Chamonix Bike Blog

Tag: Samoens

Enduro World Series round 4, Samoens

Aye, so, err….World series enduro racing. Just round the valley from home. Couldn’t really not enter.

Turn up on Friday for registration, stupidly assuming it would be in the same virtually purpose built structure as last years Coupe du France registration. Obviously it’s not and spend 30 minutes randomly riding about till I find the small hall it’s now in. Nina was chatting away to Joe Barnes in the queue so I shamelessly skip in.

After tracking down some more water and joking about the mudguard in the goodie bag we chat to Isa and Enrico, then with the stage map being released (not that any of us ever got to see it mind, which begs the question, how did people know where the stage was?) we headed over to walk Saturdays stage 3 behind the full rocky mountain team. By the top it seemed every name I’d ever read about or watch videos of was kicking about. And speaking to Nina. The name dropping getting too much for you yet? I’ve not finished.

We get down and go for ice cream.

It’s too hot for northern Europeans.

Saturday. With a race number of 190 I’m safely in the nobodies again. A mix of British, Kiwi, Irish, French and German around me. With English crossed with French being the main language it’s a bit less work for me to communicate than inflicting my franglais on folks at the Coupe du France.

We reccy the stage, race the stage, and repeat until about 5000m of descent is clocked up. Or that’s the plan. As I arrive (late, the loading system for the gondola leaves a little to be desired with about 350 riders on the start list) for my reccy there’s a few drops of rain in the air. Twenty minutes later I’ve finished my reccy and am droochit, though the ground which hasn’t felt rain for about 4 weeks is soaking it up, begging for more and not getting too muddy. The thunderstorm stops after 30 minutes.

Later riders aren’t so lucky. Chamonix rider Dave Hughes finds another rider on the ground with his handlebar through his thigh. He tourniquets with a tube and the helicopter evacuates. The course is on hold for 1 hour.

I’m not going to describe the stages beyond stage 1 had the most pedalling, stage 2 the most bike park, stage 3 the shortest, stage 4 the most brutal on the upper body and stage 5 just the most, one of the best trails out there.
Stage 1 passed, seemed ok, no terrible mistakes. Spencer who was back on mechanic duties (Formula 1 pit ain’t got nothing on him for tubeless tyre changes) meets me at the pits and says the second run on stage 2 is cancelled due to the time delays so I kick about waiting to see if it’s going to stop getting hot and sunny and return to rain.

It doesn’t. Then the stage times go up. I’ve landed in 73rd place on the 1st stage. This is something of a surprise. Heading up for stage 2 I’m no longer relaxed and just having fun with no stress of trying to do well (because obviously there’s no way I’d do well at an EWS). Instead I’m now worrying I have to try hard and take “good” lines.

The day was still fun, but by the end I was riding so cautiously I’m surprised I’m not still up there. The plus side of this was that the bike didn’t need fixed overnight.

Sunday morning and we get re-seeded according to our Saturday finish. I ended the day 83rd. Instead of the relaxed piss taking of Saturday’s riders I’m now surrounded by riders with their name on their jersey and bike. Presumably this is as they change sponsor every year so it’s hard to remember which bike is theirs. Also, instead of wondering how many riders I’ll overtake, I have Phil Shucksmith 15sec behind me, Eddie Masters 30, and Chris Kilmurray 45 . There’s still plenty piss taking, but I really don’t feel I belong here with the “real” riders. At least I’ve got my good riding top without any holes in it saved for the race runs.

Blowing straight through the tape on the practice run for the last stage (not the first to do so, the marshal is already pulling fresh tape off the roll as I career past him) I walk back to the trail to meet Eddie Masters doing the same. Me and the 3 riders behind me are now in a train of 4 whooping and whipping our way down one of the best trails in the alps. It’s not what racing is about, but it’s a lot of fun, and the only time I relax on the bike all day.

Racing over, the Dude’s of Hazzard suggest swimming in the Giffre. This seems like a good idea until I put my feet in the river and decide I’ll just paddle. Nina does the same. Spencer decides even that looks too cold. It’s left to the rest to go swimming. James Shirly goes one better and has his post race wash. 100% commitment to the van life. A stone skimming contest then starts to get a little out of hand.

