Chamonix Bike Blog

Blog

Lift openings 2018: Houston we have a problem.

Like all good popular quotations, it’s not quite right. “Houston we’ve had a problem” was the live version, but who’s going to argue with Tom Hanks?

April 11th 1970, Apollo 13 launched from the Kennedy space centre Florida with the intention of being the 3rd manned mission to the moon. Despite some wee issues on the way up (the Saturn V rocket is a ridiculous bit of engineering, its design started in the era of the pencil and is still the most powerful rocket ever made, the max carried low earth orbit payload of 140,000kg being a long way more impressive than Space-X’s Falcon Heavy and its Tesla car, {It wasnay so good at being re-used right enough, and don’t look too closely at the history of some of the lead engineers} but that much fire power with that little processing power makes fine control a touch tricky and on this launch it had a go at some pretty huge “pogo oscilations” which frankly put any tank-slapper you’ve ever had to shame) the mission had survived 2.5 of their 3 days kicking about in space preparing to nip down for a spot of golf on the moon when there was, in the words of the crew, “a pretty large bang”.

Cue the infamous exchange:

Astronaut J Swigert: “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
Houston: “This is Houston. Say again, please.”
Astronaut J Lovell: “Uh, Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

The problem what they had had turned out to be the small matter of two of the oxygen tanks emptying into space, leaving the crew in somewhat of a pickle. Not only was that oxygen intended to be breathed in the near future, but more importantly it was also to be used for the fuel cells powering the module.

What followed is one of the more impressive stories of ingenuity and problem solving under stress and should serve as hope that us humans, if we really put our minds to it, can do some gosh darn amazing things. If I were you I’d leave this page now, and go and lose yourself down the internet procrastination wormhole reading about the next 6 days of the mission. You can start most interestingly here, or more quickly here, but given the option definitely take the first read.

Of course, I can do that because I already know what’s written below, you’re probably here because you want to know when the various lifts are open and are well pissed off at having to wade through all that purple prose above.

Soz not soz.

Chamonix, usual CdMB caveats apply, and whilst we’re on the subject, how can a company as rich as CdMB create a website as atrocious as this?

Planpraz: 12th June – 16th September (thanks to the issues with the Midi lift, this opening date has been all over the place, best check the CdMB website for most up to date guess)
Bellevue: 16th June – 23th September
Le Tour: 16th June – 23th September
Flegere: 16th June – 16th September, then 20th October to 4th November
Tramway du Mont Blanc: 16th June – 16th September
Brevent: 16th June – 9th September
Prarion: 23rd June – 16th September
Grands Montets: 23th June – 9th September (*although CdMB have also claimed 16th in emails….)
Vallorcine: 30th June – 2nd September

ACTUAL USEFUL INFORMATION ALERT

Apologies for breaking from tradition again with this wee edit, but here’s MORE useful information! The Tabe chairlift is getting replaced this summer, so as a result the 4×4 trail from Logon lift to the start of the Trapette and Lavancher trails is closed to walkers and bikers, and so is Pierre a Ric. Which doesn’t really leave many options for getting down from Grands Montets on a bike. There is a trail down from the Logon Refuge that might sneak past the bans, but it’s likely bikes simply won’t be allowed up this summer. Will update when I know more, but in the mean time, here’s the legal bit.

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

La Thuile: 30th June – 2nd September (is an educated guess, as ever, dates not up, but that’s the usual)
Megeve: 7th July – 2nd September. When I say Megeve, I mean Jaillet. None of the other lifts, including all the lifts you need for the bike park, are open this summer. Again
Megeve take 2: Mont d’Arbois 22nd June, Rochebrune 30th June, Petite Fontaine 7th July to 2nd September. Megeve is now 2 separate companies with 2 separate approaches to bikes
St Gervais: 22nd June – 2nd September. Longer hours this year. Woop
Les Contamines: Yay, a resort that can give lift opening information less than1 month out from the date. 30th June – 2nd September
Grand Massif: Assorted start and finish times across the area, and they’re not online yet, but basically between 30th June – 26th August
Pila: 23rd June – 9th September (as ever, hopefully longer….)
Portes du Soleil: 29th June – 2nd September, but with some a bit earlier and later (details in the link, I’m not going to spoon feed you)
Verbier: Weekends only from 9th June then all the days from 30th June – 28th October

But, Uh Houston, we’ve had a problem.

