Chamonix Bike Blog

A day in Italy

Posted on 18th January 2020

There are many odd questions you get asked living in Chamonix. Where’s the lift to the Mont Blanc? Is it pronounced Chamonix or Chamonix? Are you a skier or snowborder? Which do you prefer; summer or winter? If you could only do biking or skiing; which?

Obviously these aren’t questions people are interested in the answer to, it’s just humans wanting to avoid silence and keep the distractions going, but the “if you could only…?” questions always intrigues me. Like, what freak scenario are you imagining that will leave the circumstances that would create only being able to ski OR bike?

I mean, obviously we’ve created a freak scenario where the alps might be snowfree within many of our predicted lifetimes, but apart from that…

Light at the end of the tunnel or train? I don't know. But I do know that almost all my rides outside the valley seem to involve tunnels these days.

Bearing in mind the impending environmental doom, was this acceptable? Some exceptionally rough calculations later (Renault trafic producing average 198g/km, Chamonix to Chamonix round trip 170km) I think we fired out 33.66kg / C02 in total, about 3.7kg / C02 pp.

This is equivalent to about 31 km commuting (single occupant at an EU new car average of 120.4g/km the average EU commute being 28.56km ), 26 minutes heliskiing (based on the Eurocopter AS350 B2 with 5 passengers [so including the guide, not including the pilot] but VERY roughly [turns out C02 emissions for helicopters are quite complex so this is probably under] so more than one drop, but not including your drive there from home), or a very very short distance of flying, like a really really short distance. I couldn’t find 2 airports close enough together to give an example but feel free to find something to prove me wrong!

This just gives some numbers to what we did, it doesn’t say if it’s acceptable. That’s up to you to decide. Is anything fair game in the pursuit of enjoyment or do we have to accept that all our actions will have a negative impact and we should stop breathing? I don’t know, but I know I feel less guilt that if we’d hopped in the spare helicopter. I can tell I’m losing you.

Anyways, the answer is generally thus. The average day biking is better than the average day skiing, but the best days on bikes don’t come close to the best days on skis. And the best season is the one you’re in.

So in the middle of winter, in a period of average ski days, Ollie’s message to say it’s his birthday and he’ll bike if he wants to was most welcome.

Load a van and head to Aosta.

Because in Italy it’s always sunny, the trails always dusty, the coffee always perfect.

Aosta riding then. There seems to be a very Italian thing that lends itself to shuttles. Assorted sizes of roads weaving up the hills across the country, all with a convenient lay-by, pull in, kerb or dirt shoulder to stop a (invariably) Renault trafic and trailer in, and a cracking bit of singletrack just alongside.

On a crisp, sunny January morning it was hard to think of a better place to be. Cafe stop to start, foccacia and pizza in the bags for lunch then up the hill to the first drop off of the day.

Obviously with a trailers worth of bikes (every bike a different brand, 3 wheel sizes, 3 frame materials, we’re a diverse group of white western males) that hadn’t been used for a couple months there was some faffage (1 punctured tyre, 1 punctured brake hose. Not a bad score for a days riding, good guy award goes to Emile for lending his shiny new Starling out to Martin so he didn’t have to skip the rest of the day), but not too much. A few more minutes for the obligatory pees-with-a-view, can anyone remember how to wheel and who’s got a new bike and can we all bounce up and down on it to marvel at how plush fresh suspensions feel like, and we were ready to drop.

As 2020 has gone in heavy on the dry January front, the trails were running great. Dusty yet with enough winter frost glue deeper in the dirt to give grand grip. The leaf free trees let plenty of low sunlight through, sunglasses obligatory for much of the day. If you forgot that you were wearing a down jacket you could be fooled into thinking it was summer.

Maybe.

If you’re the gullible sort.

Ride down to the pick up, load up, back up, see who’s driving back down, repeat. Not quite as catchy as eat, sleep, ride repeat, but about as accurate.

Not that every down was the same. Even when repeating the trails, the introduction of the “leader can’t cut” rule lead to surprisingly carnage free free for all down the most multi optioned trails. There’s something to be said for trying to ride a trail whilst staying on someones rear wheel, and simultaneously looking where the trails goes but checking where the trail doesn’t and you should. Who said we canny multi task.

This wasn’t quite the strava cut fest you’re imagining. Above Saint Christophe is such a maze of trails that you can criss cross your way down the hill, all on a different line but all going in the same vague direction. Best to look uphill as you come into some of the junctions though, the Red Arrows ain’t got shit on some of our formations…

Not every uplift was the same either. The highest point of the day was reached by pedal power, Renault Trafic’s can only climb so much ice. Worth it for the trail but.

Basically, it was a day spent taking the piss out of each other, riding in trains at questionable safe distances whilst taking the piss out of each other, and standing about in the sunshine taking the piss out of each other. It’s the formula for a grand days biking and goes some way to explaining why the average day’s riding is so much better than the average day on snow.

Now, who’s birthday’s next…

Posted in Road trip , tagged Aosta, Pila

Something old, something new. something borrowed, something tree.

Posted on 14th November 2019

“The first sentence is the hardest to write.” Once you’ve got a beginning then the rest of the piece should follow easily. I’ve not made this up, it’s been written about here and here, and they’ve earnt way more money than me from writering.

But that first sentence was pretty easy to write, nae effort at all frankly. The issue is the next bit, the quality content.

Charlie Brooker is a bit of a hero of mine. Many years ago he wrote columns for the guardian, which were brilliant because he is a god that moves amongst us mortals. The problem was he didn’t think the content was adding much to the discussion, so stopped them. One of the best writers currently putting finger to keypad stopped writing columns because he didn’t want to add to the piles of dross out there.

Which puts the rest of us in a bit of a shitty position. Just like Candide Thovex killed the headcam with his “oneofthosedays” series, Charlie Brooker essentially killed off all opinion pieces with that opinion. If you’re not improving on what they’ve done, what are you doing?

This concept of “infinite piles of dross” got mixed with the old “an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters will eventually write Shakespeare” idea and fleshed out into Jorge Luis Borges’ book “The Library of Babel” which describes an infinite library that contains not only every 410 page book that has been written, but every 410 page combination of letters of the alphabet.

Obviously though, things in fiction never cross into real life.

Except 2019. Go to http://libraryofbabel.info/ and you’ll find the Babel Library. Every possible combination of letters, commas, spaces and full stops, all archived and waiting for you to read it. All of Shakespeare. All of Romeo and Juliet except where they just spoke to each other rather than getting rash with chemicals. All of the entries of this blog. All of the entries that will ever be written for this blog. The story of your life in the style of your favourite author. The exact details of when and how you will die. All of this exists in the library. You just need to find it.

Which is, finally, where we pull this back to biking. See, in the above not-quite-infinite example are all the greatest pieces of writing (and the possibility for some very interesting intellectual property cases) but they are damn well hidden amongst an ocean of incomprehensible drivel. Though at least we now know where the (insert newspaper that least represents your political and moral opinions here) journalists get their inspiration.

In the hills above Chamonix there is near infinite possibility for trails, but very finite number of rideable trails. It wouldn’t take too much work to write a programme to scribble lines on the map (I suspect this is how some open source mapping works…though in the novel suicidal librarians scour the bookshelves looking for the index which, as all books possible exist in the library, must be in the library. Hence said mapping may indeed be the key.) but it takes a bit more effort to find or create them on the ground.

