and marked out for you, which you can go and session whilst watching the chosen ones of mountain biking doing the same.

During the official 2 days practice we had the chance to show Greg Minnar and Steve Peat how not to take loose corners, Rene Wildhaber and T-Mo how not to choose a line and watch the Ravanels and Nico Quere show us how not to rail a loamy rut….

It’s particularly useful that the trails are marked out as the official map and guidebook to the area is a bit vague and open to interpretation, leading to disagreement as to what path to follow (seriously, some of these analogies just write themselves). We ended up relying on a combination of the last 3 years worth of race cards, following our noses and, when all else failed, asking people.

This was quite a good technique as not only were there about 500 riders signed up to race, but there were about the same number doing what we were, and at least 1% knew where they were going.

For the first time the race left the hills directly above the beach and headed for the hills and the infamous Nato base freeride trails, so obviously we had to head up there too. The trails are different in nature to those lower down which make extensive use of Roman (or older) paths. Up high the trail builders have been free to do what they want, so nature’s been given a helping hand. A big helping hand.

To get up to the Nato base on race day you were faced with a 20km, 1000+m climb on road. Before the race most folks were shuttling this, unfortunately for us we hadn’t looked at the contour lines and figured it couldn’t be that far up, so we pedalled too. We quickly wised up and spent the next day in and out of cars and joining the traffic. Shuttling is all part of the Finale experience it seems. Part of me was disappointed in messing up the environment for everyone in pursuit of instant(ish) gratification, but then the trails are rreeaallyy good. And I can always do penance in the next life.

Trail building also seems a much bigger part of Finale bike culture than we’re used to in Chamonix, with folk out doing maintenance in the rain just days after the racing. We even bumped into the builder of the epic(ly long) final stage who then berated us all for not trying the hidden northshore road gap after a 45km 1000m+ day.

The 1000m of vertical down to the Med’ shouldn’t have felt too bad to us, it’s only a little more than a lap off Brevent after all, but there’s something about the Finale trails that make you feel like you get way more down for your up. It might be the sustained technical nature, or maybe the lack of fireroad or tarmac linking descents you get in most places, or maybe it’s just some higher power playing with physics.

Heaven, nirvana, paradise? I’m pretty sure Finale features there somewhere.

10/10/2014
Link up

Want to know what the next big thing’s going to be in mountain biking? Look at other mountain sports; skiing, snowboarding, mountaineering, fell running. Trail centres are a bike only thing? Snowboarding went crazy for snowparks in the mid 90’s. These newfangled “enduro” bikes that are fairly light up hill but a virtually DH bikes on the down? Skiing’s been doing the fat touring ski and DIN 16 touring binding for ages*. Big days out linking your favourite trails….

OK, so we’ve been doing that for a while too, but mountaineers got there first. With the concentration of hardcore climbers around Chamonix the main lines got climbed fairly quick, so how to make it more interesting? Enchain a load of them. This got particularly entertaining in the 80’s when not content with just climbing lots of hard routes, climbers would hanglide between lines, resplendent in Raybans and headscarfs.

So we thought we’d get in on the act.

Just the Bellevue lift left open now, but it’s probably the best lift any to get into more mountainy terrain. An efficient early start saw Spence and me at the top of the lift by 11am ready to link 2 of the best rides in the valley. The Nid d’Aigle and Col du Tricot.

The initial climb to Col Mont Lachat went as smoothly as ever, and also as ever we couldn’t pass the abandoned jet engine test station without having a poke about. If you want to do the same get up there quick as apparently it’s to be demolished this autumn.

As the tramway’s closed now until the winter it’s an easy (relatively speaking….) push up the tracks to the top station at 2372m and a selection of Mont Blanc ascentionists descending and aspirants ascending. It says something about Chamonix that everyone accepted our response of ‘the summit, Mont Blanc’ when we were asked where we were headed.