So was that a race weekend? I mostly seemed to be chatting to random folk with a common interest in bikes. Some I’d never met, some I knew only as the stars of the sport, some had been at the same races as me in the past. Then there were the friends who’d headed over to see just how good the best of the best are get some riding in when the racing moved on (cheers for the cheers everyone, apologies if I was a bit distracted and didn’t say hello on the course!)

Cheers to Luke Jarmey Photography for bumping up the standard of photography, Spencer for standing about a carpark in the rain and sun giving encouragement and everyone who cheered for me and chatted away over the weekend.

23/07/2015
Last chance to see. Samoens

Life is a temporary affair. As an organism you get between a few seconds and a thousand or so years on earth. As a species it seems you get about 10 million years until you’re outta here. As a rule, it’s the mass extinctions that’ll get you. There’s probably been five already (alas details are sketchy, there’s not many folk left afterwards to keep a record), which between them mean that 99.5% of the species that have been, have been and gone.

Today we’re possibly going into a sixth mass extinction with species getting the chop at a rate about 100 to 1000 times faster than “background” extinction. The interesting thing with this one is that whilst the others were as a result of natural events, the blame for this one is pinned square on our love of carbon and aluminium bits made in China.

Of course mass extinction isn’t all bad news (unless you’re the species becoming extinct I guess), every event has been followed by a period of diversification as new species arrive blinking into the light and leap up the reordered food chain. It’s how we got where we are today, thank you Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

What’s this got to do with a bike blog then? Very little.

The Enduro World Series circus arrives in Samoens this week ready for the racing weekend next. Whilst you’re not allowed to practice the special stages under French rules, there’s nothing about driving 45 minutes over to have a go on the trails 8 days before the race. With so many trails and no idea which will be used, it’s unlikely you’ll ride the right ones.

Either way, as of today all EWS riders are banned (that needs some caps-lock. BANNED) from the whole Samoens bike park. On foot or bike. So the weekend there was your last, err, chance to, umm, see the trails. Too tenuous a link?

So Spence, Nina and me met in Samoens last week to get a feel for the trails in the dry. This is an important point as the last time we were here it was not dry, which is sort of where the intro comes in.

The Coupe du France race here last summer was a quagmire. One of our first trails of the day included sections of Stage 1/3 which had been killed by the passing of 300 riders twice the year before. But, springing from either side of the trail was numerous new trails, similar but different.

After next weekend, when it will no doubt have rained and large quantities of earth transported from the hill to bikes and into the back of 300 riders cars and vans, there will be another set of destroyed trails on the hill with hub deep ruts and blown out berms. And hopefully from there more trails will be built, the old trails will be absorbed back into the forest and no one will die out.

Anyway, for anyone that wants to know, the trails under the GMC lift in Samoens are amazing. A lot like Innerleithen/Pleny off piste/Les Houches (pick according to geographic experience) in that they’re fairly steep, rooty, tight n twisty though trees yet often silly fast in straight lines (still through trees). The pictures probably say more. And if you’re reading this to get some handy tips for the race, Nicolai, Clementz, Graves is my thoughts, with cut down spikes and some Gore-tex. See you there.

13/07/2015
Coupe du France Enduro series round 4, Samoens

There are 3 certainties in life; death, taxes and the Samoens round of the Coupe du France being muddy.

But to be honest, on Friday afternoon as the car was getting packed for the short drive over to register and deal with scrutineering, I wasn’t so sure. And a quick track walk to see what the trail conditions were didn’t have me convinced I was going to need my newly purchased second hand wetscreams.

Then it started raining, then pissing it down, then the warm up act ended and the real storm arrived. The certainty memes were safe, it was going to be a wet race.

Samoens is part of the Grand Massif lift network and gives an interesting change from Chamonix’s mostly steep and rocky trails without the crowds of Morzine. Of course, steep and rocky trails generally drain and dry quickly after rain. Mellower angled loam under trees doesn’t and with there being something in the order of 250% of average rainfall this summer there’s not been much in the way of dust recently.

Possibly helped by the announcement Samoens will host a round of the EWS next year there were more French pros and international riders than usual, including the Irish/Scottish combo of Greg Callaghan and Katy Winton, which was great as my French sucks so I could have slightly more in depth conversations between stages than;
“It’s muddy”,
“Yes, it’s muddy, but I’m Scottish, I like muddy”,
“I’m from the south of France, I hate muddy”,
“Ah.”

