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Coupe du France Enduro series round 4, Samoens

There are 3 certainties in life; death, taxes and the Samoens round of the Coupe du France being muddy.

But to be honest, on Friday afternoon as the car was getting packed for the short drive over to register and deal with scrutineering, I wasn’t so sure. And a quick track walk to see what the trail conditions were didn’t have me convinced I was going to need my newly purchased second hand wetscreams.

Then it started raining, then pissing it down, then the warm up act ended and the real storm arrived. The certainty memes were safe, it was going to be a wet race.

Samoens is part of the Grand Massif lift network and gives an interesting change from Chamonix’s mostly steep and rocky trails without the crowds of Morzine. Of course, steep and rocky trails generally drain and dry quickly after rain. Mellower angled loam under trees doesn’t and with there being something in the order of 250% of average rainfall this summer there’s not been much in the way of dust recently.

Possibly helped by the announcement Samoens will host a round of the EWS next year there were more French pros and international riders than usual, including the Irish/Scottish combo of Greg Callaghan and Katy Winton, which was great as my French sucks so I could have slightly more in depth conversations between stages than;
“It’s muddy”,
“Yes, it’s muddy, but I’m Scottish, I like muddy”,
“I’m from the south of France, I hate muddy”,
“Ah.”

Anyways, the stages were a little complicated to follow from the map, with 11 stages between the 2 days, but only 6 traces. As ever the event video helps, but they worked out something like….

Saturday
Stage 1 & 3. Starting outside the main Samoens lift, fast but a little peddaly grass into the trees for lots of fresh cut loamy trail and the odd bit of built up bermed track, a wee blast down some fire road then back into loamy earthy natural banked stuff in the trees before you were spat out at the finish, thankfully short of some northshore and a couple of minute spin along the tarmac to….

Stage 2 & 4. The pedalliest of the weekend, but still not too bad, a mix of quite tricky to nail tight tech and faster more open trails.

After a lunch break and another trip up the gondola you had the first proper pedal/push liaison up to Stage 5
A good 500m of fire road down to some open trails in new growth forest, then a mix of very rocky 4×4 with regular taped of excursions into the undergrowth.

Another flattish pedal along some road finally got you to Stage 6 & 7 under the Morrilion gondola. A sprint across grass and tarmac (for instant cure to constipation, try cornering at race speed on tarmac with full spikes), through a tunnel where you had to use the walls as a berm (again, try committing to that on full spikes), then some reet fast rooty loams trails, the odd short climb, and more fast rooty loamy trails.

Sunday featured just the 2 traces, each repeated twice. The main Samoens lift gave you most of the height gain, then it was a 30 minute ride push to stage 1/3 and another 30 minutes or so push to stage 2/4

Stage 1 & 3. A short uphill sprint along some fireroad lead to a punchy 10m high climb then about 150m of gently rising boggy singletrack ensured you were knackered as the ground dropped away beneath you and you were into a roller coaster of natural berms and ruts down the hill where often the best bet was just to hold on and hope you bounced out of the end of each section still in the right direction.

Stage 2 & 4. About as good as it gets in my book! A bit of everything, but mostly fast flowing singletrack in the trees. The only thing that didn’t feature was a real climb, all the pedalling was to go faster, not to just go.

So all in, a grand selection of trails with very little serious pedalling, but racing doesn’t always work out like racing and it definitely didn’t this time.

Milling around at the start of stage 1 during the obligatory delayed start the feel was more of a (massive) group ride than a race, a distinct lack of aggression and competitiveness in the air. The track was pretty slick, but fun. The only problem was if you fell, you were stuck on the ground like a beetle on it’s back with a serious fight on your hands (and knees) to get up. And as the course was narrow, if the rider in front of you went down, you were probably going into them and down. As would the rider behind you….

Stage 2 was much the same and, with only a short pause before heading back up, there was a quick clean of the bike, a swap to flats and a bite to eat before getting on the gondola for Stage 3.

Enduro racing is all about surprises, and the surprise waiting for us was the news that stage 4 was to be cancelled because it was too claggy. The reason this was a surprise was that on the first run down, stage 2 was way, way less claggy that stage 1. Still how bad could it be?

Worse than this years Megavalanche was the answer. According to Melanine Pugin at least and, as she won the Mega, she should probably know. The mud was so thick you had no warning between the bike feeling a bit slow and so much mud getting behind the fork brace you were flipped over the bars. If you had the strength to lift your 100kg bike, running was generally the quickest option. Until you fell over. The results from this stage were all over the place, but that’s racing.

