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Hunting trails

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.

01/11/2018
Verbs

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!

22/10/2018
The journey, not the destination.

There’s not really much point to riding a bike for leisure*, but at least you can normally argue you’re getting somewhere. A circular ride, not so much. A load of effort expended to end up where you started. But if I’m going to start criticising that, I’ll quickly digress to ranting about the futility of human existence and the pointlessness of life in general, and I’m not going to bother because reading the news gives me more than enough things to rant and wave my hands about to.

Instead, embrace the futility. Enjoy the journey rather than the destination.

With two friends visiting and a good weather forecast we came up with a destination, Chamonix, and went looking for a journey.

As all 3 of us are now older than we’ve ever been before and have taken different journeys to get to where we’re at, the analogies start flowing. Fortunately for you, the literary and film world are full of reunion journey stories which have been judged and ranked over time, so you can toddle off and enjoy them for a combined nostalgia-and-optimism-for-future hit. I used to work in sustainable transport, I’ve watched the response to the IPCC report. There is no optimism, there is no future.

Where was I? Ah yes, biking. Road biking in particular. I’ve only road biked once before and that was 3 years ago with the same characters. But, things seemed to go quite well then and 1000 days is long enough to forget the bad bits and focus on the good, so we came up with something a little more challenging. (I should point out that Jim and I have some form in this field. After 1 semi successful day in a canoe on Rannoch Moor, a bog that seemed easier to cross by boat than foot, we decided to spend 5 days traversing Scotland by moor, loch and grade 3 rapid. What could go wrong? Lots.)

As we’re all tertiary educated middle class types, forethought and research was done. We rolled out of Chamonix with a detailed plan that went something like: up, down, up, down, uuuuuuuuuuppppppppp, ddddoooowwwwnnnn, uuuuuppppp, dddooowwwnn, uupp, down, up, down up, down, up, with a bit of eat, sleep drink and take the piss out of each other added in to split things up. You’ll notice that there was more up than down there. This is a problem with human power.

Things started well. Col des Montets arrives much easier on a road bike than a mountain bike. And 25c tyres kick the shit out of a super tacky minion for road descending too. Col du Forclaz arrived with a similar lack of fuss (if you exclude the detour to play in the anti tank bunker, we’ve not really grown up much. And to be fair, everyone thought humans were going to wipe themselves out during the cold war, and we somehow missed that, so maybe we will come together and avoid catastrophic climate change) and the tarmac descent to Martigny is way more fun than the 4×4 version.

Lunch, where we could sit and drink coffee, eat very sharp bread, and take the piss out of each other, then the climb to Grand col St Bernard. Grand is probably the right word for the climb, scale if not humour. It’s like a really shit joke, Sajid Javid stand up quality. ‘What’s 43km long and 1900m high?’ ‘The climb to the Monastery’.

We were laughing at the start. No one was laughing at the end (actually we were laughing a bit in the middle too when Malcolm met the cheese vending machine). It really didn’t help that there was a howling headwind coming down the valley. When drafting works at 7kph, you’ve got issues.

When I was planning the ride I’d imagined perfect alpine weather and sublime views of the Grand Combin to distract us from the numbing discomfort of a climb that drags on a bit in a car never mind a laden bike, but the weather hadn’t read my mind and had gone all silent hill on us. By the time we crawled up to the Monastery you could hardly see the other side of the road. So this wasn’t the time to discover that the Monastery that never shuts was locked up. And it wasn’t just us. A random Italian family was trying with equal lack of success to find a way into the building.

Turns out we were all just a bit rubbish at opening the blast proof door. We got in, we had some religious tea and soon felt good enough to go back to dealing with the world.