Aye, it wasn’t a completely random intro that.

This winter’s been a record breaker, if you use the records recorded since the late 1990s at least. There is a metric shit-ton of snow above 2000m in the alps just now. On first of April Meteo France was reporting 360cm snow depths on north facing slopes at 2000m. No joke.

This is a problem. That snow ain’t going anywhere in a hurry, and even as it melts, it’s going to be busy saturating everything below it for a while to come yet. Normally we’ve got no problems riding the valley trails in late March but instead we’re stuck in Servoz or further down the valley in St Gervais. At least the train’s running fine this year, strikes excepted.

Fortunately the Servoz trails are in great condition now, mostly down to some great trail maintenance work. Many beers are owed to Dave for his fine chainsawing of several bloody big fallen trees and to Oli for making Trois Gullies flow better than it ever has, cheers!

Now whilst Apollo 13 was a good news story thanks to human ingenuity, the current human solution to getting rid of lots of snow is to raise the global temperature by a couple of degrees, which whilst undoubtedly effective, is mibbies not the best solution overall.

A few years ago Whistler dug the snow off its bike trails to allow an on-schedule opening of its trails, I wouldn’t hold you breath for that happening in Yaute so perhaps start looking at the lower altitude bits of your maps for the first half of summer this year…

Cheers again to Dave, Wayne and Oli for the trail work, and Lorne for taking most of the photos.

10/04/2018
Sospel. Good Content.

Every winter the blog, like the bike, gets put in the cave and forgotten about for a few months.

There’s skiing to be done. Who’d go biking in the snow after all. OK, fatbikers, but they’re diff’rent to us, so should be shunned. You’re allowed to blame other people for your problems again, it’s fine.

But this year, after my wee 8 month break from bikes last season, was going to be different. I was going to keep biking through the warm dry alpine winter like all my friends did in 2017. Key to this was a trip down to the 06 for Tim, Ross and me to ride Provence’s finest trails in the winter sun. Enjoying dust and t-shirts whilst Chamonix shivered.

Well, that was the plan anyways.

Lets go back to the Provence bit.

The 06, Maritime Alpes, Provence, whitevers, can lay a good claim to being the most influential location in European mountain biking and hence the world because, let’s be honest, when did the US ever lead an “extreme sport trend”? The first ever world cup DH was held just down the road from Sospel in Cap d’Ail, and was won by some 17 year old local lad.

Most of the big French names in biking are from this way, and you have to admit racers don’t get much more influential than Voullioz or Barel. Then there’s the Trans-Provence. Ash Smith’s multi day enduro stage race that spawned a hundred imitators and made enduro cool before enduro stopped being cool but managed to stay cool.

So, bearing all that in mind, you might want to know E-Bikes are big in Provence just now.

Whether you like garlic bread or not, it’s the future. I’ve seen it.

Hence, when you get an invite to ride in Provence from Ash, you go. And it was his birthday too so doubly rude not to.

I’d say I endured two days of social media bullying from the rest of the crew who’d already headed down from Chamonix, but to be honest I was either working or sleeping in the days leading up so missed the fun of “where is @chamonixbikeblog?” Meeting in Sospel’s PMU bar to begin a celebratory night of beer, rose wine and aperol spritzers brought me up to speed.

Sunday dawned.

Saturday night meant it wasn’t exactly bright and early, but 5 of us managed to drink enough coffee to stand around offering helpful advice to Tim as he failed to fix his rear tyre and only an hour or so behind schedule we rolled out of Ride Sospel HQ for a day on the trails.

Ash has very egalitarianly put pure hunners of the trails together on GPX files so you too can have the experience we enjoyed. We did have Ash, Bry and Joris taking turns shuttling and showing us around, so I’m no really sure what trails we rode, but they were right good!

Less good was the weather. Lunch was spent hiding from the rain in the pub, but stoke remained high enough to head up towards the Cime du Bosc. Heading higher meant a change in weather, going from fine rain, through smurr, into a bit of drizzle, then sleet. Finally snow. Which set a bit of an ongoing pattern.