So. Blog needs good trails to create good content. Blog doesn’t want to repeat writing about trails it’s already done. Blog has pretty much exhausted the exploration of lines on the map. Conclusion. Blog needs to get off sofa and go and make some more trails.

Being a bit lazy, I figured it would be easier to take little used existing trails and just tidy up the bits inbetween, so after a fair bit of wandering about the woods above Les Bossons I’d found enough old hunters trails, cleared away enough bits of shrub and branch and moved enough stones around to call it a trail.

It just needed ridden top to bottom.

Enter Toby who, in good late season riding form and on a day off, agreed to ride one of my “it should be a good trail” ideas.

There’s a few easy ways to get up to the Mont Blanc tunnel. From there there’s an easy way to the Chalet Cerro. From there it’s just grunt work getting you and your bike up to 1550m, the start of the trail and the (current) end of the Bosson’s glacier.

You’re going up the same way you ride down for this part, which is good as you know what you’ll have to deal with on the way down, but which is bad as you know what you’ll have… etc, etc. I assume repetition takes up a considerable part of the 10⁴⁶⁷⁷ books in the Babel Library. In the height of summer there’s a fair bit of pedestrian traffic on the trail here but outside July and August it’s fairly quiet. You’re never going that fast anyway…

We’d wanted tech, and we got tech. Sitting at the top of the trail looking at the hills had been a pleasant wee interlude, but from the tenth meter in the trail demands concentration. In Toby’s words ‘you wouldn’t want to ride it everyday’ but once in a while is good to remind you what “technical trail” really means.

Toby was riding on good form, Toby got to the last trail feature before the trail mellowed to the Chalet Cerro. Toby committed to the line. Toby committed to the crash.

The full descent would need to wait, fortunately it wasn’t going anywhere.

I was however. A few weeks guiding in Italy and a holiday later I was back in Chamonix ready to ride. By now winter made a return the the valley and the trail above Chalet Cerro was too buried to be worth the hassle. But, all this content was written and I felt the need to get something posted before the bike hibernates, who could I persuade out in the snow to finish it off?

Jesus is leaving the valley to go back to Malaga and if there’s one type of riding you don’t get in Malaga it’s snow covered trails following terminal moraine banks so he was game. The snow didn’t make the trail any easier but there’s still more grip than you think there should be so it pretty much all went as intended.

It turned out someone else had been in, seen what I’d started and run with it. The chainsaw owning trail pixie had cut out the trees that I’d had to leave to improvisation and improved riding technique and the trail is starting to wear in nicely through the more hidden parts. Flows much better now, cheers. It doesn’t make the top ten descents in valley list, but as 500m descents that start from the foot of a glacier and end by a motorway, passing almost all possible types of terrain (but only one full stop) on the way go, it’s pretty good.

The top half is pretty obvious. For the lower section, after a long traverse rightwards, look out for the second trail heading off to the right. Then just keep following the cleared trail, moved boulders, small benchcuts, occasional chainsawed fallen trees and tyre marks. Or search for “Cosmiques (fondu)” ‘cos the trail follows the melt of the line and is best finished with some IPA. The more traffic the merrier. For now.

The Library of Babel was formed complete, but the Trails of Chamonix are still evolving. There’s more building happening that ever before, which means the mental index of trails needs constant updating too. More reason to keep riding, but mibbies there’s some skiing to do first.

Confused by the title? Search the library.

Posted in Chamonix ride , tagged valley trails

Tour des Combins

Posted on 28th September 2019

Let me break the fourth wall on the way this blog works. Usually I’ve had an idea that’s been written down long before the ride happens. Sometimes the ride doesn’t go to plan and the idea doesn’t get used. Sometimes I have a better idea. As a result there’s a file on the laptop with unused stories covering subjects as diverse as “How much fucking up of the environment is considered OK*”, “How addictive is bike riding” and “How quickly did Capucin monkeys invent prostitution after being taught capitalism” (The answer to all these sort-of-questions is “very”).

I had an intro all lovely and written for this, then realised it was perfectly wrong. I like realising things.

So instead of a bit of a rant about how “Mountain Bikes” shouldn’t be called “mountain” bikes because really its “lower down the hill where the trails are interesting” bikes I’m just going to be happy about the idea of going into the hills with friends and enjoying being there**.

Because three of us went into the mountains, rode a route that we were fairly sure would be good, and had a generally grand time.

That route would be a variation on the Tour des Combins. The ‘Combins’ being the Grand Combin, one of Switzerland’s bigger hills, and the ‘variation on the Tour des’ bit is the classic Tour des Mont Blanc esque hut to hut walk with tweeks to make it betterer for bikes.

The first thing that made it betterer for bikes was Bike Verbier giving us a lift up to Bourg St Pierre to start the first climb of the day about 1000m higher than otherwise. If this seemed like a good idea at the time, it seemed like a bloody amazing idea by the time we were slogging up the final hill of the day to the Cabane Chanrion.

That’s in about 2500 meters time though, we had the initial thousand or so to go up to the Col du Mille first.

They went.

Eventually.

You go up to get down, and the down from the Col du Mille is a bit of a classic. Starting at over 2400m, you’ve got a lot of winding alpine singletrack to ride before you hit first shrubby plants then the tree line. Better, just as you’re getting to the tree line you hit one of the best sections of trail I know of. Nothing too technical, and there’s better backdrop elsewhere too, but it just hits all the right sizes of turn on just the right gradient to make something really memorable.

Down then up, well across more than up at first, but eventually up. First on tarmac to Mauvoisin, then gravel to the Mauvoisin dam, then tunnel to Lac Mauvoisin.

Aye, tunnel. With the normal valley floor trails being under 60 years of water you have to take a few km’s of tunnel along the side of the lake instead.

You canny say the riding’s not varied in the alps…

The climb keeps going up, the scenery keeps going up, the energy levels keep going down. Thoughts of missing the 18.30 feeding time at the refuge zoo keep entering my head, along with the first musings about e-bikes.

Forgive me father for I have sinned.

Turns out we needn’t have worried. As the Cabane Chanrion comes into view so does the hut guardian, stood atop a lonely peak scanning the horizon for his only 3 guests of the night.

Dinner at 7pm? Why that’ll do nicely sir.

This is pretty much where the original start to the tale fell apart. I should be talking about the trails and the riding and the differences but really, the best part was just beginning. Sitting outside in the sun(moon?)chairs watching the moon rise over the mountains and the stars get outpaced by the satellites had nothing to do with biking, we could have arrived on foot, skis or parapont and the experience would have been exactly the same. We have far more in common than which divides us I guess.

Another day with another sunrise and another litre of tea in the belly to hydrate. There are better starts to the day than a 400m singletrack descent out the front door, but not many.

There are better continuations of the morning than an 800m pedal and push to 2800m altitude, but not many.

More than the previous example however.

Passing through the Fenetre de Durand marks the literal and figurative high point of the trip, 2797m up and surrounded by high peaks and glaciers.

It actually arrives fairly easily, the hardest part of the climb by far is lower down, by the time you get to the last few km’s to the col the slope angle has eased off and the scenery cranked up to 11 to distract you even more.

Good col that.