Down to the pits, clean the bike and time for the secret weapon. Off with the wetscream/High roller combo, on with my 15 year old 1.9″ Michelin DH muds, from when spikes meant SPIKES.

Of course, this meant the next 3 trails were no where near as bad and had a fair bit of firm ground, but I think my sacrifice was worth it for the good of the group.

With the weather staying sunny through the day and into Sunday the trails were drying fast, but hopefully not going to unrideable clag again.

My lack of power to sprint up hills was made brutally apparent on stage 1 Sunday when my 10 second man, series ranked 17th Julien Roissard, passed me within 150m of the start before the trail headed downhill. I blamed still being on flats.

Stage 2 was going just brilliantly, with Julien taking until about 1/2 way to pedal past me and generally having so much fun I almost forgot that this is meant to be serious when I went over a blind rise into a sea of orange spraypainted rocks. Riding blind, fast, is one of the reasons I enjoy these races, unfortunately it wasn’t until 1/2 way through this rock garden I remembered I had a 1.9″ rear tyre with a tube in it. As the tube deflated I briefly considered doing an Aaron Gwin, but then realised that that would just be stupid, so shouldered the bike and started running. Only about a 1/3rd of the course to go. Still, if you feel you don’t get enough cheers at a race, wrap your tyre round your frame and get running, the crowd loves you!

Anyway, after a good feed (as ever, it’s almost worth doing the races for the free food and brake pads), a change to a big Minion DHF for the back and spuds on the bike, the day was reset with no aims of improving on my placings and instead just having fun. As the 2 stages were amongst the best I’ve raced all year, in fact stage 2/4 is one of the best trails I’ve ridden all year, this was pretty easy.

Neither Nina or I were particularly happy with our results over the weekend, but points mean prizes, or at least they hopefully do for Nina sitting in 3rd for the series going into the last round, I’m less hopeful that the prize fund makes it back to my end of the score sheet.

One more race to go then it’s autumn and the best time of year for some real riding.

03/09/2014
Coupe du France enduro series round 3, Val d’Isere

I heard on Thursday morning that the latest edition of the Oxford English dictionary was going to feature the word “amazeballs“. Generally I’m of the opinion that anyone using said phrase should have bungee cord tied to their amazeballs and be kicked off a bridge, but looking at the maps for the race when they went online Thursday evening, only one word came to mind.

Sweet.

8 stages over 2 days taking you from Val d’Isere over the cols to Tignes and back. Bits in the bike park, bits on walking trails, bits in the middle of nowhere marked “here there be dragons” on the map. Of course, no idea what it’d pan out like on the ground…..

Last year the race was part of the Enduro World Series, this year it was mearly the 3rd round of the Coupe du France and, coming 1 week after the Whistler round of the EWS, wasn’t as well attended by the big names. Still a sell out though.

During the summer the Val d’Isere and Tignes lifts are free to pedestrians and cyclists and there’s a big network of bike trails. The liaisons were mostly on blue and red graded runs and were some of the best riding of the weekend. I’m quick to whinge about the dumbing down and over grading of biking terrain, but sometimes it’s good just to ride a flow trail, knowing that once up to speed you will hit the downslope on every jump and can rail every head-height berm.

The race stages were mostly not on the park trails though. Mostly they followed lines picked out through the treeless alpine geography of the hill. Sometimes this meant you were flowing through grassy bobsleigh runs, other times you were hopping about desperately trying to save your rear mech, or disc, or both, from the sharp pointy rocks that littered the hill.

Saturdays stage 1 began at the top of the Olympique gondola 1000m straight up from town and started as the latter type, then had a bit of bike park, then some pedalling, then a bit of climbing, then some nice singletrack through the trees back to Val d’Isere and the paddock with food tent. As an added bonus, the previous days storm had left an inch or so of snow on the ground at the start.

Stage 2 was back up the Olympique lift, through the bike park to the Borsat chair. Up that for more bike park to the Tufs chair, up it and finally you were at the start. It then mostly followed the official “enduro” trail Wild 10 Nez with some added diversions into the wilds. This was even more pedally than Stage 1, with over 100m climbing in the total 695m descent down to Tignes and yet another feed tent.

Stage 3 started a short pedal through Tignes town and went from the town above the reservoir and back round towards Val d’Isere. Unfortunately there was a hold up to the start whilst 15 year old lass got rescued from a nasty crash, getting the biggest cheer of the day when she was walked back to the ambulance. The stage was fun singletrack through the forest, but again was very physical.

