Chamonix Bike Blog

Tag: Grands Montets

  • Milestones

    Bitta Gaston in a Sheffield / Cham mix.

    Summer solstice, The longest day, shortest night and a time for reflecting on being half way through the tropical year and that it’s all downhill from here.

    More, my bike is 1 today. Happy birthday bike.

    Another fine morning on my way to ride my bike somewhere interesting.

    Whilst we’re finding arbitrary dates, the blog is now just over 6 years old. Like bikes over the last six years (or 200, for t’was eighteen hundred and eighteen years when the two wheeled running machine first terrified the good people of London. Presumably the not so good people and all), it’s evolved a fair bit fae those early days too. The photos are of a better quality (and not just because I now mostly nick Lorne and Toby’s good ones) the writing is better. And I’m more jaded and bitter so the information is probably more of a sandbag delivered with more a witheringly sarcastic voice. Though, you probably don’t read this in my voice so you’ll escape the worst of that.

    Lorne in Pila 2015, one of my better photos.

    The blog was started with the lofty aim of trying to show y’all that there was more to Chamonix riding than the handful of honeypotted trails that we can’t ride in the bike ban and to persuade folks to try some of the other riding we’ve got here. Nae idea how much is the blog’s fault, but there’s definitely more tyre tracks appearing on the more esoteric and niche lines about the valley. Who’d a thunk 6 years back that the Les Arandellys trail would get so popular.

    For my next mission, stigmatize Strava cut lines. If you canny get your bike round the corner, get better or walk. You disgust me…

    Sandy doesn't do strava cut lines, come back Sandy!

    Anyways (probably my commonest used paragraph starter) 6 years (and 13 days) for 135 posts, 4 bikes and god knows how many words n pixels later, we’re at the point where this counts for content. Progress eh?

    Taking inspiration from that first post (what, you haven’t clicked on the link yet?) here’s a wee round up of where we’re at the now in the valley for bikes:

    Le Tour: Currently just the lower gondola and trails, but the Autannes chairlift should be open for bikes next week.

    Posettes on opening day. You've got until the end of the month, get it whilst you can...

    Grand Montets: Is closed to bikes all of this year as all the trails off, walking or biking, are closed for works. The summer skiing’s no too bad though.

    Grands Montets skiing just grand on summer ski season opening day, 16th June.

    Les Houches: Bellevue and the Tramway du Mont Blanc for now, Prarion opens at the weekend. Some work’s being done on the official DH trails and they’re closed for now but the other trails are in pretty good nick. And mind the last tramway up the hill is 1510 at the moment…

    I was on my own, what exactly do you expect from the photography after 6 years?

    Brevent: The Chamonix-Planpraz lift has been open on and off for most of the spring, so the trails are worn in, everything is clear enough and it’s just the usual tech to worry you. The Planpraz – Brevent stage opens this weekend, and it all goes off limits again, as usual, for the July-August bike ban.

    Flegere summer 2018. Not a great photo, technically nor literally.

    Flegere: Is currently closed to bikes, the apologetic liftie held some hope that this might change at some point, but the lift will be VTT interdite for sure during the July-August bike ban. As for the trails, which you can get to with a wee bit of effort fae Brevent, the 4×4 access road is closed for a pipeline to be installed, the descent to Floria / Les Praz has some trees down on the upper section. Lower down there’s been some work to smooth off the trail a bit but otherwise it’s just as grand and tyre and rim destroying as ever.

    Bike by a train. The year round valley uplift.

    Bikes then. In six years the blog’s got through two Lapierre Spicys, a Canyon Strive and now this abused beast, the Airdrop Edit. In the last 12 months it’s dropped over 215,000m of descent in France, Italy, Switzerland and Canada, trundling about 3300km in the process. Which gives an average gradient of 6.66%. The number of the beast. Spooky eh.

    Oban Cycles roof drop. In hindsight, the trials bike was a better choice for this... Cheers for the photo Gordon

    Three times older than this blog is this picture. A teenage me eschewing gas-to-flat with pedalhop-to-uphill. More importantly, I’m on a Kona Stab from back when DH bikes first started to sort themselves out. Before this bike I had an old GT LTS DH, like wot Peaty rode, that rocked a whole 140mm of rear travel, 140mm wheel base and, obviously, snapped (this happens a lot when buying not really fit for purpose products that’ve had a few less than careful owners). That Kona was the first of the generation of bikes that could survive the abuse they were getting. It’s just a shame they weighed so much.

    All the good of the Stab, and none of the bad. Cracking shot courtesy of Soren Rickards

    The Edit has a lot in common with the Stab. In 1998 the price for the Stab frame and an inline Fox vanilla R coil shock was £1149. The price for the Edit frame with inline Cane Creek coil shock, £1299. 13% inflation over 20 years, they’d be happy with that in Venezuela. And, having made a geometry comparison table between the two bikes, I think I’ve found where that inflation went. The top tube.