The descent off the other side into Italy’s no bad either. Moonscape shale and deep deep turquoise lakes that are the thing of Yeti brand managers dreams. A final tech section through derailleur hungry rocks and you’re spat out into a high alpage and the start of a long balcon trail round to Etroubles. Really long. 14km or so with barely altering altitude through some of Italy’s best scenery. Bikes are good.

I’d had high hopes for the descent into Entroubles. After a summer of bike guiding where pretty much the whole point of riding is to go to places you know and have checked out before, this was going to be a dotted line on the map that I knew nothing about, could find nothing about, but that ticked all the right topographical boxes to give a classic Aosta valley singletrack descent.

It didn’t quite work that way. GPS said we were slap bang on the trail but the ground said otherwise. I’m pretty sure there was a trail there once, but I’m also pretty sure the dinosaurs were there once too. Dejectedly we kept picking our way down through open forest until a perfectly groomed trail appeared where no map said it should.

Keep following the map or strike out into the unknown?

The unknown worked out very well indeed.

The other thing that worked out very well, the trail ended in a small Italian village. Coffee time.

Caffeine is an interesting performance enhancing drug. It was also a welcome one at the start of 900m of tarmac climbing. We weren’t going quite to the top of the Grand St Bernard pass on the road, but a couple of sweaty hours later we weren’t much off it. Classic road bike cols are better done on road bikes would be my main conclusion from that.

Here Dave, on his carbon 29’er hardtail, decided that a better time would be had continuing over the col and descending by road back to Etiez. It was 5pm with 350m of hike-a-bike to the next col and a technical descent still to go. The appeal of travelling 20km without pedalling was too much… We waved Dave off, never to speak of him again. Sanny and I shouldered our bikes and started the plod to the Fenetre du Ferret.

Somehow I’ve never been to the Fenetre du Ferret before, but for a first time up there, arriving to early autumn golden hour on a perfect blue sky evening is about as good as it gets. Even with a chilly wind whistling over the rock and snow it was a happy place to be.

As we started the descent it got even happier. Some descents are memorable due to the situation, some the quality of the riding, some the sheer length of the descent. Dropping from the Fenetre du Ferret to La Fouly ticks all they boxes and more. Just a stunningly good ride in stunningly good scenery.

The ride could have continued. From La Fouly there’s the Tour du Mont Blanc trails along the valley floor, a couple of climbs can get you to some classic descents from around Champex Lac or above Orsierres, but it was getting dark and I was hungry. We hit the road and tucked for a very rapid return to Etiez, in the end the full descent, some 30km and 2000m disappeared in 80 minutes. If only all human progress could be so easy!

Cheers and hi-fives go out to Sanny and Dave for being (mostly) willing guinea pigs to the route, Alpavista, a fellow pictures and pontification rider/blogger who gives a breadcrumb trail of clues to put together over a bit of time with a map and educated guessing to help plan routes (except his pontifications are in French which does lend them a much more poetic air than I get). And Lucy and Phil at Bike Verbier who know every trail every where and are two of the best things to happen to mountain biking.

*You can enter a false email address to complete the test here and not worry about getting follow up guilt trips, the point’s more to make us think about just how much we have to change behaviour to live in a way 1 planet can support us.

**Keeping with the transparency theme, normally I get something written up and published within a few days of the ride. All this happened about 3 weeks ago but working riding my bike has got in the way of writing for free about riding my bike.

Posted in Road trip , tagged hut to hut biking, multi day trip, valais, verbier

Continuous Professional Development

Posted on 10th August 2019

Hello, it’s been a while. Missed me? Not much content here of late but it’s not you, it’s me. Not that I’ve no been riding, just that I’ve been working.

I’ve had umpteen jobs down the years. When I sat at a desk trying to find ways to pay for those walking and cycling routes politicians said Glasgow should have, I didn’t find myself writing EU funding applications for infrastructure projects for fun at the weekend. Yet, with bike guiding, first chance you get to rest your calloused hands and you head off to try ride some trails you’ve never ridden before, and not get paid for it.

It all gets chalked up in the log book I guess.

Anyways, this is why on my week off I found myself hanging out with friends riding new trails in the Tarentaise.

And hanging out with friends riding new trails in the Valais.

And hanging out with friends riding new trails in Beaufortain.

This blog is about the last of those.

Beaufortain is the area you’ve not heard of. Unless you race ski-mo. Or eat a lot of cheese. Cows are definitely priority #1 in this area. Fortunately though, there’s not much number 2 (except courtesy of priority number 1 alas) so bikes are encouraged as a way to supplement the cheese-and-skiing financial model that so much of the alps seems to survive on. Yay for generous unemployment benefit.

So how do VTT get encouraged to join the vache? Lots of way-marked trails, some pumptracks, cheap chairlifts and free buses. Pretty good eh.

With a forecast as all over the place as a Prime Ministerial haircut, we met at noon. Well, we planned to. Everyone was late. It started raining, we put our jackets on, it stopped raining, and that was the weather fixed for the day. You learn these tricks at guide school.

Time to ride. Chris was meeting us down in Beaufort. There’s a free bus from Beaufort back up to Les Saises. Les Saisies is about 900 meters above Beaufort. You can see where this is going.

The “Adret’naline” (or something like that, trail building is stronger than trail naming out here) trail from Les Saisies to Beaufort is pretty good. The start’s a bit meh but once into the woods things start going downhill in a good way. As both Martin and me had spent the morning watching Val di Sole practice highlights we weren’t in the mood to be stopping for photos so you’ll just have to take our word for it, but as free uplifted trails go, hard to beat.

Next up, main course. We’d met Chris in Beaufort, had some quiche, got on a bus, headed up to Mont Bisanne (top tip, stay on the bus after the Les Saisies stop, you get a bit more vertical for free. Or buy a ticket for the chairlift if pedalling 150m of vert doesn’t appeal) and looked at the views.

The “Dev’Albertville” trail’s been kicking about my to do list for a few years now, so it was grand to finally get onto it. It starts a wee bit boringly with some fireroad and a bit of climbing, but once on the ridge proper, dropping down to Albertville 1600m below, it’s worth the effort. Plenty single track, some switchbacks but nowt too tight, bitta tech, bitta fast stuff, there’s even a cracking handbuilt berm-berm-berm-kicker-berm-berm-repeat section towards the end.

There’s also a couple of mid descent climbs, some tarmac and a badly signposted posh housing estate to negotiate, but if you can’t see past those flies to enjoy your ointment, well, this analogy’s not for you frankly.

Then, more buses. Not free, but €5 to get you and your bike from Albertville back to Beaufort then Les Saises again doesn’t seem too harsh to me, just mibbies bring something to help secure your bike with….

Due to not really reading the bus times in much detail, it was now 7.15 pm and time to head home, but with a just a wee bit more (ok, any) planning you could link up a lot of good trails here with the buses, returning to the fine cafes of Beaufort on most every lap. Something for the next week off I guess.

Posted in Road trip , tagged beaufort, enduro, les saisies

Finale / Lads lads lads

Posted on 20th May 2019

It’s been a while since I’ve been down to Finale, but as the weather in Chamonix has decided to skip spring, and summer, to go directly to late autumn, it seemed a good way to escape the snow. Hence, lads, lads, lads go to Finale.

We looked at going elsewhere, San Remo, Molini, Sospel. But Finale’s just so easy. It’s easy to find out about the new trails, it’s easy to get around, easy to get somewhere nice to stay, to get pizza and glelato and coffee.