When you hear enduroists say a stage is physical it means it was more pedally than they would like.

Following a particularly exposed liaison we were back in Tignes and once more at the food tent. You can’t fault the feeding stations.

Stage 4 was back up the Olympique then heading off in the opposite direction to stage 1. This was my favourite stage of the day by far. A really well chosen line through the open terrain with lots of flow, some hard pedalling sections, but never so long you feel you’re in an xc race, and finishing off on a large section of the 2012 world cup DH course.

No idea how far or high we raced, but that’s just shy of 4000m of uplift, so a pretty full day.

My Saturday race went fairly well, this weekend was “rallye” format which means you start in your seeding order from your Coupe du France overall standings. As a result there wasn’t as much overtaking needed, but as the riders are going faster they are less keen to move when you want to overtake. As ever, the fastest folk manage it so stop whining and get better at passing. My luck finally caught up with my skill towards the end of stage 4 when I stuffed myself into a pile of big pointy rocks head first. Surprised that I didn’t seem to have broken anything on me or the bike I limped down to finish 38th in mens for the day.

Nina had a change in fortunes from her La Thuile race and with no mechanicals or crashes bagged 2nd or 3rd on every stage and, despite a 30 second penalty for accidentally leaving the course, finished the day in 3rd place.

The podium ceremony for Saturday was in the centre of town and after everyone had stood on their wobbly tree trunk and recieved their bag of Radio Fun Val d’Isere merchandising it was time for yet more food. The race entry includes Saturday night feeding and here even free beer. You never got that at the SCU series.

Sunday was another day and another set of stages. Although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky it was still bitterly cold at the top for the 1st stage and Friday’s snow was still hanging about in the shade.

Stage 5 followed the first (and worst) section of stage 1 on Saturday. Amazingly the passing of 300 riders had made this a better track as several lines had got worn in and some ruts had formed to help keep the speed. The overnight freeze helped too I imagine.

A short uphill pedal from the finish got riders to the Borsat chair and up 380m vertical to the start of stage 6. This was, for me, the stand out stage of the weekend. Like stage 4 the day before, which it joined about 1/2 way down, it was a well chosen line taped through the open hillside, linked with some bike park berms and flat or downhill fire road before joining yesterdays track on flat singletrack and on to the world cup DH and the finishline.

Here you had the chance to visit the food tent (where they even had petite fours, since when did you get petite fours at a feed tent?) before heading back up to do exactly the same again for stages 7 and 8.

My Sunday didn’t go quite as planned. Feeling pretty beaten up from my crash on Saturday I noticed 10 minutes before getting on the lift that my rear brake wasn’t working. How I’d missed this on Saturday I’m not sure, but with no time to fix the lever reservoir that was cracked open and dripping oil I headed up the lift anyway. To conclude, racing with only a front brake is not much fun and not very fast.

Getting back to town 2 stages later Spencer was ready with his own back brake and we quickly swapped over. The next time round was more fun, but I wasn’t really into the groove and was lucky to scrape a top 100 finish by the end of the day. Nina managed another full mechanical free day, but was also pretty beaten up from the previous day and was coughing up assorted green lumps which wasn’t helping her on the pedalling sections. Despite this she held onto enough time to get a 3rd overall for the weekend which moved her up to joint 2nd overall in the series.

Not the best weekend of trails for racing, but interesting to visit another place. There’s definitely a weekends worth of riding between the 2 resorts, though I’d base myself in Tignes where there’s more options, and with free lifts it seems a good option for a short trip away. Go visit.

Once again a big thanks to all involved in yet another excellently organised race, all the lifties for remaining cheerful in the face of 300 riders and especially to Spence for making up for forgetting the track pump by sacrificing his own days riding and lending me his brake!

18/08/2014
The end is nigh. Repent.

The weather has, at times, been a bit biblical recently. Given Mount Ararat is 5137m high even Mont Blanc at 4810 ain’t going to save us. All we can do is head out in the rain and enjoy the biking whilst we still can.

The Chamonix trails, being generally steep and rocky, deal with the rain fairly well and drain pretty quick. Only Les Houches turns into a true quagmire and even there it’s possible to avoid the worst of it (which is generally the last 1/3 of the DH trail and all of the old DH trails from the Bellevue). Certainly it’s not as bad as the Portes du Soleil or Grand Massif which reportedly resemble Glastonbury on a bad year at the moment. That’s the mud, not the huge numbers of people, bands, inappropriate clothing for the weather etc.

Keeping to trails above the tree line and exposed to the wind also help you stay dry(ish) and less muddy, though not perhaps as warm.