Anyways, the stages were a little complicated to follow from the map, with 11 stages between the 2 days, but only 6 traces. As ever the event video helps, but they worked out something like….

Saturday
Stage 1 & 3. Starting outside the main Samoens lift, fast but a little peddaly grass into the trees for lots of fresh cut loamy trail and the odd bit of built up bermed track, a wee blast down some fire road then back into loamy earthy natural banked stuff in the trees before you were spat out at the finish, thankfully short of some northshore and a couple of minute spin along the tarmac to….

Stage 2 & 4. The pedalliest of the weekend, but still not too bad, a mix of quite tricky to nail tight tech and faster more open trails.

After a lunch break and another trip up the gondola you had the first proper pedal/push liaison up to Stage 5
A good 500m of fire road down to some open trails in new growth forest, then a mix of very rocky 4×4 with regular taped of excursions into the undergrowth.

Another flattish pedal along some road finally got you to Stage 6 & 7 under the Morrilion gondola. A sprint across grass and tarmac (for instant cure to constipation, try cornering at race speed on tarmac with full spikes), through a tunnel where you had to use the walls as a berm (again, try committing to that on full spikes), then some reet fast rooty loams trails, the odd short climb, and more fast rooty loamy trails.

Sunday featured just the 2 traces, each repeated twice. The main Samoens lift gave you most of the height gain, then it was a 30 minute ride push to stage 1/3 and another 30 minutes or so push to stage 2/4

Stage 1 & 3. A short uphill sprint along some fireroad lead to a punchy 10m high climb then about 150m of gently rising boggy singletrack ensured you were knackered as the ground dropped away beneath you and you were into a roller coaster of natural berms and ruts down the hill where often the best bet was just to hold on and hope you bounced out of the end of each section still in the right direction.

Stage 2 & 4. About as good as it gets in my book! A bit of everything, but mostly fast flowing singletrack in the trees. The only thing that didn’t feature was a real climb, all the pedalling was to go faster, not to just go.

So all in, a grand selection of trails with very little serious pedalling, but racing doesn’t always work out like racing and it definitely didn’t this time.

Milling around at the start of stage 1 during the obligatory delayed start the feel was more of a (massive) group ride than a race, a distinct lack of aggression and competitiveness in the air. The track was pretty slick, but fun. The only problem was if you fell, you were stuck on the ground like a beetle on it’s back with a serious fight on your hands (and knees) to get up. And as the course was narrow, if the rider in front of you went down, you were probably going into them and down. As would the rider behind you….

Stage 2 was much the same and, with only a short pause before heading back up, there was a quick clean of the bike, a swap to flats and a bite to eat before getting on the gondola for Stage 3.

Enduro racing is all about surprises, and the surprise waiting for us was the news that stage 4 was to be cancelled because it was too claggy. The reason this was a surprise was that on the first run down, stage 2 was way, way less claggy that stage 1. Still how bad could it be?

Worse than this years Megavalanche was the answer. According to Melanine Pugin at least and, as she won the Mega, she should probably know. The mud was so thick you had no warning between the bike feeling a bit slow and so much mud getting behind the fork brace you were flipped over the bars. If you had the strength to lift your 100kg bike, running was generally the quickest option. Until you fell over. The results from this stage were all over the place, but that’s racing.

Down to the pits, clean the bike and time for the secret weapon. Off with the wetscream/High roller combo, on with my 15 year old 1.9″ Michelin DH muds, from when spikes meant SPIKES.

Of course, this meant the next 3 trails were no where near as bad and had a fair bit of firm ground, but I think my sacrifice was worth it for the good of the group.

With the weather staying sunny through the day and into Sunday the trails were drying fast, but hopefully not going to unrideable clag again.

My lack of power to sprint up hills was made brutally apparent on stage 1 Sunday when my 10 second man, series ranked 17th Julien Roissard, passed me within 150m of the start before the trail headed downhill. I blamed still being on flats.