A relaxed lunch in the sun later, we dropped in to the first descent of the day. The trail was just as good as last year, the views just as distracting, and the section by the ladders just as unridable (unless you’re this guy). Some things never change, just like the 650m descent went so much quicker than the 570m climb.

The trail to Bionassey we followed last year crosses the track climbing to the Col du Tricot, so here we hung a left and headed down through the techy singletrack to the swing bridge. Our handlebars have got wider still, but the bridge remains as narrow, nae riding this time.

Reaching the col a little after 2 we had the hill almost to ourselves, a nice change from the last few rides from the col, benefits of not getting started early I guess. The geology is fairly mobile up here and the descent had evolved a little from last time, but still 100% ridable and 95% fun. It’s only the access route for the second section anyway.

With a huge amount of effort, I managed to stop this time to fire off a couple of photos of the trail, but they really don’t show how good it is. From the chainring gouges on some of the rocks I think a few more folk are finding out for themselves, maybe I should start saying the trails no good?

The road kilometres from Villette to St Gervais give a welcome respite to the arms and a chance to enthuse about how good the trail was and how well you rode it….or otherwise, before the final bit of interest on the pipeline trail from St Gervais to Le Fayet. Why’s it called pipeline? As Spence said; if you don’t know, you’ve not ridden it.

Of course, whilst the tramway being closed made our life easier at the start of the day, it now meant we couldn’t just hop back up to Bellevue and finish off a triptych of trails with the GR5. Instead we got to miss the train to Chamonix whilst I tried to work the automated ticket machine, then go for a beer in the sun whilst we waited for the next one.

Could this be the best ride in Chamonix? If you can only ride “one” trail then maybe these 2, linked in with GR5 to get you back into the valley, is where it’s at.

But then, you could always start from town and ride Aiguillet des Houches from Brevent to Les Houches first.

Or….

*So smart arse, where’s mountain biking going next? Well, snowboarding’s all about the split board, so I guess we’ll be keeping the all-mountain/enduro thing going. Skiing seems to be getting into lightweight rando-racing equipment and lycra though. Maybe mountain biking does lead the way sometimes.

28/09/2014
‘Effing excellent

You might not have noticed, but there’s a wee bit of a referendum happening in Scotland next week. It seems that Westminster hadn’t noticed either as over the last 7 days there’s been a sudden realisation that folks north of the border might just go vote for independence, and for reasons other than watching Braveheart too many times. Cue a love bombing campaign of Scotland. Promises that we won’t take you for granted, we won’t ignore you, it’ll be different this time, trust us, we’re politicians…

But this isn’t a political blog, so what’s with the intro? Well, I worry I might have been doing something similar with Chamonix. After a summer of racing across France I’ve seen amazing trails, great riding scenes, understanding lift companies and Chamonix’s been forgotten, just there for the day to day rides. Fortunately the last 2 days as we squeeze the last out of each closing lift has reminded me just how ‘effing excellent the riding is here.

Lacking the tech of Brevent & Flegere, and the huge views of Le Tour, Les Houches doesn’t really spring to mind when most people think of the riding around Chamonix. A shame as it’s got some of the best trails. As long as it’s not raining, or you don’t mind the mud.

A quick lap of most of the bike park trail with a wee variation to avoid the mud and road of the lower section warmed us up before heading to the main course of the day, Who’s way.

Spence, who’s ridden pretty much everything in Chamonix, had somehow missed this over the years so Lorne and I were keen to show it off.

It takes a bit of finding, but the clues are there for an amazing, almost 100% singletrack, 1300m descent from the Prarion gondola through Montfort and on to Le Fayet. There’s a few more tyre tracks on it than this time last year which suggests it’s being found a bit more, but so far everyone’s playing nice and not skidding it to death.

After commenting most of the way down how good it was not to be riding against the clock we then discovered we were riding against the clock to get to St Gervais in time for the last tramway. Some hashtagendurotraining later we had a 10 minute wait for the tram and the decision of how to head back to town.

