Chamonix Bike Blog

Tag: Les Houches

Moving pictures

Three and a half months since I last mountain biked and, I’ll admit, it’s getting tricky to write anything even tenuously linked to Chamonix biking. But, adversity is the mother of invention, (or maybe it’s necessity, I’m not sure, will check the family tree later) so in the time honoured tradition of injured bikers looking for something to do, I’ve been out with the camera again.

When I say I’ve been out with the camera, what I’ve actually been is out with someone who knows what do do with several cameras at once and I pointed them in hopefully the right direction at the right time. Toby of seventwenty fame (aye, the dunkin donut advert, that yin) had an idea for a wee edit he wanted to shoot and I was keen to wander along, try and learn a bit and help steal the souls* of Lorne and Angus who had the honour of being the talent for the shoot. See, picking up the lingo already, darlings. Could well be in the movie busyness.

This was back at the start of December (I find skiing more fun than writing just now, don’t judge), but as the weather’s been on pause for a month now, what you see then is what you get now. Dry trails, some frost and ice low down, warmer up high, and a lovely layer of pollution trapped in the valley. Prime riding conditions.

I should probably take this as the public information bit to squeeze in, that as well as the usual winter uplift suspects (what, you’ve still not registered that there’s mtb accepting uplift all year round in the alps?) you can get your bike out to play in Les Gets, Pila and Verbier. And the big surprise, Flegere! Cheers to CDMB for letting that happen after the last few years of knocking bikes back.

Anyways, enough procrastination, Toby’s done the editing of the edit, have a gander:

The last post for the off season break is generally just before xmas, so on past performance this is probably it for the next few months. The weather looks likely to break in the near future bringing a return of winter, and it’s going to be a wee bit longer yet before I’m riding properly. But then again, it’s been an odd year so lets not rule out anything yet**.

Whatever happens, merry christmas, happy new year, so long and thanks for all the fish.

*I’ve been trying to find out if this is actually true, and I’m really not getting much evidence from google, and google’s apparently the home of fake news as well as real news so you’d think there would be some evidence at least.

There’s some vague references to native American Indians refusing to have their photo taken lest it “steals their soul”, but then there’s plenty of photos of same indigenous peeps taken seemingly with consent and there’s no indication of links between physical image and the soul that I can find in their culture, so I’m not sure about that.

The Mayans apparently believed that mirrors were portals into the otherworld letting Gods and dead folk wander between the 2 worlds. They also believe that when praying the soul leaves the body, so if you pray in front of a mirror your soul could bugger off to the otherworld. Hence, as cameras used to (well, some still do I guess) use mirrors, taking a photo whilst folks are praying in church would result in grand larceny, and so is banned. But that’s the mirror, not the camera.

Following on from that, turns out quite a few spiritualists and niche religious branches have a suspicion of mirrors, and that looking back at yourself somehow liberates the soul. The earliest form of photography, the daguerreotype, involved creating the image on a silver plated copper sheet polished to a mirror finish. Yeah, mirror finish, you ahead of me already aye? So mibbies some of the idea comes from that, but I’m not convinced your average undiscovered tribe had awareness of the history or printing techniques of photography.

Again, I’ve spent more time on a distraction than writing the article, at least I’ve not wandered off into the concepts of photography and personal identity in the 21st century…I’ll leave the last word with the well known and much referenced Australian cultural masterpiece, Crocodile Dundee:

Aboriginal: “You can’t take my picture…”
Journalist: “Why? Are you afraid I’m going to steal your soul?”
Aboriginal: “No, because you still have the lens cap on.”

** Big hello and welcome to all my new Russian readers who’ve joined me since my last post. Amazingly your views of that blog were numerous enough to have displaced the UK and France from the top of the “top ten countries what read this blog” list over the last 30 days. Perhaps if I wrote the names “Drumpf” and “Putain” correctly on all my blogs I’d end up with even better reading stats….

19/12/2016
Yeah, but what’s the best descent in Chamonix……

Dinnay fret, I’ve not gone full buzzfeed, just written too many replies to emails* asking “what’re the best bike descents in Chamonix” and figured if I write it here then a link will do the job.

That and I’ve been riding a lot of these trails recently but taking no photos and kinda wanted to share how good the trails are with folks.

Hence, in no particular order, here’s nine of the best descents in and around Chamonix plus a sandbag just to keep y’all on your toes. Obviously I’ve missed out my favourite line and a couple that are seeing enough traffic already.

It also turns out that I’ve not actually written about all these lines, so the links might just cover half the trail. Get a copy of the Chamonix Bike Book and/or the IGN map though, you’ll work it out. What’s the worst that could happen, etc….