Staying in a monastery does seem like a slightly odd choice I’ll grant you, but the St Bernard monastery is a bit of an outlier. For a start it’s at 2500m, so the views are quite good. Or would be if we could have seen much beyond the end of our noses. It’s also a refuge, and at 50chf for bed n board, about as good value an option as you’ll find in Switzerland. As an added bonus, it’s the last few days of the col being open before its winter closure (which lasts until June, winter lasts about as long as the climb up here) so the refuge is dead quiet. We get an 8 person dorm to ourselves and with only 12 people around the dinner table and food cooked for considerably more, we eat well. This is good because Mal the doctor has concluded we are something like 3000kcal in deficit and need to eat more.

The second day was always meant to be the ‘easy’ bit. Start with a massive descent, 35km and 1900m, down to Aosta, go for cappuccino, pedal along the relatively flat roads along the Aosta valley, go for more coffee, pedal some more, coffee and food some more, before the one climb of the day, complete with more stops for coffee and topped off with a long descent down into France and food.

Simples.

And it kinda was. Our overnight fears of the damp roads freezing were unfounded, instead with 2 degree air temperature and 98% humidity it was only us that froze on the initial descent. After 15km or so of steadily losing height we got out into the sun and kept cracking on. And on. And on. Descending is fun.

Aosta city came as a bit of a shock. For a start it was flat rather than downhill, so we had to pedal. Then there were vehicles fleeing everywhere. And there were potholes. Still, it’s no Glasgow and we were soon out of town and onto the first coffee stop.

Since we’d left Chamonix the day before we’d pretty much either been going up hill or down. There had been flat, but not very much. Now, with Mont Blanc in front of us and some caffeine in the belly, we were riding rolling flat roads. On the drops and in a line, road biking really started to make sense. You were putting effort through the pedals, no doubt, but not so much that you couldn’t easily hold a conversation, and we were absolutely flying along. You just canny cover ground like this on a mountain bike. Tunnels and villages flashed by and we were at another selection of cafes for lunch.

The Aosta valley terminates with a bunch of big hills. The easiest way out is the Petit St Bernard pass. At 2188m the petit bit is questionable. Still, it’s less than yesterday’s climb and under blue skies and mid October temperatures it was hard to feel too intimidated.

What a stunning climb. I’m really not used to the idea of climbing being enjoyable. Skiing and mountain biking the climb is a means to the end, the destination is the down, but on such an efficient bike the switchbacks up through the trees with Dent du Geant and Mont Blanc peaking through the foliage, the rolling road passing small villages and tunnels in turn, the rise out of the treeline and into the alpine, the huge views as the col drew near. I was in a happy place.

At the col there was an open bar selling beer. Now all three of us were in a happy place.

The descent to Bourg St Maurice did nothing to burst my euphoric bubble. Descending first thing that morning on damp greasy roads hadn’t changed my mind any on the idea that road bikes are rubbish for going downhill on. As La Rosiere came (rapidly) into view I still wasn’t planning on putting drops on my Edit, but having abandoned MTB technique and channeled Sagan (not Froome) things were really clicking and the meandering road with massive sight lines was just flipping awesome riding.

What could bring us down? Potholes, that’s what. Swiss roads were as impeccably smooth and clean as you’d expect from Switzerland. Italy seemed to have laid fresh tarmac earlier in the week in anticipation of our arrival. France hadn’t got the memo. From the Col to La Rosiere had been ok going, but leaving La Rosiere things deteriorated. A lot. Individual potholes you can bunny hop easy enough, but what do you do when the road is one big pothole and your entire tyre is smaller than the tread on the real bike. Slow down and weave about like a drunk is the answer.

It wasnay all bad, but if the 73 could just re-lay the road for the next time I’m there then that’d be grand ta.

And with that done, our second nights accommodation came into view. Le Relais Camping and a Yurt. Because why not.

Reading multi day riding advice before our trip, the importance of a recovery drink as soon as possible after finishing each days ride was stressed time and time again. With the biggest day to come tomorrow we took this very seriously and headed straight into Bourg St Maurice to find a bar and marvel at the technological masterpiece that is the new Super U carpark.

