Chamonix Activity Review: 28th July 2013

And it’s great being spoilt for choice, but the lifts still close at about 17:30, which is before most folk finish work for the day. How is a dedicated rider meant to get their biking fix AND pay for the bike? Well, you can just head out in the evening and actually pedal up something for a change! It’s never hard to find people in Chamonix who are keen to not let earning a living get in the way of living, so 3 of us headed out for some dusky lit riding whilst the day cooled off. As chief Chamonet tea boy Jan is heading off to pastures new, Robbie and I felt it was our duty to remind him what he was giving up, so we chose perhaps the best of the non-lift accessed trails around, the Loriaz chalets loop.

Starting from the village of Buet we gradually worked our way up the long long fireroad climb. There’s a few signposted cut-offs from the fireroad, but they’re not worth it unless you’re on foot, better to stay on the fireroad, keep your head down and keep pedalling…

An hour later and we’re still pedalling (did I mention it’s a long way to the top) but now we’d broken out of the trees and into a valley straight out of Scotland. Or at least, straight out of Scotland until you look at the views of the Tour and Trient glaciers, and even down to Martigny and the Rhone valley!

Eventually we made it to the cross below the Loriaz chalets that give the route its name and marks the start of the descent. It’s a beautiful spot to linger in, but as the sun was getting lower in the sky and we had almost 800m of singletrack to descend, we didn’t hang about. Drink some water, drop the saddles and go.

Even by Chamonix standards, the descent is pretty good. Not perhaps one where you need a full on DH monster, it gets ridden regularly on front suspension only bikes, but more for the flow of the trail. At least on most of the sections, it does still get technical here and there. As Jan and I have a habit of not competing, but possibly just making sure the other one knows who’s that little bit better, this meant we both piled into several of these sections just a fraction faster than we’d like…

Despite our relatively faff free ride so far (at least, faff free by mountain biker standards) the light was really starting to fade. This made things even more interesting for the final section of the trail, where you drop from open pasture into tightly woven trees, following a bobsleigh track of banked out corners. Nothing for it but to hope for the best and let the trail guide you around.

Amazingly, we survived without incident and were spat out at the end of the trail into the sleepy village of Vallorcine. Ideally the train would still be running, letting us toast the ride at the station café before being carried back to Chamonix, and possibly another post ride toasting at the Chamonix station trinity of Elevation, Chambre Neuf & Moo bar, but until the line from Vallorcine to Montroc fully reopens we just had to make do with pedalling back up to Buet where we started, reminding Jan of just how much else there is to miss about Chamonix....