Aguillete des Houches to Merlet
Bit of a double whammy this one, not only is there the descent of the Aig des Houches, but you also then get the Merlet (or Animal Park as it’s sometimes kent) trail too, and without the effort of pedalling up the Merlet road. Winner winner chicken dinner.

Vallorcine DH track
Totally unmaintained, unloved, unknown and awesome. One of the best DH race tracks I’ve ridden. The bigger features have fallen into disrepair a bit of late but the lower half is raw as, and all the better for it. Unmaintained is not quite true either as there’s been some good work done on it this year. And I love it so that kinda knocks the rest of the opening line too.

Nid d’Agile to Champel via Col du Tricot
Some of these descents come easy, others a bit less so. This one (two really) is in the less so category. Still, only 900m of climbing for 2200m of descent. The first descent is in fairly full on mountain biking territory, you’re passing folk resplendent in mountaineering gear ready for a jaunt up Mont Blanc, and there some huge exposure and the odd ladder to down climb. Well mint descent though. The second down is still out in big scenery, but this time much more flowy with 2+km of sinuous singletrack contouring along the hillside.

Col du Balme to Trient
Total Chamonix classic, despite being totally in Switzerland. Big open alpine views singletrack at the top then tighter and rockier when you get into the the trees lower down. Probably the easiest of the ten lines here.

Col de Balme to Chatelard
Better than the descent to Trient? Almost exactly the same amount of pedalling back up to Vallorcine (it’s only 15mins at an easy spin, no, you don’t need to take the train) as the descent to Trient but it feels much closer. Less flow and more tech than the Trient line lower down, but the upper singletrack through the alpages is what photographers’ dreams are made of (if they can be bothered getting far enough away from the trail for the shot). And yeah, I know the link isn’t actually for all of this descent, but it covers about half of it and I’d not realised I’d not written anything about it before. No one’s perfect.

Loriaz
The best evening ride in the world? Take the train over to Buet, pedal your way up to the Loriaz chalets, sit and watch the view for a while, there’s no rush, then enjoy one of the best “easier” natural trails in the alps. From Vallorcine you can either sit in the station cafe for a bit then get the train over the col to enjoy the ride back into Chamonix, or just pedal up. It was one of my first rides when I moved to Chamonix (cheers Spence) and through it I’ve met some amazing friends and had some amazing times.

Bellachat trails via Sentier Des Guards and the Brevent couloir
The hillside below the Brevent and Flegere lifts is covered in steep singletrack. It’s also covered in families out walking and off limits in July and August. The riding’s great, but you need to be early or late to really enjoy it without constantly stopping to let folk pass or chat. Sentier Des Guards is a bit further out the way and much less travelled, so it gets the pick here. Obviously you need to start from the high entrance about 100m above the Plan Praz station rather than the 4×4 track, anything else is cheating…..

Plan de l’Aguille
Normally the best areas for skiing are the worst for bikes, and vice versa. Below the Telepherique Aig di Midi is the exception to this rule. Of course, the skiing is easier as you can use the lift. If you want to ride the trail it’s 1300m of climbing, most of it carrying or pushing the bike. Good descent mind. Climbing up by the Pre de rocher side and descending via le Grande Foret is the more interesting loop.

Chalets du Souey
Early and late season ride usually this one, either waiting for the snow to melt high enough or hoping it’s not settled too low. It’s also a good trail for when I’m pining a bit for Scotland, the easy but long pedal up on tarmac and forestry road followed by tight trees, rain runneled gullies, root mazes and the odd well built bit of walking trail is a lot of what I miss. That and I’m usually riding there in the rain.

Le Prarion Summit to Les Bouchards
It doesn’t matter how good you are, there’s always something too hard for you, something that you know you need to get better for. This is mine. I might never be able to ride the full trail, but the challenge is always there and I’m pretty sure it’s possible. If there’s a more tech trail in the valley (that doesn’t have ladders or a glacier in the way) please let me know.

*I hardly ever check the emails, so if you’ve got a question and want an answer in the same month, ask it on an instagram picture and I’ll get back to you quick-sharp. Or in a week at least.

03/08/2016
St Gervais / So that was the first big crash of the summer

“starts Thursday as usual with a canteen quiz and again no-one wins the big cash prize” Means nothing to you? No, well, your loss.

It’s been hard to keep track of events recently. The constant state of flux between what’s in and out, who’s calling the shots, behind the scenes negotiations, false promises. The dust seems to be settling now though and it seems the state of play is this:

Brevent & Flegere. No playing on bikes, or at least no uplift for bikes, until the bike ban ends at the start of September.

Megeve, Les Contamines, St Gervais & Combloux. All good and all included on the Mont Blanc Unlimited lift pass.