We did plan to start early on Saturday. On paper (or on screen, doesn’t sound quite the same does it) it looked easy enough, 2 cols and 2 smaller climbs spread over 120km, but everyone I’d chatted to said that this was the bit that kicked them in the arse. We’d fine out soon enough for one way or another but not before we’d tracked down breakfast, which turned out to be the best damn pain au chocolat I’ve had and a leisurely coffee. Leisurely was probably a mistake.

At 10 we were heading out of Bourg and starting up the climb.

At 11 we were still on the climb.

At 12 we were still on the climb.

It turns out the climb to Cormet de Roselend does go on a bit. Quite pretty though, and somehow I was still enjoying myself.

As seems to be the way of these things, the descent was about as long as the climb, and perfectly enjoyable too. Finally getting to go to Beaufort (which is the secluded French mountain town you imagine when you imagine secluded French mountain towns) and get a cracking lunch only added to my general good feelings about the world. And a nice shorter climb to go next too.

1000m of climbing is shorter than 1100m of climbing. If I was finding my minor errors in pre-ride map reading slightly painful, Jim’s opinion of it was un typeable. My promises of a water fountain in every village weren’t going down too well either, particularly when we had to detour downhill into Hauteluce to find one. No, there wasn’t a downhill detour back up to where we left the route.

The Col des Saisies may have featured a bar selling carbonated sugar and a pumptrack (of course I did) but alas no sign to let you know where you were. As taking a photo of each col is the recognised way to navigate on a road bike we were left wandering about in circles trying to come up with a solution. Which was to stand in the carpark.

We were now 65km into a near 130km day and it was 15.30. Those of you with memory and maths skills will have deduced that we’d been on the go for 5 1/2 hours. It gets dark at about 19.30. Something somewhere wasn’t going to add up. I checked my lights still had some battery in them.

Being at the top of a col meant we were going downhill again, which does wonders for your average speed if you can pay attention to the road rather than the scenery. Not only that but before long we were back onto kent roads, from near Flumet was ground we’d all covered before and somehow that makes it easier. Onto the uphill drag past Praz sur Arly and Megeve and we were again on the drops and battering through the distance. The long straights towards St Gervais felt easy as we cruised along at over 40kph. We might just manage this before it gets dark.

After getting stuck in traffic for a whiles we took a back road detour and freewheeled into Le Fayet, then struggled to accelerate from a standstill in the stiffest gear to make it to the tabac for another round of cocacola, 35km done in roughly an hour.

Dark of course isn’t just about light. Mood and atmosphere also feature in the metaphor. Climbing the short way out of Le Fayet to Servoz may have been lit by the daylight, but the ascent was done in the dark. Road bikes don’t like proper steep gradients.

The new Servoz road by contrast is cracking, a tarmac pumptrack of rolling fun and frolics through the woods and on to the start of the Vaudagne climb which, as you look at the dual carriage way cutting round the hillside with minimal height gain, feels just a bit unnecessary. It doesn’t matter though. We could walk up this climb and we’ll make it now before the sun set.

Rolling back along the road between Les Houches and Chamonix it feels like a lot more than 3 days ago we were heading in the same direction between Chamonx and Les Praz. A few hours later in the bar it feels like a lot less than near half our lives ago we all met in a halls of residence. Which all confirms that time is relative and non linear, despite non of us studying physics.

What of the literal journey completed? Another lap of Mont Blanc done, and again it’s the company that matters, the bikes are just an excuse for the trip, cheers Malcom and Jim for the trip, what’s the next one going to be?

For the rest of yous, how’s this for an idea: Mont Blanc road trip…… Go play MTB at Chamonix–Verbier–Pila–La Thuile–Les Arcs–Megeve–St Gervais–Chamonix. And that’s just the places less than 5mins detour to the base of the lift station and I’ve got a blog post for, plenty more to pick from just a tiny bit further out.

*As all leisure activities are pointless, as are all non vocational degrees.

18/10/2018
Abhorred monster.