    Bike Stab 99 Edit 17
    Frame Size M L
    Head Angle 69 66
    Seat angle 72 76
    Top Tube 582 640
    Chainstay 432 435
    Wheel-base 1087 1220
    Fork Offset 33 46

    There will be some new trail content coming soon here, but I need to finish the trail first, and then there’s some promising looking lines on maps that need followed. And… Basically, bear with it and there’ll be something good to read along at some point. Cheers and here’s to another 215,000m/6 years of gradually rising standards.

     

  • Unintended consequences/Chamonix Bike Ban

    If a MTBer rides a trail and no one can see it, did they ride the trail?

    In 1958 Chairman Mao, the well known mountain biker and modernist, issued a decree titled “the four pests campaign” with the intention of purging China of (the latest) four greatest enemies of the people: Rats, mosquitos, flies and sparrows.

    To deal with the particular threat of the sparrow, the nation was mobilised. Men, women, children and, the linchpin of any agricultural based economy, grandparents unleashed their full fury on the mighty and terrifying sparrow. In addition to the obvious tactics of smashing the nests, breaking the eggs and just running about shooting the birds, whole cities would turn out in their millions to bang pots together and scare the poor things into the air. The cacophony would continue for hours, sometimes days, stopping the sparrows from landing until they dropped, dead exhausted, from the sky.

    Want to ride this in July or August? No one's stopping you, it's on the Vallorcine side of Le Tour, and in Switzerland.

    Alas, it turned out the evil winged consumer of grain and rice was also a kinda useful consumer of pests and insects. Whilst the sparrows did eat the crops, they didn’t eat anything like the amount that the insects who were thriving in their absence did.

    Posettes. In September you can lap this and hardly meet anyone. In July and August.....pure hoaching.

    There was nothing for it. Mao had to change his 4 least favourite animals to rat, mosquito, fly and bed bug, let the sparrow re-establish itself, and then get on with believing 150 grams of rice was a reasonable daily ration (is there a graph plotting percentage of a nation underweight verses said nations leader’s obesity?) and that melted down woks would produce high enough grade steel to build an industrialised nation. These latest great leaps forward would help him into the very upper tier of despots, and contribute to the death of somewhere between 30 and 55 million people, to date still a dictator high score of own peoples killed through incompetence and hubris.

    Lucky the incompetent and hubristic world leader is a thing of the past eh.

    Chamonix's most photogenic corner. No can do in July and August.

    Of course, what’s the issue with a few million deaths when you have the far more important first world problem of not getting to ride a handful of trails and 3 lifts for 2 months of the year. Snowflakes.

    So yeah, there’s this “bike ban” thing in Chamonix, which from some of the comments floating about the internet (and comments on social media and forums are obviously representative of the majority of human opinion) seems to mean to most folk that all trails in Chamonix and a 50km radius are completely forbidden to bikes, all the year, and that it’s some form of dark conspiracy against anyone holding a lift pass from Compagnie du Mont Blanc so they can take your money then stop you from using the lifts.

    Off the back of Le Tour. No walkers and no worries.

    First off, the Chamonix bike ban, or Arrete du Marie 006872/2016  to give it it’s Sunday name, is only applied during July and August, and only on the trails within the Chamonix commune (and with the exception of those exceptions listed in the arrete). The rest of the time the trails are just as legal to ride as anywhere else in Haute Savoie. July and August also happens to be the busiest times of year for walkers and trail runners, the trails in the valley are just too busy to get any flow going. I get that if you’re only going to be in Chamonix for 1 week of your life and it’s August and you really, really want to ride from Brevent then it’s frustrating, but for everyone else, there’re better places to ride during those months. Ban or no ban. There’s a minority of riders that really ain’t helping things either by not using the universal “don’t be a dick” rule and no slowing down whiles passing other folk on the trails, skidding their way through cut lines and generally being dicks.

    Don’t be a dick.

    Les Houches DH trail. Somewhere that walkers ain't allowed and bikes are, so you can be a dick to any you pass on the track. Or not.

    As for the lifts, again, the only lifts closed to bikes that are otherwise open are the Brevent and Flegere lifts. So Le Tour, Grand Montets, Les Houches, Tramway du Mont Blanc (and if you have the annual or summer season pass Les Contamines, Megeve, St Gervais, Combloux) are all still open during the ban. And you can still go the Brevent and Flegere lifts.

    You just canny take your bike.

    Or wingsuit.

    I couldn't find a good photo from GM, so here's another from Brevent. In October, when the lifts were open and you could take your bike on them.

    From Grand Montets only the Lavancher bowl trail is officially open, though strangely there never seems to be many people on any of the other ways down from there….probably because most of them are a bit rubbish.