There’s quite a few folk saying that Finale’s a bit played out, there’s no secret trails no more, everything’s blown out and rutted. Aye, mibbies, but that’s half of what I love about the place. Smooth trails are easy to ride fast. Holding on through the ruts and craters of umpteen years abuse really makes you appreciate how fast you’re moving.

And this is important. Presence, being acutely aware of the moment, the here and now, is a skill we’re losing. If you’re flicking between driving a car, chatting to the passengers and texting on the phone, none of the above are getting your full attention. Our ancient monkey selves had to make sure that lump in the bushes wasn’t about to jump on you as you tried to dig out a particularly tasty looking potato, and if it did, that you got up the tree quick enough. Plowing through the chunder on Little Champery, either you’re in the moment or you’re in hospital. It’s a steep relearning curve to get those primate synapses firing, and if you don’t, you might miss out on the potato at aperitivo.

In fairness, things have changed a lot since my first visit in 2013. Back then trail info was hard to come by, my main technique was using old Superenduro race cards and riding to the trail heads then following the Minion traces. Like we used to do anywhere new really. Now you just fire up Trailforks and check the GPX trace. I do miss some of those days, you could have hours of fun directly above the town just pedalling up and riding down fairly fresh trails with no real idea where you were going. But you can’t deny that the network that’s available now is way better. And it has Little Champery, which is blown out and rutted and well good.

Not everything’s blown out either. Ingineri from below NATO for example. Raced in 2015, it was good then but even more fun now to ride than race, so many rises into bends where the bike gets set light as you’re about to turn in. So many corners with a little shimmy left before the right encouraging the scandi flick. And so much variety too!

Din gets in on the act too. We’d headed for Toboggan. Toboggan did not look like a good idea. A few trees down I can handle, but when you can’t see the trail for the wood, nah. Explains why the guided groups were being dropped 1/2 way along the trail. So we rode Rollercoaster instead. I’d not ridden here since 2017 when it was a bit greasy from overnight rain and it was one of my first rides back from injury.What a difference a more or less working body and a load more grip makes! The trail swoops. That’s ‘woop’ sandwiched between two sets of curves. The trail swoops.

In and out of natural rolls in the terrain, around natural features that seem perfectly placed for the flow. And a wee bit of braking bump chunder here and there too, just to keep you on your toes.

There’s another way to get round the feeling that some of the trails are a bit past their best. Go further afield.

Backcountry Finale’s Luca took us by the hand and bundled us into a Pajero then, after shoogling us about on a variety of ever rougher and narrower 4×4 tracks, proceeded to throw us down all manner of trail we’d never have ridden otherwise. Partly because they’re a bit hard to find, but mostly because the logistics would be a complete nightmare and we’d have taken 2 days to ride the same using the knotted pipe-cleaners I call legs to pedal about with.

That and it had pissed it down the night before, so Luca mixed and matched trails. Maybe we missed out on some gems early in the day, but it meant we didn’t freeze and get covered in mud. And Lorne and I got let loose on Little Champery in the primest grip I’ve ever ridden it in, so that was nice.

Finale’s one of the economic models that gets chucked on the table when riders are trying to argue the financial case for building trails, or even just not getting banned from the trails. Riding around Mallare, the new frontier for Finale trails, with Luca was trickle down economics in action, where 11 riders and a few guides and drivers arrived at the door of the hamlet restaurant for a slap up feed.

It might cost more than a simple 10 euro shuttle up to Din or NATO, but you’re definitely getting your dollars worth. Cheers to Luca and Alessandro for the work they’ve put into helping open a new area of riding as well as their shuttling and guiding, and cheers too to the Swiss crew we were riding with for putting up with our complete lack of German.

The bike scene in Finale has changed in the last few years, but then the bike scene as changed everywhere. Nostalgia might not have killed anyone recently. Actually it’s not killed anyone for a century, the last record of it as cause of death is for an American soldier in 1918. I digress, as usual. Finale’s trails are evolving, so you can enjoy the change or stop going. We’ll be back.

Posted in Road trip , tagged Finale Ligure

Anything for an easy life.

Posted on 17th April 2019

Do you want it all, and do you want it now? Genuine achievement just takes so damn long and so much effort. Wouldn’t it be easier just to want something then get it with out all the hard work inbetween?

Well, aye, it would. So rather than put the long miles in getting ourselves back to biking fitness and riding our way into some sort of form, we’ve just looked at where we can hop on the lift and get dropped off at the top of the hill instead.

First stop. Pila.

Through the tunnel, past the open border and into Italy. Pila should be 45 minutes drive from Chamonix, but for some reason every trip there involves getting lost in the maze of streets surrounding the lift station. We got there in the end. Obviously. There wouldn’t be a post here if we were still trying to achieve escape velocity from the city.

For the enormous outlay of 3 euros, you and your bike can be lifted up 800m to the Les Fleurs station. For the cost of a cappuccino more you can go 400m higher to the Pila ski area, which we did on our first lap then didn’t bother with afterwards. The first few hundred meters of the trails are still under snow and really not worth the hassle.

Back to Les Fleurs and a short ride/push up the hill outside the lift station, followed by a couple minutes coast along the road, gets you to the main Pila Bike Park home run. Keep going along the road and you’ll find walking trails dropping down to your left which deliver varying degrees of interest, varying on your early season tolerance to damp greasy rocks…

The park trails are in pretty good condition just now. A few braking bumps but nothing terrible. A couple trees down but easy passed. No dust but, wait, what!?! No dust is a first for all of us in Pila.

Next day next venue. Chamonix to Verbier is less distance yet longer time driving than the trip to Pila, but still easy under the hour to Le Chable. Like Pila you usually go skiing by parking in a huge valley base car park, taking a lift to the ski area, then another lift to the skiing. Hence, the bikers get to use that first stage lift then drop back down to the valley floor. Simples.

Unlike Pila, the lift doesn’t cost 3 euros a go. But if you’ve got a Chamonix season pass you can use one of your wee free vouchers. Free. How often do you hear that in Switzerland?

There is still a wee bit of snow on some of the highest trails from Verbier town, so we were dropping down a couple hundred meters on road first before traversing onto some summer guiding favourites. Nuthouse, Church, Comfort Zone. Grand to be back out on the trails I worked on last year with the rest of the Bike Verbier crew, even if we probably spent more time standing in the sun chatting than riding. Surely all these games are just about the people not the sport itself?

Where else? Les Arcs ticks the valley floor base / ski area shuttle lift box, and it’s open until 28th April. Then there’s La Saleve. Open all year (well, except when they’re fixing it, what is it with France and broken telepheriques?) and rumour has it there’s been lots of digging going on there.

In an ideal piece of narrative one of these would form the third tangent of the triptych, neatly tying three countries worth of riding together and letting me make all sorts of subtext about different places achieving the same thing. This isn’t the ideal though. The weather wasn’t looking so inspiring and I kinda wanted to go skiing still and there’s work to be done around the flat and, and, and. Honestly, why is everything so much effort?

Posted in Road trip , tagged Aosta, Lift opening, Pila, verbier

Ccccchanges: Lift openings 2019

Posted on 11th April 2019

Another winter has passed, another few months of snow is melting away, another post trying to collate all the lift opening dates for the summer gets cobbled together.

