Chamonix Bike Blog

Tag: martigny

Dorenaz

I got a fair bit of feedback on the last post here. Apparently the physics of time and space and time were/are/will be a step too far. Folk were worried. It’s nice to know people care. And read the blog.

With that in the mind, lets bring things back down to earth with something more cheery.

Parasites.

Damn they’re amazing. Take toxoplasmosis. Until recently all I knew about it was you get it in cat poo and it caused Tommy’s death in Trainspotting (err, spoiler). Well, it didn’t really, his death was the result of a chain of events that surely couldn’t have been foreseen but that doesn’t help my point, whatever, choose life.

Some of this is relevant. Toxoplasmosis is a parasite that lives in the guts of cats. To proliferate it needs to spread from cat to cat. Obviously, this is difficult when you live in the gut of a cat. So, toxoplasmosis leaves through the usual channels and sits on the floor. Cats don’t eat cat poo. Cats eat rats and mice. So instead the parasite waits for the rats and mice to eat the poo and get one step closer to the guts of the next cat. This would be interesting enough, but the really good bit is about to come. Normal mouse and rat behaviour is to stay as close as possible to the edge of a room or some other shelter. Not those that have been infected with toxoplasmosis. These rats and mice throw off their agoraphobia and make a b-line for the middle of the room, maximising their chance of ending up as cat snack. It gets weirder. Some studies into rats have shown that after being infected with toxoplasmosis they might become sexually attracted to the scent of cat urine. Which raises some interesting questions about the perfume industry.

This tiny wee parasite completely alters the behaviour of a host animal for it’s own gain. Where could analogies with day to day life be found in that?

Thinking about it, is this blog parasitic? Does it alter your behaviour when you read these posts and keep seeing yon lovely Airdrop Edit on the finest trails in the world, you start associating the two. Probably not your behaviour, but does it alter my behaviour? I’m keen to keep riding the bike (it’s the most fun bike I’ve owned), and I’m also keen to keep getting them, so does that worm its way into my mind and alter my picture choices? How about when you see ideas for rides that are notchamonix and they work on your mind to change your behaviour to do that, leave the safety of the bikepark, head out into the open. Does this blog make you attracted to the smell of marmotte pee?

So many questions with no intention of finding an answer. On with the riding.

In a valley not so far away there is a magical lift. Ok, maybe magical is pushing it a bit, but unique should cover it. Dorenaz is public transport, a quicker easier way up to Champex than taking the bus. That makes it fairly rare. It takes bikes, at least 6 of them, for a small extra fee. This makes it rarer. You hang the bikes from hooks on the underside of the lift and hope they’re still attached when you get to the top. There’s not many lifts that make you do that.

Normally when you use uplift you sling the bike into the carrier and forget about it until you have to unhook it from the chairlift at the top. Not so much in Dorenaz where I challenge anyone not to have a quick glance at their axles to make sure everything’s done up good and tight. It’s funny the things that get inside your head.

No matter how amazing, the lift only gets you so far. We stood about in the slightly cooler air of 1124m altitude, looked at a map, discussed options, and decided it was way too much like effort to go all the way to the Tete du Portail, and definitely way too hot and dry for the descent. The lower trails on the south facing aspects from the Dorenaz lift are loose and dry at the best of times, as it doesn’t seem to have rained this century in Valais we couldn’t really call this the best of times.

Instead we started traversing and climbing along the west facing slopes, linking trails we knew with trails we’d heard of.

It went pretty well. We basically ended up with 2 descents, the first steep, slow and technical the second faster looser and more flowing.

The first was what I guess BC Canada would feel like if it rained less and was warmer. So BC in about 10 years then. The dirt didn’t quite have that hero tack of Whistler, but it wasn’t just loose dust either, and the rock lined trail dropping down through old growth forest with the early autumn light filtering down to the green floor made you feel like you were in another Frenchie-living-in-Squamish shredit. Stills make this myth easier to perpetuate than video.

I can’t really remember the climb, which is probably part of the bike being a parasite thing, altering memory to suppress the bit’s that aren’t fun, so maybe the first descent led straight into the second?

It didn’t, but we get to make our own truths, so it did. Which will be part of the parasitic behaviour of society thing.

The second course was a much quicker affair, which was good and bad. Lot’s of fun, but it’s all over so much quicker. It was good to be in nice wide spaced trees, and being early autumn there was a fine combination of orange on the forest floor, orange in the canopy, and less intense orange sunlight dappling down amongst the shadows.

Orange, truly the colour of our time.