Kids today, eh. Don’t know they’re born, eh. Handed to them on a plate, eh. Am I right eh? Am I right eh*!

So continues a theme that seems to have run since Greek times of when not complaining that the world’s about to end (turns out every era’s been sure theirs will be the last, so we’re not that special after all) the elders have whined that it was all much harder back in their day and that today’s adults of tomorrow are feckless, lazy and dim.

Thing is, sometimes they’re right. When I was 18 I was just about able to be mediocre at racing bikes downhills, skiing on a mud/heather based snow substitute and turning up for lectures. Paying attention at lectures was beyond me.

At 18, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.

If you’ve not read Frankenstein, you might not be aware how mental that is. Frankenstein is not the jokey, hammer house of horror, novel some of the films suggest. It is page after page of misery and terror that finds new ways to shock you every chapter. Whenever you think the depths have reached a peak (I’d criticise the book for some of the writing, but people in glass houses and all that…), Mary Shelley would find another place to go and scare you more.

It’s not only an imaginative tour de force, her 1818** grasp of science and which of the competing theories available at the time would turn out to tally with 21st century thinking was remarkably prescient. Frankenstein is arguably the dawn of science fiction.

As well as being multi-talentless at education and sport, 18 year old me wasn’t exactly great at relationships. Mary Shelley on the other hand was hanging out with Lord Byron whilst being Percy Shelley’s lover. Frankenstein was written holidaying with them both on Lake Geneve, enjoying all night discussion and not going outside much (due mostly to a volcanic eruption the previous year that had resulted in the world getting a year without summer and the beach not being a great choice).

After a fun night round the fire reading German ghost stories in French (bloody european elitists, get back here and read the Daily Mail you turncoats) Byron suggested they all retire to write a short ghost story each. A couple days later, Byron had invented the Twilight franchise, Percy probably got some notes down about vegetarianism and atheism (bit ahead of his time that lad) and Mary had the beginnings of Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus.

Anyways (new drinking game, every time you read “anyways” on this blog, have a beer. Please binge drink responsibly) I seem to be veering far, far away from bikes again.

Or am I?

For the creature, monster, protagonist, wretched devil or hero (choose one accordingly on how you feel about a nameless animated cadaver) went through an awkward few months/years where he didn’t really want to speak to anyone (adolescence is hard to pin down when you’re conceived as a full grown adult) and felt that the best place he could hide out and get away from it all was…..Montenvers, Chamonix.

Obviously 200 years ago there wasn’t a train, so he didn’t have to deal with hoards of day trippers, but even now if he’d hung about to the evening he’d have found that the crowds disperse nicely and the trails are pretty quiet.

Two centuries ago the bike was a 1 year old patent so he didn’t have to worry about two wheeled peletons disturbing the peace either, but it’s about a 1hr pedal up to the buvette and another 45mins or more on top of that carry to Montenvers so the effort required limits numbers too. Until recently.

As Frankenstein’s creation was a marvel of science that the world wasn’t ready for, I see no parallel at all with the Chamonix communes decision to make the trail up to the Mottets buvette an official e-bike route.

A creation, formed between the dissecting room and the slaughter-house, made from the discarded parts of others. From a distance the silhouette is the same yet up close the hideous differences, the rough joining, are all too apparent. More powerful and capable than its natural predecessors and yet shunned and ostracised for being not pure, subsequently lacking identity and being unsure where it should exist in the world, or if it should even exist at all.

No parallels.

Still, the trail’s good, no controversy there. The Caillet trail’s featured in the blog before, but I felt it was time to take an evening spin with the camera, make some pretty pictures to go with all this and encourage folk to maybe give the full descent a go occasionally instead of just sticking with the classic Caillet.

You can climb to the Mottets buvette then carry through the boulders to Montenvers, which does mean you get to play on the moonscape of rock up by the end of the 4×4 trail, but it’s harder going after that point. Alternatively take the normal route to Caillet then turn uphill and keep going till you hit the top, or till the light starts to run out and you need to turn round and head home, confusing a wedding party along the way (though that might just have been on our visit).