This year the theme is “oops, that lift’s broken as well”. Yes, not been a great year for Compagnie du Mont Blanc. Starting with the multiple cable failures on the Aiguille du Midi cash cow/telecabine, there’s also been problems with the Planpraz telecabine, Col Cornu chairlift, Bochard telecabine, Grands Montets telecabine, and the Charamillon telecabine.

How this pans out for summer MTB action is:

Grands Montets. After the slightly careless burning to the ground of the mid station in October 2018, current chat on opening is 2021. The Plan Joran telecabine is open this summer, but whether they let dirty bikers into their shiny new(ish) cable car is another question.

Brevent. The issue with Planpraz is apparently fixed, but we’ve heard that before in Chamonix this year. And there’s absolutely nothing to worry about for the Brevent top station, 100% no issues with that at all and no chance of short notice closures for repairs…

Flegere. The main gondola up from the valley floor has come to the end of its life, so is getting removed and replaced this summer. You can traverse to Flegere from Brevent easier than Brevent to Flegere, so that’s good news. Assuming the Planpraz lift doesn’t break again. Less good is the news that all the trails under the cables will be closed until 30th November for the works.

Le Tour. The Charamillon telecabine is overdue replacement but, due to assorted local issues, this keeps getting knocked back. Currently looking like 2020, but who knows. If it breaks then access from Vallorcine is easy enough and it’s likely the opening dates of the Vallorcine lift will be extended to accommodate this.

Train. The train, or year round uplift as we otherwise know it, isn’t running between Le Fayet and Chamonix from 1st April to 21st June. The bus replacement service doesn’t take bikes. Or often dogs.

It’s not all bad news. A fairly average winter for snowfall means that the trails should be snow clear nice and early this summer, and you can already play bike off the lifts at Pila, Verbier and Les Arcs. Woop, etc.

Chamonix opening dates (as ever, usual CdMB caveats apply, check montblancnaturalresort.com for the latest):

Bellevue: 8th June – 22nd September
Le Tour: 8th June – 22nd September
Prarion: 8th June – 16th September
Brevent: 8th June – 15th September (Then Planpraz only 19th October – 3rd November)
Tramway du Mont Blanc: 15th June – 22nd September
Grands Montets: 15th June – 1st September
Vallorcine: 29th June – 1st September
Flegere: Closed to be made into a 10 person telecabine

There’s more to the Alps than Chamonix, what other dates are there:

La Thuile: 29th June – 1st September (is an educated guess, as ever, dates not up, but that’s the usual) lathuile.it/en/bike
Megeve: 21st June – 15th September. A mix of the Jaillet, Mont d’Arbois, Rochebrune and Petite Fontaine lifts opening dates. If you want the all open it’s July and August, more details at: lesportesdumontblanc.fr
St Gervais: Bettex and the alps’ best flow track, open 28th June to 1st September ete.ski-saintgervais.com
Les Contamines: Simple to navigate and with all the information for the coming year displayed, other areas take note. Please! 29th June – 1st September lescontamines.net
Grand Massif: Assorted (very assorted) start and finish times across the area, and they’re not online yet, but based on past seasons between 15th June – 1st September summer.grand-massif.com/mountain-biking
Pila: On the ball this year, website all updated and with 2019 dates on it already! 22nd June – 9th September pila.it/en/summer-season/
Portes du Soleil: 22nd June – 8th September for the most part, with Les Gets open at weekends 30th May to 16th June. Website a bit slow on info this year, so here’s just the Les Gets bit, you can work out the rest. lesgets.com/envie-de/vtt/tarifs-et-horaires
Verbier: Weekends & Holidaydays only from 8th June then all the days from 1st July– 27th October verbierbikepark.ch/horaires_fr

CCcchanges? Aye, so going with the old adage “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, guide” I joined the ranks of the French qualified MTB guides this winter, so I can now work anywhere in Europe that’ll accept my burgundy passport. At some point soon I’ll have details and prices up so you can pay for the pleasure of riding with me instead of just reading about it for free (*Edit, that’ll be the details you need here: Alpine Flow MTB ). I’ve already got a wheen of interesting work planned, so I’m pretty excited really.

Dinnay fret, there’ll still be assorted content popping up here, it just might be increasingly tenuously linked to Chamonix. The Chamonix bit of the title seemed like such a good idea all those years ago. So did lumberjack shirts and baggy baggy jeans though, so perhaps looking backwards and harking to bygone eras isn’t the best idea.

This blog isn’t the only bit of bike related content I’ve done this year. Airdrop have brought out a new bike. As Airdrop is a company that doesn’t do things the normal way, Ed thought it would be good to put some content up on their website about their now superseded Edit V2, showing it having been abused and explaining why you shouldn’t buy one of their new bikes. Which is yet another reason to like what Ed and James are doing. So, here’s a wee link to the bit I wrote explaining why I like my Edit so much. And it’s got a grand title photo that makes me look way more gnar than I am.

Cheers Lorne and Toby for the photos, and welcome back to bike season then everyone, I’m off for a ski.

Posted in Trail conditions , tagged Lift opening

How to ride a bike in Chamonix.

Posted on 3rd December 2018

“There’s no such thing as a new idea”. A phrase well kent in magazine journalism. You pretty quickly wind through the various permutations of articles you can write about bikes and, unless you are a genuinely talented journalist (and if you are, then the $ ain’t in blethering ’bout bikes), you start repeating yourself.

Even this intro is a repeat of an intro I used in 2014 to explain why I was repeating myself.

To save it getting too meta, I’m not going to repeat the rest of that article, instead I’m going to spear off on a new well trodden tangent.

The ‘how to’ article.

At least this one is covering newish ground. I don’t think anyone’s written a how to go play bike in Chamonix piece before. So, without further ado (as in I’m boring even myself now), here is all the info you wanted to know but couldn’t find on the crime-against-marketing that is the compagnie du mont blanc website.

Lifts.

These are the lifts you can take your bike on, you can find roughly when they are open here.

Le Tour/ Vallorcine: Lift info here Mellow angled flowy riding on the whole, with some great stuff down into Switzerland

Grands Montets: Lift info here Limited riding, but some good trails worth a look none the less. Limited is a relative term in Chamonix after all. A wee fly in the ointment. The GM lift burnt down in autumn 2018 and is not scheduled to be rebuilt until 2020 or later. We wait with baited breath to see if the Plan Joran lift opens for bikes….

Flegere: Lift info here If you don’t like rocks, tech, or big views you’re unlikely to enjoy Flegere.

Brevent: Lift info here There is a LOT of riding from Brevent, but it’s all on the steeper, more technical side of things.

Les Houches: Lift info here The much overlooked, underappreciated hotspot of Chamonix biking. Huge amounts of trails with more being added all the time and also the gateway to the larger Portes du Mont Blanc area.

Tramway du Mont Blanc: Lift info here 100 year old lift infrastructure that works great for bikes, getting you back into the Chamonix valley

Then, not actually Chamonix, but covered by the “unlimited” Chamonix lift pass as well as the local lift passes you have:

Mont d’Arbois Petite Fontaine & Rochebrune: Lift info here The Portes du Mont Blanc are a bit like the whole Les Gets/Morzine area, but without any people and only a couple of purpose built trails.

Jaillet: Lift info here Riding out of Megeve, and with a maze of great trails underneath it.