I alluded to it being quick, 850m had been lost in a dusty, slidy, hairpin-y flash and we were left with the pay off from going right for the last few hours. A sharp turn to the left and heading back home. We can but hope. Turned out the fun wasn’t over. Whilst going right had been a steady downhill trend, going left still had some fun singletrack next to the Rhone to pump and pop along before the final few kilometers of vineyard track back to the car. Chat turned to where next in 2020’s adventure. No idea, but I’ll probably write something for it. Photos for this week come from the phone’s of messieurs Oliver Carr and Juan Coatez, ta muchly!

22/09/2020
Emosson dam / Things are generally better than you think they are.

Here’s a question for you*:

In the last 20 years the percentage of the world’s population living in extreme poverty** has?

A) About doubled
B) Remained about the same
C) About halved

A, obviously.

How about this one then:

How many of the world’s 1 year old children have been vaccinated*** against at least 1 disease?

A) 20%
B) 50%
C) 80%

Again, surely A isn’t it. Depressing but that’s how it goes. Certainly not C. What optimistic fool would think that?

So yeah, it’s C. Both times. Don’t worry, most people get it wrong. You’d assume by the wonders of multiple choice averages then about 33% would get those questions right, but no, its closer to 13%

And your education doesn’t seem to help either, apparently that last question has a strong correlation where the better your education, the more likely you said A. Which makes sense, as you’d be more aware of the complexities of creating, storing, transporting and administering a vaccine that needs to be kept refrigerated at all times and delivered by highly trained professionals.

Why’s this? I don’t really know, but clevererer folks than me think it’s because there’s a lag time between your education and your current place in the world. What you learnt at school was probably right(ish) 5, 10, 20, 30 years ago but the world has moved on. It’s just your knowledge that hasn’t. You imagine that because you were taught about famines and corruption and destitution in many regions across the world, things haven’t really changed. If a country can’t feed their population, how can they have a refrigerated transport network? Well they can by having moved on over a 20 year period and now most citizens live a lifestyle similar to the UK not that long ago. In general, on almost any metric you care to use, the world of right now is a better place than the world of your school days. Things really are getting better. So essentially, before making a flash judgement on something, you need to check what the state of the art is and re-assess your existing knowledge. Then crack on with your whataboutisms that the statue is there because of his philanthropic work and historical context, not the other dubious bits. Like, why else would you want to keep the statue of Jimmy Savile?

Bikes then Graham, how are you pulling this back to bikes?

Weel, a similar thing happens with trails. You might have ridden a line on the map 8 years ago, but mountain geology is an active thing, trails change, work gets done to make things less or more rideable. Riders change, our tastes change, our bikes get better. Basically, you need to go back to places every so often to see if the situations changed.

Years ago I more or less wrote off Emosson Dam as being not worth the effort of biking except the classic line from the dam to Martigny. James got in touch to see if I wanted to try and find a trail he’d heard of over Emosson dam way. I was fairly sure it’d be ok, just not worth the effort you’d put in to get there, but I’d not seen James in ages and playing bikes is only ever an excuse to catch up with the amazing people that ride them. So I said aye, where shall we meet and a day later we’d both taken the same different train and were sat in a cafe in Finhaut drinking coffee out of antique tea cups whilst a giant cat pinned me to the chair and a road climb in the sun waited for us.

Long story short, turned out to be a great trail. It wouldn’t have been a great trail 15 years ago because my bike would have broken on the way down (twice) and I’d have broken on the way up if I’d tried to pedal something that would survive the down.

We explored a bit, we turned around from the first attempt due to too much snow, we found the second plan, we sessioned a few bits, we looked at dragon flies, we rode some great trail, we talked about all sorts of shit.

Actually, that’s not praise enough. It really was a good trail. We chose not to ride a couple of short sections, partly because we are now old, partly because even though both of us are happy to represent for bike companies that produce bikes we really like (obviously mine is better though, covid compliant fist bumps to Airdrop for the new Edit which has taken the baton passed to it by my old Edit and Bolted down the hill) we don’t want to replace those bikes too often and big piles of rocks do shorten bike lifespans when you drop them into it.

The upper section had the most bike threatening terrain, but past the initial couple hundred meters of descent things mellowed out and it turned onto one of those trails that you know is older than your grandparents yet somehow was built with 2020 bikes in mind. Tight switchbacks but with supportive berms, assorted small lips with perfectly placed backsides to aim for, rocks that roll or launch depending on your preference. Like I say, really was a good trail.

It’s the trail between the dam, Gietroz and Chatelard. That should give enough clues to tempt you away from the increasingly busy Chamonix without taking away too much of the fun of updating your knowledge.

*If you’ve read Factfullness then none of this is news to you. I’m confident most of you haven’t, so I can get away with stealing content.