Whichever way you do it, you’ll be treated to a fine old descent.

Well, I say a fine old descent. It goes down hill, the path dates from before the building of the railway which opened in 1909 so counts as old, and we rode all but a 10 meter section of the trail. That adds up to fine in my book, but it is a bit rocks and tech in places, so if you’re not a fan of either of those you’re probably not going to have a great time of it.

If you’ve not read Frankenstein I’m not going to ruin it for you by telling you how it ends. Mibbies they all hug it out and ride away hand in hand on unicorns towards a rainbow, mibbies the pit of misery gets mined so deep they’re finally consumed by the molten core of the earth. It’s not much effort for you to find out, and when you do, have a think about how it applies to e-bikes. Then stop thinking about that because it doesn’t matter and have a think about what it says about humanity, which does.

*I’ve been re-watching Spaced recently. In the DVD (which I can’t watch because DVD’s aren’t the future anymore) there was a handy “homage-o-meter” feature which would click up with the homage being homaged on screen at that moment. At some point I will write one of these blogs and flag up the same. This blog is not that blog however.

**The timeline gets a bit blurred for the sake of an easy post here. Frankenstein was conceived of and mostly written in 1816 & 1817, first published anonymously in 1818, published under Mary Shelley’s name in 1822*** and remixed by Mary Shelley for the most widely read version published in 1831.

***Obviously at this point the critical reception of the book changed tone a touch: “The writer of it is, we understand, a female; this is an aggravation of that which is the prevailing fault of the novel; but if our authoress can forget the gentleness of her sex, it is no reason why we should; and we shall therefore dismiss the novel without further comment” The British Critic.

30/09/2018
The Ignoramus.

I’ve spent most of my life thinking this was an insult, one I’ve received and sent. Turns out it’s a compliment. Or at least, was a compliment.

Ignoramus from the Latin “we do not know”. As in, we don’t know everything so we need to learn. More importantly, that what we do know might not be correct and needs to be constantly reassessed with each new bit of information we receive. Or basically the foundations of modern science and critical thinking and what the whole shoogly enterprise of the twenty first century technological world is based on. How we arrived at Space-X, Man on the Moon, nuclear weapons and the hydraulic dropper post. And why Donald Rumsfeld truly was an ignoramus when he said “there’s things we know we know…”

Of course, there’s a difference between the enthusiasm to embrace the unknown as a catalyst for learning more about what you don’t know and shrinking your view to the point that everything you don’t know is ignored and you just focus on the area you think you’ve got down (until new knowledge arrives and it turns out the world IS flat after all. Or that ignoramus is a compliment) I’m not sure exactly what it says that populist politics has brought us to a point where many influential persons in the world have a less liberal, less intellectual outlook that the Romans, but the broad brush of it isn’t very uplifting.

Anyways, this reveling in the things we do not know is what’s been sending us to try the next line over for the last few years. The trail we found last week was good, will the trail a little further along be better? Often no, no it’s not. Sometimes it is considerably worse and we emerge from the undergrowth several hours later, bleeding profusely from thorn scarred shins, with grooves on our shoulder from carrying the bikes for 80% of the descent.

But all that just makes the sweet trails taste all the sweeter. No, really. Science says so. A study in 1971 found that pigeons which were trained to peck a button to be given food would do it more enthusiastically when they didn’t know if it was going to work out with a tasty treat. It’s the rewards that ain’t guaranteed that seem to do it for mammals and mamils alike.

The search for new trails isn’t blind though. Just as science draws on the discoveries of the past to leap forward, we let others do as much of the hard work as we can before taking the last step and claiming the glory. If you want to find the next greatest trail ever, have a look through old maps and see what farmers tracks and mining routes have fallen into disrepair and dropped off the radar. Or just look for the bits where people tend not to go with bikes and see where the terrain then matches up with bike friendly angles.