No matter, the Transit had snow tyres and we had extra layers. Ross had heated socks. Having a kit bag ready for expedition to Baffin has it’s advantages I guess.

Do you ever arrive somewhere and it just feels “right”?

The bluff overlooking the Roya valley is one of those places. I admit, the bullet pocked ruins of a house and a miserable looking bunker from the infamous Maginot Line (ok, the Alpine Line war pedants) would suggest that at points in the past for several people here was very much not a right place, but today on a selection of shiny #enduro rigs (we were all wearing half face helmets and goggles, WITHOUT IRONY. So Damn Enduro. bro) this place felt right.

The first turn, a right hander hairpin that drops steeply away into a wall of death esque wooden berm, looked a giggle in the dry but in snow more suggested death by splinters. Fortunately that was the end of the woodwork (mostly) and from here down was 3 laps of variation on the theme of fast, floaty airs, flow, fun.

A pretty good ride out for the first full day on the bike of the year!

If Sunday night was a more subdued affair (most of us are now firmly in the masters category at the races) then Monday morning was also quieter than the previous morning. That quiet you only get when there’s something dampening the normal noises of a village.

The quiet you get when it snows.

Chamonix is no stranger to snow, right now the Meteo France bulletin de neige informs us the north facing slopes have 170cm of snow at 1500m, 280cm at 2000m and 370cm at 2500m altitude (Aye, we are a bit worried what this means for bike season). But Sospel IS a stranger to snow.

It never snows there.

Never.

Still, we were here to bike and after various vehicles had been stashed in assorted locations around the region for Plan A riding, and a bit more coffee, we got in the van for some biking.

This is where the plan started to fail.

When Facebook started its live feed malarkey they probably didn’t envisage Tim’s attempts to conduct interviews whilst Ash negotiated a stage of the Monte Carlo rallye in a Ford Transit with a good £30k worth of bike in and on it, but who can know what their creation can go on to be….certainly not facebookski.

I’m not sure the live feed of us putting snowsocks on was quite as popular. Either way, sometime later it was accepted we probably weren’t going to reach the trail head and another plan was needed.

This plan was the Foret de Menton. Otherwise known as stage 23 in the Trans Provence. Traditionally one of the last stages of the race, our first stage of the day.

There’s something brilliantly stupid about riding bikes in proper snow. This was none of your usual couple of cm of wet slush that biking in the snow generally involves. Talk of why we’d left the ski kit in Chamonix wasn’t completely done in jest.

Keep moving with a bit of speed, pick trails that aren’t too steep but still have a bit of gradient and hope there aren’t too many roots under the snow is the usual advice for riding in the neige. I’d generally add use the previous riders tracks as clues but it was now snowing so hard that our tracks were covered between laps.

This is all good and fun, but bike kit isn’t ski kit and before too long stoke alone isn’t quite enough to keep you warm. Grand plans of riding the final stage of the T.P. down to Menton were abandoned in favour of another bit of rally driving to a heated room serving food and drink by the beach.

Where it was still snowy.

Seriously, when does it ever snow on the beach in the Med?

Time to head back north, on increasingly snow free roads, to the frigid hills of Chamonix where it wasn’t snowing but was cold enough to make me fear for my toes again.

Another trip will be made down to Sospel to try the trails under more usual conditions, you should try it too.

Ride Sospel can sort you out with accommodation and trails, Cool Bus can sort you out with shuttles and if you invite us Chamonix folk down it would seem we can sort you out with unseasonal weather.

Cheers Bry and Joris for sharing their trails, shuttles, beers and chat and a massive thanks to Ash and his family for welcoming us down to their house.

Bonjour, ça va. Good content that.

06/03/2018
Cold War

The Cold War. Fifty years where the leaders of our wee planet did their best not to have any real fights with anyone else, unless of course anyone else was a small nation that could be played with like a board game.

Quite an expensive board game, the US alone spent $15119.3 billion*, which is a lot of shiny carbon bling or a lot of hungry kids that could be fed. If it helps you to get your head round that number then how about it’s a bigger number than spending $2370 every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every year since Jesus was born (and, in case you’d forgotten, he’s got another birthday coming up. See, it’s topical this, I don’t just throw it together on a whim). $2370 a second, every second, from 4BC until the 5th December 2017, and you still wouldn’t manage to keep up with US military spending during 44 years.