Bettex St Gervais: Lift info here Home to one of the best greeny/blue flow trails in the alps.

Les Contamines: Lift info here Hidden away at the top of a long dark valley, doesn’t get the attention it deserves from aficionados of lift accessed big mountain scenery riding.

Lift Passes.

So you know what lifts you can use, but what lifts can you afford to use? In 2018 you had 3 choices.

1) 22.00 euro VTT day pass which gives you a day unlimited use of the lifts at Le Tour OR Les Houches OR Grands Montets (except Grands Montets was closed to bikes for 2018, then burnt down, so really just the first 2 choices).

2) 32.50 euro gives you all of the above on the same day, but you need to get between the areas yourself.

3) 65.00 euro everything pass which means you can use all the lifts listed above, and the non bike accessible lifts too, so also the Midi etc. If you’re fitting bikes around tourism then this pass is for sure the best bet, and if you’re out for a week then the full area summer pass is actually pretty good value at 126 euro for 6 days, and worth getting for the access to the Tramway Mont Blanc and Portes du Mont Blanc region alone.

The lift pass prices page is hidden on the CdMB website here. Another option if you’re riding here a lot during the summer is the rapidcard, which is a one off purchase of 25 to 50 euro for the card, then every day you use it is much reduced compared to the normal daypass price, with the added advantage of covering the lifts that aren’t on the VTT pass so you can easily ride the Brevent/Flegere/Tramway lifts without a fight at the ticket desk….

If on the off chance you’ve accidentally gone to Chamonix for a full season, you’ll probably want a full season pass. Info for that is actively hidden on the CdMB site, it’s actually part of the residency test to work out how to buy the pass. Here’s the start of a breadcrumb trail for anyone who think’s I’m joking.

Trails.

There are some restrictions on where and when you can ride a bike in Chamonix and surrounds, but it’s really not that hard, you just need to ask yourself one question: Is it July / August or not?

No- then you can ride anywhere that isn’t the Aiguille Rouge National Park. The park is well marked on the IGN maps and with little posts on every trail that goes over the park boundary. Simples.

Yes-, then Arrete du Marie 008576/2018 comes into force and you can only ride those listed tracks in the valley. This isn’t really an issue. All those other trails are covered in walkers and trail runners and you canny get any flow at all. At either end of the valley, Les Houches and Le Tour, you have some different rules. Les Houches only limits bikes on the “Grand Sentiers”, so the GR5/Tour du Mont Blanc trail from Bellevue. Fine, just use the recently resurrected DH track. Le Tour has the same limits on the Chamonix side, but the Vallorcine side is a different commune, so no stoppage, and the rest of area accessed from the lifts is in Switzerland where again, bikes are allowed on all the trails as long as you give way to walkers and don’t damage the trails. Saying that, the Tour du Mont Blanc route from Tete du Balme round to Trient has an unofficial ban (think like the voluntary Snowdon ban) during the busy periods of the summer. Fortunately it’s also not the best, or even second best trail round there, so it’s no great hardship to miss it out during July and August.

If all that’s too much hassle to deal with, you could always just hire a guide: Alpineflowmtb, guiding you to your new best trail ever.

Trail etiquette. Guess what. You ain’t that important. The town, authorities, lift company, none of them really give a shit whether you come here to bike or not. The biking euro is useful, but compared to the money brought in by walkers, trail runners, alpinistes and skiers… it’s nothing. So if one user group is going to get banned, it’ll be bikes.

Simply put, we are worth the least to the valley. So we kinda have to play nice and not give anyone the excuse to extend any of the existing restrictions. For 99% of the folks biking in Chamonix, this isn’t a problem but there’s always someone who doesn’t quite get it. A refresher if you need it; Say hello (or bonjour, salut, ciao, whatever you’re comfy with), smile, make eye contact, slow down when passing other trail users, slow down to a stop at the side of the trail if it’s narrow, don’t skid every. damn. corner, don’t make cut lines. And some of you really won’t like this but outside of the bike parks, maybe don’t wear a full face helmet. If you’re riding quick enough to think you need the extra protection, you’re probably going too fast for a shared use trail. If you are worried about the trail being too technical and you think you’ll be crashing lots on the way down, perhaps an easier trail will be more fun for you, and most folks walk at least one section on a long descent. A full face lidded, goggle wearing rider barreling down the trail is pretty intimidating and freaks folk out. But, if folks can see your face and make eye contact, conflict is way less likely. Almost everyone you meet is going to be friendly and encouraging, so please don’t give the 1% any more ammunition than they can already make up.

Or to summarise: Be nice, say hi. Don’t be a dick.

Public Transport.

Sometimes you want to take your mode of transport onto another mode of transport. In the Chamonix valley you can use both bus and train with the bike. The bike buses that ran from 23rd June to 2nd September in 2018 (similar dates each year) and are in practice free (best carry your carte d’hote) and take you from the town centre to the lifts at Prarion and Le Tour. You can also fit up to 5 bikes on the trains, or considerably more if no one is being a jobsworth, but don’t count on that. The train is free between Servoz and Vallorcine with your Carte d’hote, you have to pay for it from Le Fayet up to Chamonix or from Vallorcine onwards to Switzerland. You can check the train times here.

What’s a carte d’hote I hear you ask? Well, when you stay in a chalet/airbnb/hotel/campsite/whatever, the proprietor will charge you “tax de sejour” or a day tax for being a tourist in the valley. Part of what this tax gets you is a business card sized, umm, card which is for free transport in the valley. If you don’t get given this either your accommodation provider has forgotten, is cheating you out of money, or is not paying tax. Either ways, you should get a card. If you’re staying with friends the tourist info office will happily sell you a card for about the cost of 1 train journey, so it’s a fairly simple cost/benefit analysis to make.

Bike hire and repairs.

Sometime you break your bike and it can be fixed, sometimes it can’t, sometimes that super lightweight rigid singlespeed fat bike just ain’t gonna cut the mustard, sometimes you decide you want an e-bike. All and more of these issues can be dealt with at the following places: Slash, Zero-G, Legend CHX, Echobase

Other stuff.

What is the best bike to ride in Chamonix? Any bike you want really, but the Airdrop Edit is hard to beat… DH focused geometry without being a DH bike, 150mm travel at the back with a bit more at the front, solid reliable build but more than capable of going up the hill under your power too.

I’ve finished riding, where do we toast a successful day shredding the gnar? Anywhere that sells Sapaudia beer. Obviously. Which just happens to be Bighorn, Le Vert and Beckett & Wilde, with more to come…

Yeah, pretty blatant, but Airdrop and Sapaudia have both believed in me and this blog enough to help out when they have plenty of other things to be cracking on with (like making excellent bikes and fine ales), and that in turn is helping you out, so why not support them a bit too for the help you’ve just got.

Posted in Chamonix ride, Trail conditions , tagged bike ban, Lift opening

Hunting trails

Posted on 1st November 2018

A mission statement is a short definition of an organisations purpose, a phrase to focus and direct the activities of the group. One example is the Starship Enterprise’s “To explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no man has gone before!” though the last bit was more about Captain James T Kirk’s efforts at interspecies relations than the attempts to be an interstellar UN. Another example is the US army’s: “The U.S. Army’s mission is to fight and win our Nation’s wars by providing prompt, sustained land dominance across the full range of military operations and spectrum of conflict in support of combatant commanders.” which has evolved somewhat from the traditional Hummer playlist that liberated Baghdad (and suggested some folks don’t quite listen hard enough to lyrics…).