**Extreme poverty is generally defined as living on ‘less than a dollar a day’ but that’s based on 1996 prices, so the world bank considers, for 2019, that extreme poverty is living on less than $2.16 a day. In 2018 an estimated 8.6% of the world lived in extreme poverty, in 1998 24% which is closer to thirded than halved, but there’s plenty room for error in the stats. Unfortunately, and in opposition to the general aim of this piece, the predictions are that for the first time in a very long time the percentage of people living (perhaps surviving might be a better term) in extreme poverty looks set to rise due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Which is shit. And also a reminder that the restarting of economies in the rich nations has knock on effects world wide if we stay with the current global economic model, or that if the world is going to change to a new more human/less $ focused system then we’d better do it quick sharp as time really is running out for a lot of people. Don’t worry though, the ultra rich still got richer so that’s good isn’t it.

18/07/2020 Also, just to clarify and I should have had this in originally; Things getting better isn’t the same as things being good. 8.6% of the world living in extreme poverty whilst the richest 26 people in the world hold 50% of global wealth is a fucking disgrace and needs to change.

***Interesting facts for all you die-hard, or at least die-of-preventable-illness, anti-vaxers: the very first vaccine was made in 1796 to neuter smallpox, a disease that was eventually eradicated thanks to that thar vaccination. Regrettably no double blind study was carried out 224 years ago, we had to wait over 150 years for that to start happening, but it does happen. Seriously, how can you believe despite all the evidence that these vaccines are unleashed on the public untested, how does that great conspiracy theory run through governments that can’t even get the trains to run on time?

16/07/2020
Vote Leave*.

I left the EU today**. It was easy too. Me and 3 fellow EU citizens packed the bikes into the car, went to the boulangerie and drove over the border into the wildlands of Switzerland. Then after a days riding came back to the EU.

There’s still a couple of days to go until the Chamonix lifts open for the summer so lazy riding needs a bit more effort. Fortunately Switzerland’s Postbus service can provide just the help we need to get 1700m of descending for only 700m of up.

Woop.

The Col des Planches area is new to me but Oli and Jarno have ridden there (and quite a few other places) plenty so there was none of the route finding stress I normally associate with riding somewhere new. Perhaps there’s something to be said for riding with a guide and bike holiday organiser in the crew.

There’s also a lot to be said for riding with a photographer in the crew, however the batteries died in Tom’s camera (possibly due to the several hundred artistic shots of “roof-rack mounted bike shadow on assorted roadside surfaces” on the drive over) and for most of the downs we were moving too fast and enjoying the flow too much to be having with any of that stopping for just push-up-one-more-time malarky, so don’t expect many insta-bangers the day.

Enough of the scene setting. We’ve driven over to Martigny, taken the road up towards the Col des Planches, and parked the car at the village of Chemin Dessus (yes, that is the name of the village). A relaxed pedal up the hill later and we have to make the first choice of the day. A longer ride, with more climbing, to get two big descents or a shorter climb for a shorter descent to start, then a much bigger descent for main course. With the cloud settling in around us and the forecast for heavy rain early in the afternoon we went with the shorter day.

Said short climb through the mist done, we were ready to drop into Sentier des Mines. It’s called Sentier des Mines because it’s the path to the mines. The mines that you can still wander about inside (we’re not in the EU anymore Dorothy, them thar Belgian bureaucrats canny stop us getting killed in an abandoned mine now….) for quite some distance, though bringing a torch would be a good idea.

Fun as the dietrus of the industrial age is, the trail down was lots more interesting, and made even more interesting by the 4 up race to the end of the trail. The only thing better than trying to overtake 2 riders in one move is trying to overtake 3 with one move.

Sentier des Mines done we headed back up the same tarmac for the main line of the day, 950m descent from the junction of Route du Planard and Route du Col des Planches.

Jarno and Oli were warning that there’s a couple of tricky hairpins near the start. They weren’t joking! Tight and steep is not too bad, but when you add exposed into the mix it’s all a bit more interesting. Oli got the only clean descent of the 3 of us, but Tom won most dramatic when he celebrated surviving the hairpins by clipping the side of the trail on the last narrow bit and firing him and bike off down the scree. He received a good sized slice through his elbow as a prize, and the first aid kits got raided to stick him back together again.

That was the last of the drama, and pretty much the last of the photos, as from here down the trail was just fast and swooping singletrack through a mix of alpine style trees and Mediterranean coast style brush. All grand fun if eyewateringly quick in places.

Then, as there’s the unbreakable rules of physics to contend with, what went up finished coming down and we cruised back along the valley floor to the Martigny amphitheatre to watch the lions eat the Christians whilst we munched our sandwiches.

Fittingly some roadies arrived and sat down on the other side to do the same, so obviously a gladiatorial duel ensued. 6.9kg road bikes are nae match for our enduro gnar and no sooner had we bludgeoned them to death than we got the emperors thumbs up and headed off to 21st century Martigny for a coffee whilst waiting for the bus to get us back up to the car. Tae be fair, dropping the 5.60chf plus 1/2 fare for the bike would be the better way of making our way up the hill, but the bus timetable is a little limited, so bus at the end of the ride it was.

