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Seven days and counting

Summer’s here. Skies are blue, temps are high, taps aff etc.

Eager to enjoy the weather before it turns (another side effect of being Scottish, you can never, never learn to trust the weather to stay good) Spence and I headed out for an easy(ish…) day to check out a new trail and see where the snow level had got to.

I try to avoid the lift accessed trails when the lifts aren’t running (seven days till they open) in favour of more esoteric trails so I’ve spent a lot of the last month riding above Servoz. Today was no different and we started a long and relaxed climb from Servoz to the Le Mont carpark. Then Lac Vert. Then Gite Le Chatelet. Then the Chalets du Souay.

The climb is never difficult and just keeps plodding on, but it’s hard to plod when you’re a) not that fit and, b) run a 36 tooth chainring. Spence on the other hand is testing out a Oneup components 42 tooth sprocket which, combined with his 30 tooth chainring, meant I spent a lot of time watching him disappear, and he spent a lot of time waiting for me.

Still, the views are outstanding and the weather good for topping up the sunburn/tan so neither of us were too rushed and arrived a relaxed 2hr 20mins after setting off at the Refuge Moede Anterne, a good 1200m above our start.

After a customary break for food, drink and reflection we got on with the main reason we were here. To go back to the start again. Ain’t biking just pointless eh?

We started on an awesome bit of ridgetop singletrack which saw us flee down from the refuge to the first small climb aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand snow.

We’d thought there might still be a wee bit hanging about, and sure enough, there was. Nothing compared to the amounts of last season fortunately but still enough to force us from the bikes a couple of times and cause our brakes to howl like banshees being metaphorised.

The next section down to, then contouring with, the Souay river we’d checked out from the opposite side of the valley, and it was pretty good too. A mix of bright orange dirt singletrack and just the right side of super tech rock sections. At least, they were just the right side until I got a bit gallus and pinged off the bike and both me and bike bounced through a pile of rocks. Somehow this only resulted in a wee hole in my rear tyre.

Stan’s tubeless gunk is great stuff though and a spin of the wheel and 5 minutes straightening bars and putting air back in the tyre saw the bike good again. I was less convinced though and, having managed to escape breaking the bike once, was keen not to watch it bounce through sharp pointy boulders again so took things a touch easier.

Unfortunately the trail then started to get very tech, with in-situ chains and iron steps. Progress and flow slowed for a km or so.

Once passed, we were back on it and the fun continued down to the junction with one of our favourite trails in the area. To save me the effort of describing it again, you can read all about an earlier ride on it here.

Instead, I’ll just let the photos do the talking (err, again, that’s the cop out I used last time I wrote about it.) with the caveat that it’s much more fun to ride than photo and as we’re not getting paid for this, you can just have the average photos.

Cold beer time.

07/06/2014
Average.

Average sounds, well, average. Not good, not bad, but not anything memorable. Mediocre even. With hundreds of kilometres of the world’s best trails on the doorstep the ‘average’ bar sits pretty high around Chamonix.

Searching as ever for good, or at least above average, trails we headed out of town and round the corner to Les Contamines. It’s only 15km away in a straight line, but about 30 minutes in a car on account of there being some 4000m high lumps of rock and ice in the way.

The same lumps of rock and ice made a great back drop as we sweated our way up from Les Hoches (not to be confused with Les Houches…) towards Le Plan de la Croix in the sun. Fortunately some clouds came in along with a light breeze so the 700m of spinning up the tarmac and gravel roads went in a fairly easy going hour. So far so good, at least as far as it can for gaining height on a bike.

Alas the cloud didn’t then do the honourable thing and bugger off again once we reached the top of the climb at the Porcherey gite, so greybird it was for the down. At least the trail, once we’d picked which one to follow, looked good, both on the map and infront of us.

Starting through a field on a grassy bobsleigh run before dropping into the trees for some fast and loose corners, all with a banking to catch you if you got too enthusiastic.

It was starting to look like yet another above average trail, when the singletrack ended and we hit a trail you could (just about) get a 4×4 up. Still fast and fun, but not quite the same. With a few washed out sections making the trail more interesting it continued for the next ½ of the descent until we hit the road at Le Carteyron

A dashed line on the map perked us back up with more entertaining singletrack hairpinning the rest of the way down the hill to the car, but not enough to save the trail from being damned with the dreaded ‘OK’.

Despite this, it was good enough for us to talk of a return trip to test out some of the other options on the map in the hope of finding a more consistent descent.

Which just reminds us how lucky we are to get to ride here day in day out, when 700m of easily accessed fun downhill is just average.

Here’s to mediocrity.

01/06/2014
Dear green place

The Chamonix valley. It’s expensive (so move somewhere less dear or quit whining), it rains (well, how else does it stay green) and it’s miles from Glasgow (the original dear green place). But between the winter & summer seasons there’s a lot in common with the Weeg.

