Chamonix Activity Report: 3rd July 2008
A little heavy rainfall this week has done nothing to mar the humours or fade the sun tans of the valley's residents. An occasional soaking is great for clearing the mountain air and for adding a shot of green to the alpine pasture. What better way, in that case, to make the most of the excellent trail conditions right now than to get out there and enjoy it?
We planned a mammoth two-country, lift-accessed bike ride earlier this week. Our destination was Trient, our start point Le Tour; it was real enduro-style mountain bike riding, with some very steep, sustained singletrack climbs and fast, flowing, technical singletrack dirt-path descents. From the top of the Autannes chair at Le Tour, we headed for the Tete de Balme - it was here we encountered a couple of steep snowfields hanging precariously above big cliffs. Tucked away in the gullies, it was difficult to plan routes around them, so we had to get ourselves across them. Not that easy in full body armour, especially when lugging a 20kg mountain bike...and wearing flat-soled shoes! It was only after we'd got back that we found out that a hiker had broken their arm the day before, by slipping down one of those same snowfields. Be careful out there!
The run down to Trient was sensational, an immense 1300m of sustained downhill from the alpine snow to the lush midmountain pineforest, finishing amongst the farms and villages of the lowlands at the base of the Col du Forclaz. Finally, the Tour de France style road descent - 6km steep downhill - to the border station at Le Chatelard. We took the train back to Vallorcine, where we jumped on the gondola with our bikes, rising steeply up over the downhill track that opened at the weekend - and pedaled up to the Col des Posettes, before riding the fireroad down to the parking lot at Le Tour to get the car back. Tired but wanting more, we took a run at Flégère, which turned out to be a bad idea.
We headed down towards the Trappe chairlift, then picked up the singletrack into the woods. Then, we turned right, following a sign for Les Tines, and pushed our bikes up for fifteen minutes. The track started dropping at that point, and turned into some gentle singletrack with moderate switchbacks, the corners sprinkled with pine needles and the rocks covered with moss. Before long, the corners started getting tighter, and soon turned into unrideable, steep, sketchy, exposed switchbacks. There must have been at least fifty of them, and it took a good hour or so to get down a mere 500m of vertical. I've attached a shot of the route in the pictures above right - avoid unless you fancy a pointlessly unpleasant challenge!
As it's now July the number of bikers on the trails will drop dramatically - mountain biking is only allowed on a handful of trails during these summer months, which means that I'll be hiking (and possibly climbing a little, heaven forbid) a lot more. A map of authorised bike routes is available at the tourist office in town, opposite the church.
See you at the trailhead!