    Another Brevent trail. They're not that much fun anyways.

    Le Tour; yup, Posettes trails are included in the ban area. Plenty of folk ignore the closure, it’s a cracking trail after all, but during the morning through most of the day it’s hoaching with walkers so really, what’s the point of never getting to ride at any speed when you could hit any of the trails from the Vallorcine gondola legally and with way less traffic? Or you could pedal up to the trails down from Loriaz chalets. Then there’s all the trails over in Switzerland that start from Le Tour.

    Lorne on a trail somewhere above Vallorcine and below the telecabine. All legal, all year, always quiet.

    Les Houches, like Vallorcine, isn’t in the Chamonix commune so the arrete doesn’t apply. Instead they have their own arrete, Arrete No 13/046, which prohibits biking only on the “great walking trails” implying any of the not so great trails are fine…. GR5 counts as a great trail, officially and critically. Those of you who’ve spent too much time watching legal dramas will probably notice that the linked arrete is only valid until 30th September 2013, and no I canny find a more up to date document online, wouldn’t it be ironic if bringing this to attention got it updated in a more draconian manner.

    A grand trail, but not a great trail. Or is it the other way around? Either ways, above Les Houches and all there for the taking whenever you want.

    So aye, it’s frustrating, not getting to ride on the doorstep in Chamonix, but for plenty folks the result of the ban is just looking a bit further afield. Looking closer at the trails they can ride in the valley, looking where they can ride at Le Tour and Les Houches, looking where they can ride beyond the valley. If that’s too hard, try having a look at the trails suggested in the Chamonix Bike Book, or hire a guide. Mibbies as the numbers of VTTists at Les Houches and Le Tour continue to rise, forced out of the more convenient spots to town, the Marie will be forced to make changes to further fill its coffers with biking dollar and reinstate the bike trails at Flegere.

    Doubt it. More importantly, it’s not that big an issue, quit whining.

    If not getting to use a lift to the start of this trail, riding up instead, then getting stopped by a PGHM gadgie and told not to be a dick is the worst thing that happens to you this year, you're having a good year.

    If you want to read more about China (sorry, CHYNAAH. Trump rules) then give Wild Swans by Jung Chang a go.

  • A bit of peace & quiet

    That's a sick-track

    September has started and Chamonix has emptied! Overnight the population of the valley has halved and, conveniently, the weather has stopped thinking it’s winter and moved on to cool mornings, low 20’s during the day, blue sky and bright sunshine. All in all perfect bike weather.

    This week is probably the best of the year to visit Chamonix to ride the classic steep & technical trails that it’s famous for as the lifts are still open, the bike ban is over and you don’t have to stop all the time for walkers. After a week off the bike, I wanted to head out on my own to ride at the pace I felt like on some of the trails I’d not seen for a couple of months.

    Brevant Gondola

    Out of Chamonix, the Brevent gondola (open till 16th Sept, then again from 27th Oct to 7th Nov) whisked me up the hill and I set off up the hill for 50m to begin the contour round on the Charlanon trail. Once away from the 4×4 tracks near the lifts, the trails were empty. It’s a long bumpy way down to the Flegere lift (also open till 16th Sept), but soon enough I was there and straight back up again.

    Brevant trails

    The “Sicktrack” isn’t in any guidebooks for Chamonix, but ask a local and they’ll point it out to you. You can use variations of the trail to go to La Joux & Tre le Champ depending on how much climbing you want (it gives the brake fingers a rest at least!) but as I’d never taken the third way, I dropped down to Argentiere. I thought I was going to clear the descent with no dabs but obviously got too excited and 50m from the end of the track my luck ran out and both feet ended up on the deck. Next time!

    Sick track to argentiere/tre le champ

    The Posettes trail is probably as classic a Chamonix trail as you can get, unfortunately with the trains being off I’d have to pedal uphill to get there, so didn’t bother putting the saddle up and cruised through Argentiere to the Grand Montets lift (open till 9th September). I’m more used to the GM lifts in winter when the lift queues on a powder day are infamous world-wide so it’s quite strange the difference in summer where you just wander up, wait for a ‘bin to be ready to go, then head up with it almost empty! If you don’t like switchbacks, you probably won’t like Trapette Couloir. Apparently there’s 47 of them on the way down, but I prefer just to enjoy the trail rather than count. Inbetween the hairpins are lots of gentler bends with steep berms and wall rides on the inside, just make sure you don’t overshoot the other side of the trail…..

    GM telecabine, no pow hungry scandi's to be seen

    After all that technical riding, it was a bit of a relief just to cruise back down the hill on the Arve track, and even it barely had any walkers on it. All the trails I rode were in perfect condition with dry rocks and dry but not dusty trails, hopefully the cooler evenings will keep it that way as there’s definitely a lot more riding to be done before winter starts.

    need a seat?