Nowt for it but to skip Brevent and Flegere, pedal down the valley to Prarion then over to St Gervais for some exploring.

Conveniently, getting to St Gervais involves riding Who’s Way, which is maybe my favourite trail off the lifts in Chamonix. Certainly one of the more complete. Today it was even more complete with 2 sidewall slits in my possibly a bit past their best tyres. Lessons learnt being 1) tyres have a finite life span 2) when the sealant is pissing through the sidewall, it’s not going to plug itself 3) remember to put your tyre plugs in the rucsac you’re taking with you on that ride and 4) Lorne’s Lezyne minipump is infinitely better than my Specialized minipump.

Anyway, slightly slower than usual, we make it to St Gervais, where the next hold up is the unique shuttle timing system of the St Gervais lifts. They run for 5 minutes every 30 minutes. Don’t expect to get Pleney style fast laps here.

The next main difference to Pleney is when you get to the designated blue “whizz” trail (honestly, what possesses folks to give trails such awful names) and discover a complete absence of braking bumps. A hardtail would be a better weapon than a DH bike. A BMX bike would do the job pretty well if the dust isn’t too loose.

This is a good thing mind. Being based in Chamonix means I read commentary on t’interwebz about the death of “real” riding and the takeover of flow trails with a hint of bemusement. We just dinnay have anything like that near to us, so it’s a grand wee treat to get to ride a well sculpted flow trail where we hardly had to pedal or brake for 6km and just pumped transitions and found things to hop over.

After a lap for photos, it was still lunch time at the lift. (oh, aye, forgot to mention, closes 1200-1330) so we had an icecream (Lorne being well pissed off that there were no Calypsos) then went up for another lap with no stops before exploring other trails.

It should have been no stops.

There’s a bit of boardwalk about a third of the way down where I was just thinking “this’d be bloody lethal in the wet” then I was sliding across said boardwalk using my skin as a brake. I’d also tried to impale myself on my bars, which wasn’t apparent at first, but got worked out by not being able to breath for a minute or so, my favourite bike t-shirt being ripped open pretty much nip to nip, and a line of broken skin from sternum to my left bicep.

And that was pretty much the end of my day really. I was blinking sore, felt like I’d been kicked by a donkey and didn’t have the spirit for exploring. So instead of me now getting to tell you about the pure super-sick-gnar-fest of megarad natural singletrack we then found…..we cruised back to Le Fayet on easy trails, took the tramway back to Bellevue then the “easy” way down of GR5. Which is still a fair bit of good riding.

Plenty more days to explore this summer, so we’ll be back with something more useful before long, but until then, give the St Gervais trails a go. It’s not going to keep you entertained all day, but it’s pretty good for a bit of a change.

11/07/2016
Link up

Want to know what the next big thing’s going to be in mountain biking? Look at other mountain sports; skiing, snowboarding, mountaineering, fell running. Trail centres are a bike only thing? Snowboarding went crazy for snowparks in the mid 90’s. These newfangled “enduro” bikes that are fairly light up hill but a virtually DH bikes on the down? Skiing’s been doing the fat touring ski and DIN 16 touring binding for ages*. Big days out linking your favourite trails….

OK, so we’ve been doing that for a while too, but mountaineers got there first. With the concentration of hardcore climbers around Chamonix the main lines got climbed fairly quick, so how to make it more interesting? Enchain a load of them. This got particularly entertaining in the 80’s when not content with just climbing lots of hard routes, climbers would hanglide between lines, resplendent in Raybans and headscarfs.

So we thought we’d get in on the act.

Just the Bellevue lift left open now, but it’s probably the best lift any to get into more mountainy terrain. An efficient early start saw Spence and me at the top of the lift by 11am ready to link 2 of the best rides in the valley. The Nid d’Aigle and Col du Tricot.

The initial climb to Col Mont Lachat went as smoothly as ever, and also as ever we couldn’t pass the abandoned jet engine test station without having a poke about. If you want to do the same get up there quick as apparently it’s to be demolished this autumn.

As the tramway’s closed now until the winter it’s an easy (relatively speaking….) push up the tracks to the top station at 2372m and a selection of Mont Blanc ascentionists descending and aspirants ascending. It says something about Chamonix that everyone accepted our response of ‘the summit, Mont Blanc’ when we were asked where we were headed.

A relaxed lunch in the sun later, we dropped in to the first descent of the day. The trail was just as good as last year, the views just as distracting, and the section by the ladders just as unridable (unless you’re this guy). Some things never change, just like the 650m descent went so much quicker than the 570m climb.

