Chamonix Activity Review: 10th July 2013

The bike ban’s not exactly good news, but it doesn’t mean the end of riding in the valley. A quick look at the Map for Chamonix Valley Trails will let you download a guide to some of the legal trails around the valley, of varying quality, and if you want to unleash your inner movie lawyer then read the “Arrête Municipale (n° 124/2004)” which specifies a number of trails you can use.

Balancing the bad news with good, July also means that the last of the lifts, Grand Montets and Vallorcine, are now open, giving lots more options to link up routes around the valley. The bike buses have also started now saving you from pedalling up to the top of the valley. If all that isn’t enough, then the trains are running too! Well, between Le Fayet and Argentiere at least.

So, what to ride when the bike ban’s on and you want natural singletrack? Well, the bike ban only covers Chamonix & Les Houches, so we hopped on the bike bus and were whisked up to Le Tour in no time. From the top of the Autannes chairlift it’s a short traverse over to the Col de Balme and…….Switzerland, where no July & August bike ban exists!

As ever, you’ve got lots of options on how to descend from the col, many of which take you down to Trient (check out the Chamonix Bike Book for more options, or try a local guide. We didn’t have enough time to ride back round however, so hopped back over the border into France and followed the wide track round to the Tete de Balme chair (runs in winter only) and back, again, into Switzerland and the long snaking singletrack descent towards Catogne.

With the winter snows taking so long to clear from the hills, most of the biking this year has been lower down in the trees, so it was even better than usual to be in the alpine pastures with the trail stretching out as far as the eye can see, not that you get long to look at it as it’s no manicured trail centre piste, with ruts and rocks coming at you fast. Having long sight lines also gives you much longer to see any walkers, and them time to see you, so you can go a bit faster when it’s clear and still exchange friendly bonjours when you slow down.

Eventually we arrived at the base of the Tete de Balme chair. From here we could join the excellent Vallorcine DH track, but it’s closed for the summer along with most of the area underneath the Vallorcine gondola, so that option was out. You can drop over into Switzerland (er, again) and ride the singletrack through the trees to Chatelard, but with the train being off between there and Vallorcine the only option would be to ride back to Vallorcine, and we were feeling lazy. This left option 3. Follow the 4x4 track which doubles as the home run in winter to Vallorcine. Of course, this track is also blocked part way down for the works, however there’s a very enjoyable detour which lets you ride all the way back down to the Gondola…Which was closed for lunch. Nothing for it but to head over to the Station café for a coffee until the 12:30 to 13:45 lunch break was over. First world problems.

13:45 arrived and we headed up the gondola, looking down on the DH track wistfully, then pedalled up to the Col des Posettes and back to the Chamonix valley. In an ideal world we could have now headed up the Aiguillette des Posettes for one of the best descents around, but even without the bike ban the trail is way too busy with walkers at this time of year to be worth it. Instead we traversed back over to the top of the Charamillon gondola on fast, drifty fireroad and joined the red bike track. If you’ve not been down the trail since last year then you’ve missing out. Changes have been made and it’s riding better than ever.
Safely down to Le Tour all we had to do was decide how to ride back down the valley to Chamonix, vive la bike bus!