The Chamonix Bike Blog is neither a business, the worlds largest military force nor a fictional spaceship, so doesn’t need a mission statement. If it was though, I guess the closest it’s got is to encourage cyclists to try trails other than the main honeypot routes in the valley, and for everyone to be nice to each other.

In the name of a non existant mission statement, I’ve gone and ridden pure hunners of amazing trails then written something about a few of them here to encourage y’all to go give them a go too.

So if I said that a couple weeks ago, before the snows came, I went for a ride with Oli and Luke down by Sallanches and found a proper cracker of a 1300m descent, you’d expect that I’d now give some clues about where it is and how to go ride it.

Well, I’m not. I’m going to put up a load of photos to make you feel like you really missed out, give a wee bit of an explanation why, then go off on a tangent.

So why am I not saying where it is? About 5 years ago I rode this trail with Tom “Chamonix Bike Book” Wilson North. It wasn’t a complete success, but the terrain hinted at something better so I started looked about the map and saw another promising looking line. Searching through the interwebz I found a tiny amount of information about walking and biking the trail, all of which suggested it was too technical to be worth doing. Problem is, one persons technical is another person’s flowtrail…. With a relatively low expectation for success and plenty other things to try less than 30 mins from the front door, it remained on the ‘to do’ list for about 5 years.

Eventually, opportunities aligned and we said sod it, lets gie it a go. There were a few navigation points on the way down and the occasional uncertainty that we were on the right line, but nothing that can’t be dealt with if you’re an IML or spend winters doing ski lines like these.

The trail certainly wasn’t for everyone, but there were only 3 short steps all of us chose to walk. A few tweeks of alignment and it could be a classic.

That’s not the point I’m going for though. Because the thing is, we all enjoyed it far far more for not really knowing if this was going to work out. For not knowing if at any moment the good was going to end and we’d be walking the rest of the way to the valley floor. And I don’t want to take that enjoyment away from anyone else. So if you know the trail, you’ll recognise it here, but if you don’t you won’t, so you’re still going to have to go and see if the line YOU think is going to work out will.

Then there’s the other thing.

We rode this trail on a Wednesday. Really, we could only ride this trail on a Wednesday or a Friday. Between 9th September and 20th January the Haute Savoie is in hunting season and these are the only 2 days hunting is forbidden. As the trail is deep in the woods, little frequented, yet easy enough to access if you have a car, it’s a fair assumption there will be hunters in the area. And nobody wants to get shot.

A lot of people would say we’re being a touch paranoid, but a 34 year old mountain biker was shot dead on the Super Morzine trails by a 22 year old hunter earlier in October. He was the 4th person to be killed in France due to a hunt since June 1st this year. Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you.

The investigation into the death is ongoing however some of the details are becoming clearer. Le Dauphine has provided the best information, you can read it in French here: https://www.ledauphine.com/haute-savoie/2018/10/16/vetetiste-tue-par-un-chasseur-pour-le-procureur-de-la-republique-la-visibilite-etait-totale-haute-savoie-montriond , a rough summary of what’s been written would be: The 8 hunters were in a line parallel with the trail the cyclist was riding, roughly 40 meters from the trail, and had clear visibility. The cyclist was wearing a bright coloured t-shirt and coloured bike and helmet. The round was on an upward trajectory when it hit the cyclist, the hunters should have been shooting towards the ground.

Hard to mistake him for a boar. And it’s not like he was the first non hunter to be killed either, there are legion stories of innocent folks getting shot.

So you want to go play outdoor between September and January but don’t want to get shot? Advice to walkers, runners and cyclists during hunting periods includes to carry a bell and wear bright colours. And we do, I’ve got lovely pair of fluorescent orange Fox shorts that come out at this time of year. Except the dead mountainbiker was wearing bright colours and on a bright coloured bike when he was shot. Also, much like it’s the cyclists responsibility to not run over the walkers, I kinda feel the onus should be on the hunter to not shoot a human, rather than the human to dress up like a christmas tree.

There are two ways to go hunting in France, a day license or an annual hunting permit. The annual permit costs 447 euro or 150 euro if you only want to kill things in your own department. Not bad compared to buying a summer lift pass. You don’t just buy the license anymore though, following the high accident rates pre 2000 you’re required to sit an exam to get it. Here’s an anglophone’s experience.

Before you start thinking that sounds quite complicated, it’s a license to kill things. With a gun. Compare that to the challenge of sitting a driving license theory and practical exam.

The good news is that deaths are decreasing. In 2002 hunters managed to kill 40 people, which is verging on humans being a legitimate form of game, last year they had that down to ‘only’ 13. The bad news is that November is historically the worst month for deaths. So don’t put the hi vis away quite yet.

So maybe it’s time for a bit more regulation? The hunting lobby is strong in France (what is it with guns and government?) there’s apparently 1.12 million hunters in France (down from 1.5m in 2000). In 2017, 2,780,000 bikes were sold in France (and you can look at the live selling rate here). I think cyclists outnumber hunters. And dinnay forget the walkers, trailrunners, mushroom hunters, dog owners, horse riders….. So I’m not convinced that hunters are that strong in number, just very very vocal (kinda like the NRA). Mibbies it’s time we were a wee bit more vocal.

The purpose of all this isn’t to say hunting should be banned. We have to accept that simply by existing all organisms have a negative and positive influence on the other organisms in the vicinity. We might try to minimize the negative, but even Buddha accidentally stands on an insect every so often. Hunters have just as much right to be in the hills as mountain bikers, or runners, or any other group, but the current rules of society say that no group has the right to go about killing people, and only one of these groups regularly does.

Again, I’m not saying hunting should be banned, just that perhaps there should be a zero tolerance approach to alcohol, one of the weekend days can be a no hunting day, maybe ban shooting over the line of trails within 1km, the calibre and power of the guns could be limited to reduce the range of stray bullets and the damage they can do at a distance (of course, this means you need to get closer to the prey, but then I keep hearing that hunting is about skill and stealth not wantonly blasting away at the undergrowth, so surely this shouldn’t be an issue for all the true hunters).

Before that happens, here’s some useful links to help:

CHASSECO. Kinda a one stop shop for finding out where hunters can hunt and on what days. Quite handy. And also available as an app should you already be cycling and trying to avoid the bullets: http://chasseco.fr/site.html#RECHERCHE

If you want to know what dates the hunts are on, and which animal you really shouldn’t look like, here’s the info: https://www.chasseurs74.fr/reglementation-chasse-haute-savoie

In summary; hunting trails good, hunting trail users bad.

Posted in Trail conditions , tagged Arve valley, Flaine

Verbs

Posted on 22nd October 2018

Verbs, as Massive Attack inform us (when oh when will they do a Sesame Street co-lab?), are ‘doing’ words, so this episode we are doing Verbier. Chamonix’s richer, better schooled, better looking (but not quite as talented….), cousin.

There’s a fair bit of winter rivalry twixt the two as to which is the better resort, with the Chamonix folks laughing at what Verbier calls “extreme”, the Bec du Rosses is just a fun wee ski out for us, whilst the Verbier crews get confused why Chamonerds take all they ropes and harnesses and crap out with them in their rucsac and just backflip over the problem whiles we’re still setting the abseil anchor or working out which foot to put the crampon on first.