The clouds are down in the valley hiding the aiguilles and leaving a view of green, tree covered, hills. None of the lifts are open so we’re pedalling up fire roads to bomb down damp singletrack. And it’s raining, so there’s not too many other folk out and about despite none of the trails being particularly far from town.

Spencer and I felt the need to explore so headed off up towards the Mont Blanc tunnel in the hope of finding some trails to link known favourites across the north facing side of the valley down to Les Houches.

Even a cursory look at a map shows that there’s not too many trails and a lot of rivers in this area, but we didn’t have any better ideas, so figured we’d have a look.

Not far from the tunnel we crossed our first stream, the Torrent de la Crosset. Given it’s one of the main drainages for the Bossons Glacier it was pretty easy, I couldn’t help but wonder how long the snow we ski on the west face of the Midi takes to make it to the stream.

Once over and this (and with dry feet), the trail heads downhill. Fast with greasy rocks and roots, just like Mugdock.

Next challenge, Torrent des Bossons. Again the water is relatively low so crossing is pretty easy, the hack through the deforested area less so. Fortunately we found a manicured garden for a millionaire’s chalet to skip through…..

The hill above Le Mont has some great wee trails accessed off the old green run from when the chairlift was for a ski area. You even get to pedal past Cedric Gracia’s attempt at getting a bike park in Chamonix, also long abandoned.

Fortunately the singletrack is longer lasting and we get another great descent until we find the Torrent de Taconnaz. This time there’s a bridge, so nae danger of wet feet, but the bridge goes nowhere (there used to be one of them in Glasgow too) and we’re left randomly riding about Les Houches trying to find a trail until we get bored and head to Super U for 50 centime cookies.

Doesn’t sound like much, but it was good to be out exploring instead of on the sofa. The elusive trail-to-end-all-trails remains elusive, but at least we know a few more shortcuts….

27/05/2014
Coupe du France Enduro Series round 1, Blausasc

When I last raced DH in 2000 I remember looking at the results of the masters category and thinking that I’ll come back to racing next decade and I can get to be competitive again. It’s been 14 years, but I look through the names of the masters category and now they’re the ones top ten-ing in the overalls. No chance of being competitive there then.

So instead I looked at enduro, apparently the refuge of downhillers who were never quite quick enough, and sure enough, the start list is again filled with the heroes of my youth. Still, how fast can a bunch of ex world champ downhillers be? Worse, this is France, home of enduro. At the first round of the Enduro World Series, 13 of the top 20 guys were French. No chance of being competitive here then.

Despite all this, I entered the full Coupe du France Enduro series.

This isn’t as daft an idea as you’d think though. For a little over 250euros you get 5 races from Blausasc just outside Nice to Samoens next to Chamonix. Not only that, someone marks out a load of the best trails, gives you a lift pass (or at least some food and water to help you up the hill) and stops anyone from walking up the trail the other way. Plus you get 26euro brake pads and a jar of olives in the goodie bag. Result!

Besides, last time I was racing I would drive 8hr south to get to a muddy forest in Shropshire to race, now the same drive gets me to the south of France, if that’s not progress, nothing is….

After said 8hr drive Spencer and I arrived in L’Escarene, a few km up the road from Blausasc to meet Nina and several of her relatives who were putting us up for the weekend. Chamonix connections working out once again!

The last hour of the drive had been spent staring at the perfect looking terrain around us, so we headed over to Blausasc itself to walk stages 3 & 4 and see if it was as good up close.

Compared to the alpine trails we’re used to in Chamonix, Blausasc was a huge change. Dry, dusty, limestone rocks everywhere. Very similar to Finale not far up the coast, but slightly less clay in the dirt and with the added touch of a strong local trials (motor) bike scene to help cut the tracks.

Stage 3 started above the trees with some fast corners and MX whoops, then into a bobsleigh track section with several big compressions. After a sprint up some fire road it then got into super narrow singletrack winding through the trees following the contours of the hill before abruptly diving off the edge into some loose fresh cut trails, before another km or so of foot wide singletrack to the finish.

In contrast stage 4 was rocky and open, with a couple of short but very technical sections, but mostly on established trails and finishing in the village itself. As for the first 2 stages, no idea, we’d find out in the morning….

Racing started at 0900, with the top 20 guys setting off in pairs at their allotted times, then the girls, then the rest of us. Nina got her interview at the start line and rolled off on the first liaison whilst Spence and I wandered back to the car with a relaxed 45 minutes for me to get ready. 25 minutes to go I start looking for my gear. No knee pads. I’d left them in the flat in L’Escarene.

Almost everyone we’d met in the village would tell us about how their cousin was an ex world champ downhiller (there’s a few of them kicking about these hills) or a rally driver. Spence did a pretty good impression of a rally driver getting my pads back to me in time for my start!

