Chamonix Bike Blog

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Open for business. Still.

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.

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.

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

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*

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.

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

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

27/10/2013
Tricot two

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?).

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!

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.

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…

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.

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

05/10/2013
Two trails

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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….

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

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.

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.

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.

29/09/2013
This is mountain biking.

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….

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.

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.

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.

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….

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.

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.

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.

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….).

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.

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….

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

26/09/2013
Last chance to ride ___________

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

23/09/2013