Which, as usual, turned out to be the GR5/Cedric’s favourite trail (allegedly). How had I forgotten how good this trail was? As an added bonus, some work’s been done on the techiest section since the summer deluges, bringing it that bit closer back to being ridable clean (by us, I’m sure Cedric would have nae worries).

Three thousand vertical meters or so of varied and amazing riding all in an afternoon off work. Chamonix, how did I ever doubt you?

Another day and another lunch break, time enough to sample the fun at Flegere on it’s last day. A busy choice with plenty of other folks out on bikes and enjoying the sunshine. One lap down to Les Joux and another to Floria buvette doesn’t sound like much but again, these trails are just so good I was embarrassed to have been neglecting them.

The trail elves have even been out doing some work on the old Flegere DH trail to make it 100% rideable from the Index lift down to the Flegere/Brevent liaison lift and so make the first bit of the descent a bit more interesting than fireroad.

Should it be “Aye Chamonix” or “Chamonix, better together”? Dunno. But I’m looking forward to getting reacquainted

15/09/2014
Coupe du France Enduro series round 5, Valberg

There’s been a lot of race writeups on here recently, and I will get back to proper riding for the next post, but there was one last race in the Coupe du France so for one last time the Kangoo was laden with bikes and tyres. One last time we headed out through the Gorge du Arly. One last time we drove south with no air-con and one working window. One last time you get the idea.

This last one was Valberg/Guillaumes, star of online hits like Fabien Barel’s this, Yo Barelli’s that and Nico Quere’s other. All of these videos feature sections of the race track, and none of them do it justice.

In the first break from tradition, a clue that this wasn’t going to be a normal race, 2 of the 8 stages went online on the Monday before the race with the instructions that they were now taped and open for practice. At first this seemed very anti the “spirit of enduro” as it would give an advantage to the locals, but it turned out that as the stages had been used for 10 years, it was to try and even the field for anyone that hadn’t raced them before. And could turn up on a school day to practice. Not sure if it worked or not, locals always have an advantage whether they know the exact trails or not, but I think I’d prefer if we just had to ride blind(ish)

Saying that, shuttling the tracks on the Friday was pure dead brilliant. Though the flip side was that shuttling up the side of a mountain gets through a small petrol tank quickly. At 1.70 euros a litre in the village garage, the entertaining roads had an obvious cost.

After a lap of stage 2 & 3 for me & Nina, and an extra lap of 3 for Nina with Spence, we drank more petrol for the 25 minute drive up the road to the sign in and the next surprise. Instead of the fastest starting first, they’d be starting last. So rather than the usual 0600 alarm for an 8am start, I wasn’t rolling into the liaison until 1030. Which was the next thing. The 1st liaison started about 650m above the finish line, so you pretty much had to have a car to get there. Unless you were one of the 2 Italian lads who misunderstood and rode up to the start….

Which neatly brings us to describing the stages.

Saturday. 1850m of height gain, 2400m of descending and 45km of riding over and between 5 stages. If somehow you’re saying “aye great, but I NEED more video links” then the event video here will give a better idea.

Stage 1. After a pretty easy 30 minute liaison the opening stage was a short sprint into the trees and then lots and lots of dry, dusty, loamy singletrack. Sometimes freshly cut, sometimes fairly well established and mostly downhill, for a long long time until suddenly there was a flat pedally bit with a few short sharp climbs that I needed to push. After the timing gate you were along the road to the food tent and a 1hr window for….

Stage 2 which began after a 310m climb in the saddle. This stage is now 10 years old, but ain’t showing it at all. Mostly on the signature grey shale rock of the region with sculpted features blended into natural terrain. The only way I could describe it is like the Rampage course for punters. So much fun to ride, and only slightly terrifying to race.

Stage 3 was the same but bigger, with the liaison going past Stage 2 and up a total of 390m. Beginning with a 10m tarmac sprint, a 90 degree right into a steep bank and another 90 degree right, then wooded singletrack, a few pedals, lots of the grey dirt spines, then some super loose and dusty singletrack in the trees to finish. Again, just amazing to ride. The racing? More later (oooh, suspense eh?)