Stage 2 was going just brilliantly, with Julien taking until about 1/2 way to pedal past me and generally having so much fun I almost forgot that this is meant to be serious when I went over a blind rise into a sea of orange spraypainted rocks. Riding blind, fast, is one of the reasons I enjoy these races, unfortunately it wasn’t until 1/2 way through this rock garden I remembered I had a 1.9″ rear tyre with a tube in it. As the tube deflated I briefly considered doing an Aaron Gwin, but then realised that that would just be stupid, so shouldered the bike and started running. Only about a 1/3rd of the course to go. Still, if you feel you don’t get enough cheers at a race, wrap your tyre round your frame and get running, the crowd loves you!

Anyway, after a good feed (as ever, it’s almost worth doing the races for the free food and brake pads), a change to a big Minion DHF for the back and spuds on the bike, the day was reset with no aims of improving on my placings and instead just having fun. As the 2 stages were amongst the best I’ve raced all year, in fact stage 2/4 is one of the best trails I’ve ridden all year, this was pretty easy.

Neither Nina or I were particularly happy with our results over the weekend, but points mean prizes, or at least they hopefully do for Nina sitting in 3rd for the series going into the last round, I’m less hopeful that the prize fund makes it back to my end of the score sheet.

One more race to go then it’s autumn and the best time of year for some real riding.

03/09/2014
Proper planning prevents (long climbs). Grand Massif

Half way between Chamonix and the Portes du Soleill sits the Grand Massif ski area, and it’s sort of ½ and ½ PDS & Chamonix in the riding too, with Chamonix’s queues and busyness combined with the PDS’s rolling terrain and bike friendly attitude.

After scratching the surface there last year I was keen to return and explore more, with the descent from the top of the Flaine lifts at 2480m down to Sixt at about 750m being top of the to do list. Arriving in Les Carroz a quick look in the direction of Flaine was enough to guess that there is still, at the end of July, too much snow. Maybe next month.

Instead our plan became to hit the Les Carroz bike park for a few laps before riding over to Samoens whilst the lifts were closed for lunch, lap Samoens & Morillon for a bit then head back to the car. Sorted.

The Les Carroz bike park hadn’t changed much from last year. Some maintenance keeping it in order, a bit more signage, a few new features, but still the same trails and still fun.

With the lifts closing for lunch we started the trek over. Armed with no maps, a reasonable sense of direction and a mix of bikes ranging from superlight enduro race rig to DH monster bike, we figured to begin with “up” and see how it worked out.

The previous year we’d ridden the “La Vieille” trail for part of the way over, which was good but unfinished. This year we managed to find it again, and it was finished. Unfortunately it involved a fair bit of contouring, but no complaining from Richie & Alex on the big bikes.

Eventually we made it round to the Samoens trails and let gravity do the hard work again. There’s a maze of trails coming off the main Grand Massif Express lift here, both official and locals. We managed to avoid repeating anything from last year and found some amazing riding, a day could easy be spent on this one lift without getting bored.

My afternoon started to get a bit worse at this point, with the discovery that my shiny new Spicy 516 had been spec’d with cheap inner tubes too small for the tyres. After 2 punctures, 1 of which happened when the bike was lying on its side, I was getting quite grumpy.

The mood wasn’t improved with discovering that the second Samoens lift, the Chariande Express wasn’t running. This was the lift we needed to get back to Les Carroz. And the car. No problem, we can use the Morillon lifts for only a bit more effort. They weren’t running either. Moral of the story, check the Grand Massif website to see which lifts are running on which days before making the trip.

As we were armed with the pedalable bikes, Lorne & I set of to ride back over the hills to the car, whilst Alex & Richie grabbed some more laps of the Samoens trails. It wasn’t the worst riding back over, but in the humid afternoon it would have been nicer to be sitting on a chairlift with a gentle breeze.

Next time, proper planning and no snow.

30/07/2013
Aye Grand, Massif

First things first. It’s been really hot in the alps, and dry (It still comes as a surprise to a Scot that very dry = very little grip on singletrack, but that’s basically what condition the trails are in everywhere this week.) Very little grip and you have to either be first, 6 inches off the leaders tyre or way way back to see anything. The weather has finally broken however and a few days of rain should help tack everything back up, and save us from heat stroke.

It’s also really busy here in Chamonix, so Tom, Lorne & I got in the car and made the 45 minute drive to Samoens in the Grand Massif to get far from the madding crowd. The Grand Massif is the interlinked ski area of Flaine, Samoens, Morillon, Les Carroz & Sixt, sandwiched between it’s more famous neighbours of Chamonix and the Portes du Soleil, but much more in keeping with the terrain around Les Gets than Brevant. Also more like Les Gets is the attitude to Mountain Biking, with the area offering 8 lifts to haul your bike to the top of the hill and “more than 350km” of MTB tracks to play on once you’re up.