Truth telt, both places are grand and, being an easy 50 minutes drive apart*, worth going to each of them.

Plus I’ve spent this summer working in Verbier, so it’s not like I’ve spent lots of time learning the trails there or anything.

Starting with the basics, the Verbier bikepark is mostly below the Verbier – Ruinettes lift, but there’s also bikes only trails over by the Savoleyres lift. A bikepark pass will set you back 31chf to 37chf and let you play on the Le Chable-Verbier-Ruinettes gondola, the La Chaux Express and the La Tzoumaz / Savoleyres gondolas which link Verbier and La Tzoumaz via Savoleyres.

In addition to the bikes only bikepark trails, there’s a wheen of “enduro” trails. Or trails as they’re otherwise known. If there isn’t a no bikes sign at the start then they’re generally well ridden. If there is a no bikes sign at the start, then riding them will cause all manner of issues for everyone else when it comes to bike access and general trail advocacy so best stick to the trails you can ride, it’s not like there’s a shortage of them.

If you stump up the extra few chf for the full 4 valleys lift pass then a whole world of possibilities opens up, kinda like how the Megeve/Les Contamines/St Gervais addition to Chamonix’s pass works. But you’d really need a guide for that…

Anyways, work is work and play is play. Lucky for me a few Chamonix friends have made the trip over when I’m not working at showing people around so I can spend my day off showing people around. It’d be a pretty dull bit of content if I just listed off trail names and descriptions for every trail we rode, but there are a few stand outs.

Margaret Thatcher. If you know where to start, and you know to go far enough right, maybe you can find: Margaret Thatcher. It sits in that liminal zone between legitimate and not legitimate trail. There’s no sign at the start telling you not to ride it, but that’s mostly because not many people know the trail’s there. So I’m not telling.

It could be in Innerleithen though.

After a slightly out of character start through rocks and moorland, Maggie plumets through coniferous forest. The trail constantly evolves as parts get too worn out so new lines appear through the fresh loam and, of course, fresh roots. It gets steep too, silly steep in places, yet somehow the dirt is just good enough and the corners just rutted enough that you can slip and slide and bounce your way down and jjuuuussssstt get away with it. And if you don’t the undergrowth is pretty forgiving. Talking of corners, unlike the Iron Lady, this trail IS for turning. There’s not many points where you go in a straight line for more than a few meters.

Chez Danny. There’re two very similar trails out on riders left of the bikepark, Chaz Danny and Nuthouse. I’m not sure which is better really. They both share the same excellent traverse over the alpages away from the park trails which sees you hopping and skipping through the grass like a Von Trapp. Nuthouse does have a better top to bottom flow, Chaz Danny kinda abruptly ends about 2/3rds of the way down the hill. But then, Nuthouse needs a bit of a pedal to get into it whilst Chez Danny is fully up to speed just a few meters in. I’ll go with Chez Danny because I really like corners, and Chez Danny is all about the corners. There’s a bit of straight to start with, and a few more on the lower section, but otherwise you’re either setting up for a corner, executing a corner, or exiting a corner for many hundreds of meters of vertical. A good thing. Unless it’s wet in which case there is no traction worth talking about and you can remove the ‘set up’ and ‘exit’ parts of the above description and replace it with ‘sideways’ after executing a corner.

Wouaiy. Which is the noise you make quite a lot of the time on the way down. Bike Park isn’t the greatest thing about Verbier, but that doesn’t mean there’s not some great bike park. Best started from Fontanet on the Rodze trail where you can get your eye in on the upper jumps framed by, if you’ve been lucky with the weather, one of the better backdrops of any park in the world. In an unusual twist for a European bike park, the jumps are all of a fairly similar size too, so if you get the first few, you should get the rest. Ish. It’s not Canada ey.

Over the whoops (what exactly are you meant to do with whoops? I really don’t get them) and through the wooden arch into Woohai proper (you could also get here straight from Ruinettes, but where’s the fun in that?) At first it’s a lot of tight left, right, left, right, left, repeat corners, with the odd wee gap jump thrown in for measure. As it’s a bike park you don’t feel quite so bad about throwing some shapes to get round the corners, but I’m not sure I’d say that if I worked on the park maintenance team.

As the angle of the terrain slackens off so can your braking fingers and you enter the best section. Fast, diving around the trees. Big well built berms throw you round the corners and little lips dotted around the trail let you gap over almost everything you could want to, making a root infested trail feel as smooth as tarmac when you get it right.

In Verbier it never stays mellow for long though, soon enough you’re hanging off the back of the bike and chucking it round the turns again. And then you’re dumped out onto fire road faced with a choice. Step up and drop into the black final section of obligatory gap drops and tech rocks. Fun, but not for those of a nervous disposition, or. Down the fire road for a bit to the excellent last red section; deep berms, with the end of the last overlapping the start of the next, just as it should be really, to let you proper pop from corner to corner. One of those trails that massages your ego and fools you into thinking you’re a far better rider than you are. Which means it’s time to get back on the lift, leave the park, and go ride….

Vertigo. Which isn’t that grand a name for the trail as it’s not really that exposed and Hitchcock hasn’t appeared for his cameo on the trail. Or not yet anyways. The name is immaterial. The pedal round from the bike park round La Chaux with the grand views of the Grand Combin in front of you nicely whets the appetite. The appetizer of the techy traverse from the gravel road to the start of the trail does just that. By the time you start to roll in over the undulating alpage you are definitely ready for the main course.

A shame then that the first bite is a little soured by the stravafication of the initial turns. Or lack of turns due to the straight lining trench that runs through them. No matter, the bike park crew are apparently going to return this to its former glory soon, and you’re into the woods and all manner of trail taste sensation before you know it anyways.

Vertigo eases you in gently, the trail swoops and flows through the forest for the first half, occasional flashes of the drop appear through the trees but mostly you’d never know how ridiculous a bit of hillside it is for a trail to pass through. Slowly but surely though, the swooping turns tighten up. Soon your arms start to burn from the braking into each cresta run esque hairpin and you’re wishing you’d paid more attention at cornering school.

Then, the section that gives the trail it’s name. You emerge from the woods into some straightforward trail. Gently curving, not too steep. And about 30cm wide, bench cut into the side of a steep slope that ends in a plunge to the gully below. It’s only short, you’re soon back into throwing the bike around corners then the final long deathgrip-if-you-dare straight and the Dirt magazine (R.I.P.) gap jump at the end. My favourite trail off the lifts, I think, Donkey Derby is up there too right enough. Either way, what next, Lama Farm or Comfort Zone?

Basically, there’s a lot of good trails. Some are better than others, some are more tech than others. You’re not going to know for yourself unless you go and try them though. Think of this post as a bit of gentle encouragement to go and make the journey over the border from Chamonix. The lifts are open until 28th October** if that’s the extra push you need.

A big thanks to Bike Verbier who have not only shown me all these trails, but pay me to show other people them too. And, more importantly, loads of harder to find and access trails that you’d have nae chance of getting done otherwise.

*Or a scenic but pricy train ride apart. Or a sweaty road bike. Or an interesting MTB trip.
** Weather permitting…. I’ve been skiing up at Lac des Vaux in October before!

Posted in Road trip , tagged valais, verbier

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