Stage 4 was preceded by its liaison. The previous 3 pedals up had lulled us into a false sense of security. Leaving the feedstation the 2hr 10mins allocated for the 655m height gain looked ok, until 10 minutes in when you pulled off the tarmac and started pushing up a trail. And kept pushing. All the way. Still, the stage was another blinder. Longest of the weekend at over 760m of drop and featuring all that is good about woodland singletrack.

Finally Stage 5 only needed you to drag your body and bike up 50metres to the start above the town of Guillaumes. 100m of yet more steep dusty singletrack spat you out at the top of the town where you raced through narrow alleyways, stairs, wall drops, tunnels and car ramp stepups to the town centre. Like pretending to be in the Italian Job, but on bikes. In France. With no gold.

Home, eat, drink, sleep, reset.

Sunday stage 1. Only 280m of up for the honour of the worst stage of the weekend. Open alpages with slightly damp grass and rocks poised ready to destroy a rim or tyre or disk or dérailleur and your chances.

Stage 2. Had a chairlift! And then a surprisingly tight 120m climbing liaison which saw plenty folk arriving breathless and/or late for their start. Just as well they were warmed up as after a series of flowless freshcut corners through the trees you had 1/2 a km of flat or uphill fireroad. Better singletrack was followed by another hard pedal and then the final steep section to the finish next to the chairlift.

Handy that, as you were back up it for stage 3. Fortunately the liaison was then 100% downhill to stage 3’s halfway height where you were telt you had an obligatory reccy descent of the lower part of the stage, before getting the pleasure of an obligatory push all the way back up to the start. This stage was a bit different (again, building suspense with a tease and promise of a big reveal, just to keep you reading) wide lines at the top, a short pedal, some unavoidable (tiny) gap jumps then multiple taped lines where you had to pick a route and stick to it for a while, then old school grass dual slalom stylee to the finish arch.

Whit a series of tracks, yet what of the alluded to surprises?

Surprise 3. Arriving at the start line of stage 1 I discover that rather than the usual 10 second gaps, we get 1 minute. But start is groups of 3. Yes, down super narrow consequence laden trails we were going to be racing 3 up, elbow to elbow, mano a mano (err, a mano).

I got lucky. 1 of my fellow gladiators didn’t show and the other, Phillipe Widmer, had been an overtaking target of mine for the last few Saturdays, so we were already on familiar terms. Out the gate I had the legs for the holeshot and gained a lead through the initial techy corners. The terrain just kept getting more and more fun to ride and I was having a ball when I started to hear heavy breathing. That wasn’t mine.

“Allez, ALLEZ!”. I’d kinda forgotten it was a race and Phillipe was back on me. Best start pedalling again. The rest of stage passed in a blur of good line choices and that amazing feeling of being in the bubble where everything seems easy and fun. Until I hit the pedally section low down at least, but I’d built up more than enough lead by then.

Stage 2 was similar. Got the holeshot, almost got overtaken on the 1st pedally bit, pulled away in the technical sections. But I just couldn’t shake Phillipe who pushed all the way to the line.

Stage 3 I was starting on the outside. The opening 100m which would have been easy as a individual were going to be interesting as 2. For 3 the starts were turning out in turns comical and painful. Phillipe got the holeshot, I got to the base of the slope first, we collided, laughed, and he was in the lead. Then the physical section saw him ramp up the gap. To cap it off I then made a daft mistake and crashed. Normally I’d have cruised down the rest of the stage, but having a distant speck churning up dust fired something inside me. I think it was competitiveness. Either way, I started pedalling, pushing on in the corners, the speck was getting bigger. The speck was getting closer. Dropping into the final tight and steep trees I was back on his tail and this time I was shouting “allez, ALLEZ”. Phillip overcooked a 180 degree hairpin and went down, 3 out of 3 stages.