In brief, if you’ve arrived with a big FR or DH bike (and almost everyone we met was on a 180mm travel FR bike, with a few DH machines inbetween), head to Samoens or Les Carroz, use the main lift out of either village and play on the tracks there. The blue trails are fast and flowing, the black are steeper and looser, more like a good DH race track than freeride course. If you want some enduro riding, Samoens is the most central, but you can’t go too far wrong starting from any of the areas, especially as bikes are allowed, virtually encouraged, on all trails. For XC riding, or if you’re in town out of uplift season, Sixt and the Les Gets side of Samoens seem to give the best riding, with lots of road & firetrack to climb on with singletrack to descend back down. The resorts promo video does a good job of showing off all the trails.

Our normally meticulous planning for trips failed us as I didn’t realise the Morillon lifts are closed Tuesday & Wednesday, but that still left 5 lifts, so we figured we’d survive. Rolling into Samoens at 1000 the first thing we saw was lots of cyclists (well, lots by Chamonix terms, it’s not Whistler), and a queue for the lift. Once we’d paid our 17.50 for whole area passes and been given piste maps and advice we joined the next queue for the lift. If the Grand Massif has 1 downside, it’s the lift loading. A small problem I know, but 1 bike and no people in each 8 seater gondola doesn’t move a back log of over 20 bikes very quickly! Still, we got up the 900ish meters of the “Grand Massif Express” to Les Saix, turned round and headed down. There’s plenty of options, we were a bit disappointed by the marked red 54, so didn’t hesitate very long in diverting ourselves onto an unmarked locals trail, which was frankly awesome. Fast & flowing with a mix of loam & root straights and well constructed firm berms, all making best use of the geography. A lot of the marked (and unmarked) trails converge some height above the village on the road where we thought the fun was over, but keep an eye out for the black return track dropping off the road which is great and has the best natural rock berm I’ve ever hit.

After heading back up the Grand Massif Express, we gained another 600m on the Chariande Express chair to head over to Flaine. I always take a “real” map along with the trail map in a new area to check what the terrain is, but that doesn’t mean I actually look at it so it was a bit of a surprise when we discovered it was quite a climb to Flaine (Chamonix bike blog; we fail so you don’t have to…)

The 1700m descent from the top of Flaine to Sixt is much recommended by connoisseurs of alpine descents, but none of us fancied the 250m climb up the gravel road in the full force of the sun to Les Grands Vans, and the other option of 100m climbing up the main road also looked a bit hot, so we decided to return on a cooler day and headed down through the pastures above the Lac de Vernant to follow an amazing bit of contouring track that, after some amazing dusty single track and not too punishing fire road climbing, brought us out by the Kedeusaz Telecabine above Les Carroz.

This lift accesses the Les Carroz bike park, an area directly below the lift line with, officially, a black & blue line dropping 700m back to the base station. Look around on the way up and down though and you’ll see plenty of other tracks snaking through the trees, and even the 2 marked tracks have lots of optional sections. We rode 3 laps through the trees, with the fast and playful blue line being the favourite, a mix of fast big berms with only a few braking bumps and creative trail features (air to suspension bridge to air anyone?) our choices also being influenced by river crossings to cool down in.

Time was marching on and we couldn’t spend all day here, so after the top station lifty let us fill up on water from the staff room (cheers!) we had to pedal up 70 meters under our own power to get to the top of the (closed) Morillon area. The terrain didn’t look to promising for getting round to Samoens but we headed down the fire road planning to take any track to the right in the hope it got us back. Eventually we found “red 1” which is probably better accessed for the ridgeline walking trail than the piste we followed, but either way was a great trail. Unfortunately the next section on the trail map seemed to be uncompleted northshore, so we headed down following our nose and google map along fire road and tarmac back to Samoens

There were plans to do another lap on the GME, but having done more than 12000 foot of descending in our arms and being more than a bit baked by the heat, we passed instead heading for the best 2euro can of juice ever and to wash the dust of our bikes, definitely to return. When it’s colder.

24/08/2012