Anyway, riding mud is like riding powder whilst it’s dumping. You have to head out when the weather’s worst, you WILL get cold and wet, and it’s not easy. The flip side is that it’s so much more rewarding. Why ski down a well groomed piste when you can leave your own trace through the forest? If it’s too hard, you’re just not good enough.

Summer, or what’s passing for it, might still have another month or so to run but that doesn’t mean the lifts do. Shut down in Chamonix starts at the end of the month and it’s the same for most of the other hills.

Here’s the list you don’t want to see:

Vallorcine 31st August

Grand Montets 7th September

Brevent 14th September (re-opens 25th October to 2nd November)

Flegere 14th September

Prarion 14th September

Tramway du Mont Blanc 14th September

Le Tour 21st September

Bellevue 28th September

And futher afield

Grand Massif 31st Aug: http://ete.grand-massif.com/ouverture

La Thuile 31st Aug : http://www.lathuile.it/datapage.asp?id=211&l=1&s=E

Portes du Mont Blanc 7th Sept http://www.combloux.com/en/activities/summer/pass.html

Tignes / Val d’Isere 31st Aug (still FREE up till then) http://www.tignes.net/en/summer-sports/free-and-a-la-carte-activities-252.html

Pila 8th Sept: http://www.pila.it/en/holidays/tariffe/tessere-a-punti/

Portes du Soleil starts closing the weekend of 31st August and is mostly closed by the 9th, except Champery which keeps going to 26th Oct: http://en.portesdusoleil.com/summer-lifts.html

Verbier 22nd September then weekends only until 26th Oct (if weather’s ok): http://www.verbierbikepark.ch/horaires_fr.php

Fingers crossed the sun comes out to play for a few weeks and we can start to complain that it’s too hot and the trails too dusty for a bit instead.

09/08/2014
Champex Lac: Seasonal discrepancies

Deja vu? After 2 weeks of near constant rain it seemed the Scottish summer was over in Chamonix. One day of sun meant the trails were dry (mostly) and spirits were high (mostly). It also meant everyone had headed out to enjoy the trails.

Eager to ride some fast downhill trails, preferably with well build berms, a trip out of the valley was called for, and where better than Pila?

Turned out plenty of other folk had a similar idea and the queue for the Mont Blanc tunnel was backed up at least 60 minutes, so we headed to Champex Lac instead…..

……I’m starting to think Pila is not for me this summer, and with Meteo France apparently declaring July the dreichest in over 50 years I’m also wondering if summer is not for us this summer.

Anyway, as going somewhere new and little known generally works out, we headed off to Champex Lac in Switzerland. The lift is best known in summer as an access point to the Trient plateau which is used by many guides as acclimatization for parties hoping to climb Mont Blanc. In winter it’s either a tiny family ski area or one of the best tree skiing powder areas going (though shh, it’s a secret) depending on your outlook. We were hoping the mountain biking was going to be a similar epiphany to the skiing.

It wasn’t.

After paying our 25chf for the lift pass and worrying about the unpadded chairlift battering the bikes we headed up the 700m to the top at 2194m.

There are 4 promising looking trails on the map, we started out with the dashed line running under the second, smaller, chairlift line. It started out tech and didn’t let up. Once you start pushing down sections the fight goes out of you and it’s easier to just keep pushing, so we pushed a lot of the line.

Towards the bottom of the hill the riding got better, which was the most frustrating thing about the day, when the riding was good, it was really, really good. It’s just the bits inbetween were really, really not.

In winter on of the best ways to ride Champex is to head along the long traversing green piste then drop into the trees when it looks about right. We tried this for the next 2 laps.

The ratio of riding to swearing was improved, but inbetween the excellent sections it was still either super tech or fireroad. Fortunately the best section of trail was from the refuge low down on the hill and common to all the ways down meaning we always got good trails to finish on.

Feeling fairly disparaged we went up for a final lap on the south eastern aspect of the hill. This trail saved the day for me, but apparently my tastes in technical trails and exposure are not normal, so whilst we all agreed it was the best trail, there was some disagreement on just how good it was.

Either way, starting up high above the trees with some nice narrow straights leading into a long switchback section down a couloir (which saw both Ally & I take accidental shortcuts, Ally’s resulting in him headbutting a fairly pointy rock) it then wound it’s way down through the trees getting gradually more open and flowing as it went. Finally we reached some fast and (relatively) flat tracks with a beautiful layer of loam that brought us down to join the Tour du Mont Blanc and the pedal back into Champex Lac.