I’m not the only person to be rocking the ‘look at the clues and use what you’ve found’ technique. Ash ‘Trans Provence’ Smith (to pigeon hole him far more than he should be) and his itinerology series show this ways better than I manage, and the TP race showcases the results of his searching ways ways better too. But, just because you canny run 100m like Bolt doesn’t mean you shouldn’t run.

Following last years trip to Whistler, I returned to Chamonix full of enthusiasm to bring that trail building culture here and create some #sickgnarshreadbroloamfestflow trails. Very quickly I realised I had neither the time, talent, brawn, materials nor dirt to do this. What I DID have however, was a promising looking worn line going off into the trees near the end of a load of great descents in Les Houches, where you had to start using the tarmac to get down to the road….

A bit of scoping later revealed an old walking trail heading down through the woods between Les Houches and Vaudagne. And quite a few fallen trees. And enough shrubbery to keep the Knights of Ni happy. And some of the best rideable rock slabs in the valley.

I’d be lying if I said I then invested hour upon hour of my time into carefully clearing and crafting a new trail, but there’s been a few pissing wet afternoons spent in full waterproofs cutting back undergrowth to reclaim the old trail and drier days spent running the line in and tweeking the alignment. All so I can present to you a trail called…

Squam-ish

Because it’s just like all the amazing trail building work in Squamish. Ish.

Take your choice of trail at Les Houches to end near the Ecole Physic. About 200m BEFORE you reach the tarmac’d Ecole road there’s a 90 degree right bend. At that bend the entrance to Squam-ish is up and a little to the left. I’ve deliberately left the first few meters quite overgrown to minimise the chance of conflict with other users. The trail is fairly flat for the first wee bit, then on an easy rock slab rolling to the right, the interest starts. If I’m honest the trail still needs a fair bit of running in and some substantial work to the last 100 meters or so before it becomes a classic, but the start’s there and if anyone with more time on their hands than I wants to help it evolve, crack on. Otherwise, it’ll get finished off in late autumn (unless winter comes early or I gain meaningful employment).

Other folks have spent less time pontificating and more time digging (the pen may be mightier than the sword, but it’s not got much on a backhoe) and as a result there’s a web of fresh trails starting to spread around the valley, mostly in the Les Houches/Coupeau area but also Les Bois and Planet.

Focusing on Les Houches, some of these trails use the old bikepark trails from the days when it was under Bellevue, others pick up abandoned trails that we’ve been looking at on the IGN map for years, but never got the traffic to stay clear. Then others, like the new finish to the Alpage Respect bikepark trail under the Prarion lift, are just straight up brand new.

It’s got to the point where I didn’t ride Les Houches for 3 weeks, came back, and rode brand new trails every lap for an afternoon, there’s that many new things appearing. For the most part they’ve been made in the fine tradition of old school French DH tracks. Raw and steep. Really steep. They’re also often not that weather proof, so heavy traffic in the rain will ruin them, but in the long hot summer we’re still having the loam is just perfect. Almost powder skiing esque.

The summer lift season is almost finished at Les Houches now, but it’s going out with a bang. By this weekend the Prarion lift was hoaching with riders from across France and beyond. The long queues might have been a bit irritating, and the way the trails were evolving from one lap to the next entertaining, but it was pretty amazing to feel like Chamonix was an actual bike town for once, a vibe I’ve only felt a few times before in Finale, Whistler or Morzine. I don’t want that to last mind, we can go back to grumpy locals and empty trails for the other 11 months of the year.

Most of these new trails are very much unofficial and not mine to advertise, but as the entrances are generally not hidden, all YOU need to do is look and reap the rewards. A couple of these trails will become official trails once finished but until they’re on the map it’s up to the park crew as to how well advertised they get, so again, I’m not telling until next summer when I can use it for a whole new bit of content.

It’s not Whistler, it’s not Squamish either, but the bike scene in Chamonix is looking pretty healthy.

Have fun, be an ignoramus and play nice.

16/09/2018