As we headed back to the shining bright lights of the EU we got stopped at the border, which reminded me, have you ever seen the length of the queue for the Non-EU citizens passport booth at border control? This referendum shouldn’t be about the economy or if you don’t want to share your island with other folks, no, just think of your holidays people.

Please, please, please don’t vote leave! but if that’s the majority choice from the public, then out the EU we go. At least it will be the common will and so the UK should go forward looking to see what it can do for the world rather than what the world can do for it irrespective of the outcome. For your random non-bike lesson of the day however……consider Socrates.

The Socrates who accepted his (wrongful) execution by the state, even though he had plenty chance to escape, on the grounds that it was prescribed by democracy and therefore was right***. Even if it was wrong. That’s the Socrates who tried to prove the oracle at Delphi’s proclamation that he was the wisest of all was wrong as he considered himself to posses no wisdom. He questioned all the wisest members of Athens society and found them to think themselves wise, but there was more they didn’t know than they did. He knew he didn’t know very much which paradoxically meant he was wiser. And a bit of smart arse too, so aforementioned Athens high heidyins, who were a bit fed up now of being made to look foolish, sent him to trial. You can guess how it went from there, but if you want more, try looking on the internet.

*Not actually today, it was the 8th, but that doesn’t scan quite as well.

***Yeah, I know, the scholarly jury is still out on this interpretation but it’s fairly well accepted and fits my analogy well.

Apologies to the majority of readers who ain’t from the UK and are just looking on in bemusement at Brexit.

10/06/2016
Cunning as a fox drunk on cunning juice

Ahh, the clear mountain air, the efficient clean travel on a bike, the pristine alpine environment.

Shame we drove here.

Worse, the ride’s plan involved knocking the vertical climbed down from 1500m to 450m by driving over in 2 cars, leaving 1 at the bottom then heading back to the top. More wasted miles, more wasted time, more wasted CO2.

But, in the future, it will be different…….

Electric cars are getting closer and closer (it’s a long read, but way more worth while more than the rest of this) and renewables are forming more and more of the grid capacity (Scotland managed 50% of power generation through renewables in 2014) so there’ll be less to feel guilty about there, but it’s still irritatingly inefficient to drive 2 cars.

Which is why I predict the next big thing in mountainbiking will be the google self drive car.

Yup, think about it. Sit there and let it drive you to the top of the hill, get the bike out, then plug in the GPS of the bottom of the hill and ghost the car off. Shred the gnar to the power of X-TRM then get back in to the motor and repeat.

Unfortunately, that’s the future and this is the now, so I needed a cunning plan to avoid the inefficiencies, a plan cunning as a fox drunk on cunning juice. I needed…..

An ultra runner.

As luck would have it, Colin had got into town the day before and wanted to run up some hills, the game was on.

It doesn’t take much of a glance at a map to notice the trail traversing from Col du Forclaz below the Pont Rond before dropping down the ridgeline towards Borgeaud near Martigny, with the perma-autumn showing no sign of letting up today seemed a good day to try it out.

The traverse round goes easily enough, a mix of pedalling, pushing and dancing as we discovered several tricky patches of well frozen snow below the coating of pine needles…

From Portalo (no, really) the trail pops out of the trees and into view, along with the Grand Combin comes a thin line of a trail heading off into the distance.

I’ll be honest, for the first 300m or so of vertical the descent it was only ok. Fast and open track ranging from about one to four or so foot wide. Never particularly technical except for the challenge of keeping the bike straight on the loose surface at the speeds you could reach. So far, a really good choice for less confident riders still looking for a big alpine descent.

Fortunately, as well as driving the car to the base of the hill for us, Colin had been scouting the track and gave us the heads up for a easy to miss trail ducking left off the main trail about 1/2 height.

Just as well he told us, it’s pretty easy to miss but well worth taking. Could do with a wee bit more traffic to clear some of the twigs and crap off the trail, but otherwise, smashing bit of riding. Obviously there are no photos of this bit due to the combined issues of the trail being too much fun to want to stop (common issue this) and it’s dark in the woods, we’re no riding with a flash set up.

As ever, even with the balance of down to up being tipped far in our favour, the descent ended quicker that the climb (mibbies there’s something to be said for trail running there) and some eyewateringly fast 4×4 trail topped by some fun but loose singletrack spat us out in Borgeaud and the conveniently parked car.

Conclusion? Great idea, good trail, hopefully to be repeated.

Course, we could always just get e-mountainbikes and solve the problem that way. Or maybe not, just stick to convincing folk to drive the car down for us. Cheers Colin

18/11/2015