Still, in amongst the bombs too big to be dropped and weans being fed radioactive porridge there was some fun stuff too…

Dig out your old transistor radio.

Ok, find a grown up and ask them what a transistor radio is.

Tune the radio to 4625kHz and what do you hear?

The two alternating tones is pretty much all anyone’s heard on the channel since it was first noticed in 1982, except just occasionally, once in a whiles, you get a random Russian word. Nobody who’s telling knows what’s going on here, but as the station is transmitted from sites near St Petersburg and Moscow, most educated guesses say it’s a cold war relic giving Soviet spies instructions over the airwaves.

You’d think with the budgets involved they could stretch to smartphones and WhatsApp.

Clawing it back to bikes, it is winter. “Winter is coming” doesn’t cut it right now.

Winter is here and doesn’t look like it’s planning on going anywhere in a hurry. Alas what is not here yet is a particularly deep snowpack so, whilst it’s fun enough scratching about the hills getting some early season turns in on the skis, you’re having to go affy canny to avoid destroying skis or knees.

Which is why the more committed/daft are still out on their bikes. Put enough clothes on and don’t stop too much and the -10 air temperatures don’t seem to bad, the extra drag from riding through the snow even helps up the exertion levels and keeps you warmer.

Yay.

Nordic ski trails and ploughed roads make the uphills relatively easy and trails in the trees, preferably not too rooty and with helpful berms for the bends, make for good descending. I’m not saying I want to ride snow covered trails every. damn. day. of the year, but for a change for a wee bit of fun, it’s pretty good.

As ever at the start or end of the bike season, it’s Servoz we head to. The road up from the village is cleared and I’m sure it gets easier every time, then no matter which of the many trails you take to head back down, as long as it’s not the 4×4 track you’ll be treated to fun singletrack through the trees and, in the case of the trail Toby and I hit, a wheen of built features to play about on.

Well, if your wheels are in the air you can’t slide.

Anyways, hopefully it’ll either snow more soon so skiing proper can get underway, or the weather copies last year patterns, goes full mass snow destruction and we can get some dusty bike laps in. Win win. Unlike the old cold war which more of a no-score draw kinda game.

*Ish, kinda, maybe. Numbers here aren’t exactly the domain of a second rate MTB blogger, but that figure is for the years 1946-1990, inflation corrected to 2010 levels, in US billions, which is a thousand million, or 1,000,000,000.** And I’m assuming Jesus was born in 4BC on 25th December, which is another kettle of assumptive fish. And possibly loaves too. Questionable sources here and here.

**The Greenlandic native language (despite operating on a base of 20) only goes up to the number 12, after which they just used “many”. I think we can safely use similar language at this point for the dolla spent. ‘Mr Obama, how much did you spend on drones?’ ‘Many.’

06/12/2017
Aosta, Col Entrelor

Climbing, skiing or biking, Aosta Valley has got some of the best lines you’ve ever or never heard of.

Year round good weather, stunning backdrops of some of the biggest and best hills in the alps, coffee, pizza. There ain’t much it hasn’t got. During three weeks in Canada I would be looking at friend’s instagram feeds full of rides in Aosta and suffering serious #fomo. This tell us that 1) society (or mostly me) has an issue with living in the here and now, and 2) Aosta is really that good.

So, after getting back to Chamonix I was pretty happy when one of the first messages I got was from Ross suggesting a trip through the Mont-Blanc tunnel to go ride in Aosta.

The first contrast with B.C. was as we loaded four bikes and riders onto and into a European spec estate car. This procedure is considerably easier with a pick up truck, however I consoled myself with the knowledge that said truck would use more fuel backing out of the driveway than we would for the 100km round trip, even with detours for coffee.

Bad omens continued as we had to dingie our first choice of cafe as the Carabinieri were parked outside, which was where we planned to park so we could keep an eye on the bikes strapped to the car. Second choice was closed for the day. Fortunately next door was serving and 1.10 cappuccinos could start pointing the day in the right direction.

If I’d been paying more attention I’d have followed Davide’s lead in getting a croissant and espresso chaser, but I wasn’t paying attention and so had no idea just how high Ross was planning on making us ride.