By Stage 4 we had our mutual good luck start routines down. I didn’t have Phillipes power endurance, but at least I could outsprint him for the 40m it needed to get into the first rock garden in the lead and I pulled away from there. The first 1/2 of the stage felt like stage 1 had. In the zone and riding easily. The air was getting dustier and I was starting to catch the group 1 minute infront but then the days riding started to catch me. Everything was getting tired and I couldn’t hit the lines I wanted anymore. My legs would seize with cramp if I stood up to pedal and I felt like the bike weighed as much as I did. Still, 4 out of 4.

Finally stage 5 and we were getting to start 1 at a time. I celebrated by riding straight into a tree about 5 seconds out of the start gate. After untangling myself from the bike I fired on down with squint bars, which at least gave me slight x-up style points on every air. This stage was just what an urban DH should be like, I just wish I could have ridden it without squiff bars!

Enduro racing is a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but for me, this day was what I was looking for in all the races I entered. A long hard day on the bike with some of the best trails you’ll ride, a huge variety of terrain and happy people to share it with. I just wish we could have raced it all 1 at a time.

With the racing done and dusty, we headed off to eat, get ready for day 2, and find out what was happening in the morning. This proved harder than anticipated, but instead we got to watch the kids get their prizes from Fabien Barel & Nico Vouilloz. If you’re wondering why the French dominate enduro, then this is why. For the last 10 years in the Mercantour, kids as young as 8 have been racing on the same stages, with the same liaisons, as the adults, they just do less of the stages over the day. Then getting guidance from the worlds best. Same recipe as British DH I guess…..

Surprise 4. With no information to go on, we’d guessed that the start times would be the same order as Saturday. Yes and no, I went off as expected, but the girls were now in the general classification, so Nina’s start was with the mid pack riders and about 15 minutes before we even turned up! She managed to sprint up the liaison and just made her start.

The pace notes for Stage 6 mentioned that you could puncture easily. Before my start I got a text to say Nina had managed to puncture. Twice. Fortunately we were back to individual starts so I took it easy passing many others at the side of the trail who hadn’t.

Stage 7 didn’t have rocks at least, just lots of pedalling and loose branches, one of which decided to get stuck in my cassette and dérailleur. More time lost.

Stage 8, surprise 5. The startline was taped out like the mega-avalanche. Riders were going to start as per their current classification for the weekend. If you want to move up the ranking, you have to overtake! Francois Bailly-Maitre went out the gates, then at the appropriate gap for your time so far, so did the next rider, and the next. Suddenly the wider taping at the top of the course and multiple line choices lower down made sense! I managed to get the rider infront of me, but that was it, I’m not sure I’m cut out for the Mega.

And with that, the Coupe du France was over for the season.

Surprise number 6. I finished the weekend 8th. In category…. After a season of being in the same category as all the top guys (and in fact every guy from 19 to 39) they ran a Masters 1 category for almost-but-not-quite over the hill club of 30 to 39.

Nina might not have done so well here between the hard liaisons and double puncture, but she did well enough and got the 3rd step on the podium for the season title. An incredible result for her first season racing, and she only started biking 3 years ago!

Perhaps the best part of the prize giving though was seeing the 1st placed junior Sebastien Claquin hand his prize of a years factory deal with Giant to 2nd placed Valentin Escriou. Though as Claquin also finished 5th overall in mens, I guess he had his factory deal signed already.

One last time we packed up the car, got ready for the drive, complained about our aches and pains and headed back north.

One time more I’ll thank everyone who organised the series, the 130 volunteers involved in this round, the team that chose Saturdays stages (why is the EWS is going to Samoens when it could come here?), all the racers who made me feel so welcome over the season despite the occasional language difficulties, Nina for being a great race buddy, and Spencer for the driving, cooking, organising, mechanicing, taking photos and lending me numerous parts of his bike, all when he could have been getting riding in for himself.

Next season?

10/09/2014