The trail to Bionassey we followed last year crosses the track climbing to the Col du Tricot, so here we hung a left and headed down through the techy singletrack to the swing bridge. Our handlebars have got wider still, but the bridge remains as narrow, nae riding this time.

Reaching the col a little after 2 we had the hill almost to ourselves, a nice change from the last few rides from the col, benefits of not getting started early I guess. The geology is fairly mobile up here and the descent had evolved a little from last time, but still 100% ridable and 95% fun. It’s only the access route for the second section anyway.

With a huge amount of effort, I managed to stop this time to fire off a couple of photos of the trail, but they really don’t show how good it is. From the chainring gouges on some of the rocks I think a few more folk are finding out for themselves, maybe I should start saying the trails no good?

The road kilometres from Villette to St Gervais give a welcome respite to the arms and a chance to enthuse about how good the trail was and how well you rode it….or otherwise, before the final bit of interest on the pipeline trail from St Gervais to Le Fayet. Why’s it called pipeline? As Spence said; if you don’t know, you’ve not ridden it.

Of course, whilst the tramway being closed made our life easier at the start of the day, it now meant we couldn’t just hop back up to Bellevue and finish off a triptych of trails with the GR5. Instead we got to miss the train to Chamonix whilst I tried to work the automated ticket machine, then go for a beer in the sun whilst we waited for the next one.

Could this be the best ride in Chamonix? If you can only ride “one” trail then maybe these 2, linked in with GR5 to get you back into the valley, is where it’s at.

But then, you could always start from town and ride Aiguillet des Houches from Brevent to Les Houches first.

Or….

*So smart arse, where’s mountain biking going next? Well, snowboarding’s all about the split board, so I guess we’ll be keeping the all-mountain/enduro thing going. Skiing seems to be getting into lightweight rando-racing equipment and lycra though. Maybe mountain biking does lead the way sometimes.

28/09/2014
‘Effing excellent

You might not have noticed, but there’s a wee bit of a referendum happening in Scotland next week. It seems that Westminster hadn’t noticed either as over the last 7 days there’s been a sudden realisation that folks north of the border might just go vote for independence, and for reasons other than watching Braveheart too many times. Cue a love bombing campaign of Scotland. Promises that we won’t take you for granted, we won’t ignore you, it’ll be different this time, trust us, we’re politicians…

But this isn’t a political blog, so what’s with the intro? Well, I worry I might have been doing something similar with Chamonix. After a summer of racing across France I’ve seen amazing trails, great riding scenes, understanding lift companies and Chamonix’s been forgotten, just there for the day to day rides. Fortunately the last 2 days as we squeeze the last out of each closing lift has reminded me just how ‘effing excellent the riding is here.

Lacking the tech of Brevent & Flegere, and the huge views of Le Tour, Les Houches doesn’t really spring to mind when most people think of the riding around Chamonix. A shame as it’s got some of the best trails. As long as it’s not raining, or you don’t mind the mud.

A quick lap of most of the bike park trail with a wee variation to avoid the mud and road of the lower section warmed us up before heading to the main course of the day, Who’s way.

Spence, who’s ridden pretty much everything in Chamonix, had somehow missed this over the years so Lorne and I were keen to show it off.

It takes a bit of finding, but the clues are there for an amazing, almost 100% singletrack, 1300m descent from the Prarion gondola through Montfort and on to Le Fayet. There’s a few more tyre tracks on it than this time last year which suggests it’s being found a bit more, but so far everyone’s playing nice and not skidding it to death.

After commenting most of the way down how good it was not to be riding against the clock we then discovered we were riding against the clock to get to St Gervais in time for the last tramway. Some hashtagendurotraining later we had a 10 minute wait for the tram and the decision of how to head back to town.

Which, as usual, turned out to be the GR5/Cedric’s favourite trail (allegedly). How had I forgotten how good this trail was? As an added bonus, some work’s been done on the techiest section since the summer deluges, bringing it that bit closer back to being ridable clean (by us, I’m sure Cedric would have nae worries).

Three thousand vertical meters or so of varied and amazing riding all in an afternoon off work. Chamonix, how did I ever doubt you?

Another day and another lunch break, time enough to sample the fun at Flegere on it’s last day. A busy choice with plenty of other folks out on bikes and enjoying the sunshine. One lap down to Les Joux and another to Floria buvette doesn’t sound like much but again, these trails are just so good I was embarrassed to have been neglecting them.

The trail elves have even been out doing some work on the old Flegere DH trail to make it 100% rideable from the Index lift down to the Flegere/Brevent liaison lift and so make the first bit of the descent a bit more interesting than fireroad.

Should it be “Aye Chamonix” or “Chamonix, better together”? Dunno. But I’m looking forward to getting reacquainted

15/09/2014