From the carpark in Degioz, Valsavarenche, there weren’t any more clues either, as Ross pointed to a series of switchbacks on a 4×4 track leading up a hill before adding “then it goes up to a col over there”, and we set off up the trail.

Ross soon pulled into the lead, unsurprising really given that despite being a life sentence skibum he is fit to the point of owning a road bike. A road bike that he’s taken for casual laps of Mont Blanc. In a day. He’s also smashed his back up to the point where he can’t really walk, or stand, or sit, so his only option was to keep pedaling until he fell off or reached the top.

We’ll never know which it was, as Dave, Davide and me set a more relaxed pace up the hill because it’s Italy. You either do it at a steady relaxed pace, flat out, or not at all.

As we pulled above the tree line and the full views of Gran Paridiso and the remains of its glaciers came into view we met a signpost which finally let me know where we were going, the Col Entrelor at 3002m altitude.

3002m is pretty high. Maybe not for climbers, maybe not during ski season, but for a biker attached to mechanical uplift who’d not been above 2500m for 6 months, getting to 3 kilometers above sea level was going to be quite painful. At least I had company.

The climb continues through alpages, past barns and refuges and small lakes, over the occasional bit of frost and disturbing assorted herds of Ibex and chamois. Another advantage of Aosta over B.C. there, the wildlife is lower down the food chain than mountain bikers.

After continuing for quite some time, the climb stopped and the col arrived, complete with views down into Val de Rhemes and beyond. We could now turn round and come straight back the way we came. Futile fun.

Normally I’m no a fan of there-and-back rides as I’d rather not see what’s coming up on the trail, ruins the surprise. This time however the combination of altitude, sun and overall height climbed meant I’d completely forgotten everything before dropping in, so the whole descent was an unknown present to open.

And what a treat it was too. Other than a couple of one meter sections where the trail narrowed between rocks and fear of ripping off a derailleur or brake disk encouraged the prudent use of a foot to guide the bike through, the full descent back to the tree line was fast and flowing singletrack with just enough wee drops and rolls to keep you on your toes.

We had feared that the quality of the trail was going to drop as we re-joined the 4×4 track that had given us the first 650m of ascent but no, a right turn onto the trail down to Eau Rousse saw to that.

You’d think all bench cut alpine trails through the trees would be the same. They follow a fairly similar gradient as they traverse slopes too steep to walk up (or ride down) directly, feature 180 degree bends every so often, and generally have roots cutting across them at right angles to travel. Yet, all over the alps, some are just a bit better than others.

This trail was better even than those. A well built bike park line lets riders of different speeds and abilities to play with the terrain and find airs and gaps and features to play with. This trail did the same, despite being made long long before anyone considered it might be used as anything other than away of getting from A to B. Makes you wonder how many other lost trails out there could be resurrected to do the same…

No matter how good a trail, it always ends. Probably for the best, I suspect on the third or fourth day of continuous descent it might get a bit samey and you’d want to stop for a coffee break.

The trail ended, we span the short distance back down the road, loaded the car and began a new quest for pizza. No doubt some other bikers in some other place were having a better day on a better trail, but I really didn’t feel like I was missing out today.

14/10/2017
B.C. Pemberton, Squamish and Chilcotins, I don’t only ride park.

Following on from the part 1 post on the trip to British Columbia, here’s some envy inducing images from our trips away from mountain bike Disney Land to some other choice spots.

Whistler’s park is famous for a reason, but then the rest of B.C. is also famous for a reason. I could’ve probably spent 3 weeks riding Squamish and come home thinking I’d had a grand trip. There’s a lot of amazing riding out there and I’ve hardly seen any of it, but I suspect I’ll be seeing more over the next few years.

None of this would have happened without Rob and his friends taking us on roadtrips away from Whistler and lending out assorted gear and advice so I raise a craft IPA/fizzy French lager to y’all in gratitude and hope I can repay the favour in Chamonix at some point. Cheers also to Lorne for doing most of the organising and logistics for the trip, and taking the better photographs!

Here’s some pictures and pretention that I scribbled down at the time in the absence of a coherent write up on 3 weeks riding.