In the “rallye” format French enduro races you are given allotted times to start each stage, so you can get there as quick or as slow as you like, but if you don’t cross the start line at the given time you get the time you’re late added to the stage time. With 38km of distance and 1400 of climbing to cover each day I was mildly concerned at how the timings would work out.

Fortunately the liaison stage timings seemed to be sufficient for the weekend though, with delays on both days due to timing issues and riders needing stretchered off the course, you could feel a bit pushed if you forgot you were getting extra time to complete.

The event video’s already online and will give you a better idea of the stages, but I’ve written a description anyway because that’s what a blog’s for, pointless writing.

How was stage 1? The red mist came down and remembering details is tricky, but it was a mix of fast straights with rocks up high and roots lower down with steeper and twistier new cut sections.

A long road climb up to the start of stage 2 showed just how much work and organisation goes into these races with several road closures to let racers cross over or race down streets. It’s an indication of how much biking is worth to the economy here, with Nice and the coast taking most of the tourism euros, and hence how much bikers are valued. It’s nice to feel wanted.

Stage 2? Pretty pedally, really pedally actually. I crossed the line a broken man having given it all and as a result knackered my legs for the rest of the weekend.

Stage 3 rode much like it walked (except for me blowing out the rear tyre at the top and having to put in a tube and Nina forgetting to let some of the 35psi out of her tires) a whole lot of flowy fun, but you really didn’t want to be going over the edge on the narrow sections.

Stage 4 was great fun to ride, how often do you get to blast through town streets, round blind crests and corners, without worrying about other people. My Sunday run down the hill was some of the most fun I’ve had on a bike in ages….despite some comedy crashes and having to stop for the paramedics carrying a stretcher.

Those were the race stages, but a big reason for doing the series was to be forced to go to new places to ride. Chatting to folk on the hill all were saying that these traces were ok but really the race should be getting held on the trails over there, pointing to the next hill over, as they were much, much better. Whilst Nina and I were racing, Spence was out checking some of the other trails and confirmed, everything here seems to be pretty amazing to ride. Plans were being hatched for a return visit without the race plates, so I guess the event did it’s job for the local economy.

How did the racing go? Nina pulled a pretty good ninth over the weekend, especially given this was a very physical race with over 2800m of climbing and Nina strength is definitely in her downhilling and she had a less than perfect lead up to the race. You can see what she thought of it all here. I tried too hard on Saturday, multiple crashes on every run, usually whilst overtaking (All the riders were excellent at getting to the side of the track as you caught them and shouted rider, alas I wasn’t so good at guessing the best side of the track to try passing on….) combined with the blow out left me way off the pace, so on Sunday I played about with various techniques and discovered doing jumps and wheelies and riding how I do normally got me my best stage placings, which is convenient.

A massive thank you to Nina’s relatives for being so welcoming to us all for the weekend and giving us the run of their amazing house. Also cheers to the team and volunteers who organised the race. Finally cheers Spencer for fixing up my bike as well in his official role as Nina’s mechanic (and doing most of the driving, photo taking, food prep……) and Concept Pro Shop for the pre-race bike tune in their incredibly well equipped workshop.

Next stop, Val d’Allos.

22/05/2014
Saleve, because pedalling uphill is hard work.

Earning your turns, pedalling up the hill, is great for achieving a smug feeling of self-righteousness and superiority, but it’s way easier to take a lift. Looking for an easy life we headed west to Saleve and its year round uplift.

It’s a popular choice for out of season riding (though it’s been closed for 6 months for refurbishment) so if you want more info, here’s what happened last time we went.

The 10 uplift ticket is still 43euro, still valid for a year, still shareable amongst you all, but now gets scanned by a smart phone. The photo’s are still rubbish too, but you try shooting fast moving objects in a forest on an overcast day, with a wee camera and no flash gun before you complain.

The weather’s been a bit damp recently and Saleve has a reputation for not drying quickly but even so we were a bit surprised at just how slick the trails were on our first lap. The wind and heat of the day helped dry things out a bit and as the day went on things got a bit tackier, but you were still never far from a sideways moment.

If you’ve not ridded at Saleve before then you won’t know how much of a maze the trails are. We were basing line choice at each junction on which way we were sliding at the time, so by random the first couple of laps were on the longer tracks over towards Monnetier and their pedal back uphill to the last bit of trail towards the lift station. Great for Lorne & I, less good for Spence and his new DH bike.

The shorter more direct lines were more slick, though were seeing most traffic from the locals (all of whom seemed to have mud tires on, almost like they knew what conditions would be….). Fortunately mud is pretty forgiving to fall on, so it was more entertaining than terrifying.

With the reputation for being muddy you’d hope that there was a hose for cleaning off bikes at the station, but it turns out you’re not allowed to use the hose that’s there. Old toothbrushes are a very inefficient way to dry clean a bike.

There’s still more than a month to go until most resorts open for the summer season, so it might be time to find the old spike tyres in the shed and invest in a power wash.

14/05/2014