There was still plenty of time for some more laps, but we were over it. If we’d known that there were some easy flowy trails to hit then we’d have headed up for more, but there’s only so much riding you can do at the edge of your ability before it starts to get a bit tiring mentally and physically.

In summary, Champex Lac; not worth the effort, but feel free to go and prove me wrong as every penny spent there helps keep the lift turning in winter.

Cheers to Lorne Cameron for many photos, summer and winter.

02/08/2014
Les Contamines, no bad.

After 2 weeks of near constant rain it seemed the Scottish summer was over in Chamonix. Four days of sun meant the trails were dry (mostly) and spirits were high (mostly). It also meant everyone had headed out to enjoy the trails.

Eager to ride some empty downhill trails, preferably with well built berms, a trip out of the valley was called for, and where better than Pila? Spence would even get to take his DH bike, and the rest of us could sit and eat ice cream or drink coffee.

I guess plenty of other folk had had a similar idea and the queue for the Mont Blanc tunnel was backed up at least 45 minutes, so we headed to Les Contamines aiming to meet friends instead.

In an area filled with off the radar bike friendly lifts, Les Contamines is pretty much an unknown. Before the trip I found some info on the sole bike trail down from the top lift at 1850m to the base at 1180m, some second hand information that the riding is”pretty good” and, that’s about it.

Turned out the riding was indeed “pretty good”.

The lift pass for the day is a cheap 12.60euro, though you need to pay 2euro for a magnetic card if you don’t have a spare one already. This gets you 2 lifts, the first a short 300m hop open all day and the longer second stage runs from 1500m to the top but closes 1230-1315.

Spence had swapped bikes back to his normal all mountain bike and it’s as well he did. The single official DH trail is plenty of fun and, with no climbs, easily ridden on a DH bike but you’d be scuppered for all the other trails.

The first lap was on said DH trail. Lots of nice berms, especially through the woods, no real braking bumps and good flow. It could do with some bigger features as we all landed flat from every jump, drop or hip, but I guess they’re catering for a more family market.

After the warm up lap we headed up the hill from the lift towards the Chalets de Roselette, before joining a narrow trace of singletrack through the alpine and down towards the valley floor. The trail was particularly good up high, mixing fast sweeping sections with some tighter rock gardens and gnarled old roots. As we got lower in the direction of Notre Damn de la Gorge the trail got steeper and more technical. Never unridable, but certainly demanding, before easing off for the final blast down to the back of the church and the short coast down the road to the telepherique and lunch.

Some sandwiches in the sun later we headed back up the 1st of the lifts. As the 2nd stage was still closed for lunch we tried a trail running south from the lift through the Bois des Granges.

It began with a lot of promise, very similar to the previous trail. Alas about 1/3 of the way down it flattened off and got rockier and rockier to the point where it was easier just to carry. We were starting to think it was going to be another average trail to chalk up to experience when the rocks finished and we were left with an amazing technical descent down through the woods and back to the road ready for another lap.

A few more goes of the DH trail later (we don’t get to ride well built stuff much in Chamonix ok), where Nina had had a massive superman over the bars and I’d ridden into the wrong end of a see-saw jump, we were ready to try exploring more.

Heading east from the top of the lift we dropped into the grassy expanse of the main ski area. A word of advice, don’t.

Another lap of the DH trail.

With a storm on the way in and warnings from the very friendly lifties that the telepherique may have to close we went for one last long lap. Following our tracks we headed back to the Chalets de Roselette but this time turned right instead of left after entering the woods.

A chat with some locals earlier had confirmed we’d found several of the best trails, and told us that the trail we were aiming for was quite wet and had some tricky root sections. I’d gone selectively deaf when they said it was wet and only heard the bit about roots. I like root sections. In the dry.

Fortunately the muddy sections weren’t too bad and on easy sections of the trail, whilst the roots were great. The track eventually spits you out just above (as in through the garden of) the Nant Borrant refuge, which just happens to serve ice cream, coffee and beer. It wasn’t perhaps the same quality as you’d get in Italy, but we weren’t in Italy and it tasted good enough for us.

All that was left was the cruise down the Roman road back to the car, though calling it a cruise would be a disservice to the track. Rock slabs, drops onto, off and over the trail, wee jumps abound, and you have to stop by the bridge over the stream to check out the rock formations.

Maybe we’re not going to rush back, but I think we’d all go back pretty happily. Certainly worth a stop by on a trip for a day for some chilled out quiet riding. No bad at all.

20/07/2014