I’m a little confused by Rob and Andy’s chat of “a good climbing trail”. Normally this is called a chairlift. Here in Pemberton it seems to be a flowing trail cut up the hill. It is a pleasant enough way gain height for sure, but a little frustrating not to just push straight up through the zig zags and gain height with speed an efficiency.

B.C. verses France I guess.

For the afternoon we swap pedalling for shuttling in Rob’s F150 truck. The 19 year old V8 behemoth makes it hard to take the moral high ground on e-bikes, but when you’re lapping a trail as fun as Reserectum the moral high ground is a mute point.

B.C. verses France.

There used to be a trail called “One trick pony”. Then the forest got harvested and the trail destroyed. From the dust arose “Glue Factory”.

As a group of 7 we drop in in roughly guessed order of speed. After 30 seconds Rob stops at the start of the clear cut. ‘Reet good that. J.P. and Joe arrive to similar comments. Lorne arrives swatting himself and complaining about having been stung.
We look up the hill.
The screaming starts.
Ali and Esther are busy being engulfed by a swarm of hornets we’d disturbed.

The group continues for another 30 seconds of trail. ‘Reet good etc. etc.

Rob arrives, compresses out of a turn and superman front flips off the trail into the clear cut debris about 3 meters below. Somehow he’s completely unscathed but his four ride old rear wheel is toast. Or taco.

What’ll the next 30 seconds bring?

It’s about 7pm, the sun is going down behind the truck cab, behind the three bikes on the tailgate, behind the hills. Beck’s ‘Loser’ is on the radio and we’re taking the piss out of each other after obscenely good day’s riding in Squamish. This is one of the best bits of biking, and the hardest to capture or explain.

Yesterday we saw Momma Grizzly and her 3 cubs crossing the road. This was cool because they were 75m away and we had Rob’s dirty great truck to hide in if they headed our way.

Today, I’m leading out above the treeline. The trail’s traversing below the summit of a mountain I never found the name of. I see a load of fresh earth ahead but, being a veteran of many an alpine trail, clock it as a freshly fallen small landslide and keep going.
I notice the landslide starts from just above the trail. Odd. I keep going.
I notice the landslide has a great big hollow as its start point. I keep going.
I notice the landslide has bear shit all over it. I stop.
Shit.
I appear to have ridden straight up to a grizzly’s hibernation den. Rob then arrives with the key thing that Goldielocks never had. Bear spray.

It’s not a new complaint, but generally the best biking doesn’t get photographed. Who wants to stop mid-train as you slide down some new best trail ever with ridiculous scenery and colours around you. Aye it’d make a grand photo but that’s not worth killing the moment for. And that’s before you start with the issue that the photo only illustrates the moment, it doesn’t include the climb to the trail, the atmosphere, the enjoyment of the trail up to this point and the anticipation of the trail still to come

Hence, there are very few photos to illustrate just how good the Chilcotan combination of Hightrail-Molly Dog-Pepper Dog-Kens Trail is (and it might be the best 1000m vert of singletrack I’ve ridden) but you can extrapolate from the scenery shots of the climb, the pictures from Ridge-o-rama and Cinnabar the day before, and your own memories of that. time. when.

As I might have mentioned, there’s bears out there. Riding into a bear would be a bad thing, so to minimise the chances of this you start a little chant of “hey bear” as you approach blind corners, thick shrubs and the like. This rises to “HEY BEAR!” as you get faster.

At first I wondered if it evolves a Pavlovian response in the bear, instead of the ringing of a bell getting the saliva going the sound of our anti-bear call would actually get Yogi ready for a 70kg snack. I’m now wondering if I’VE got the association conditioning, where whenever I’m riding a grand trail I’ll start yelling “hey bear” to the confusion (and possible consternation) of French hikers.

I’m not sure I’ve really conveyed the awesomeness of this trip, and to be honest I don’t really need to. You either want to go to B.C. or you don’t, this page isn’t going to influence you either way. I’m glad I went, I want to go back, but I’m also pretty happy to be living where I am with all the Chamonix trails on my doorstep, and the infinite choices spreading out from there. Squamish, Finale, Pemberton, Verbier, Chilcotins, Aosta. There’s not much to whinge about there.

See you next trip everyone, cheers!

12/10/2017