For those of you that don’t know, this is an MTB event held in both France & Switzerland in the Portes du Soleil region of the French Alps (one of the largest skiing areas in the world) and in the summer it becomes a trail centre of giant proportions! It is not a race and the circuit is approximately 75km taking in a mixture of Alpine Single Track, downhill and fire trails with most ascending done via chairlifts/bubble lifts adapted to take your bike. Seven resorts are spread across the region with Chatel taking its turn this year to host the bike festival. A multitude of lifts take you to exhilarating long downhill & ‘lush single track’ that goes on for mile after mile. In short, Mtb heaven!
Si & Steve
Booking our places proved to be our first challenge. In our naivety we thought that we would be sending a one-line email to some cosy French tourist office, but it was nothing of the sort! Instead registration was done via the worlds most complex sports activity website! Places were disappearing at an alarming rate, counting down in real time. With three minutes to spare and 3 attempts for payment to be accepted by credit card we were in and registered to start at our chosen point of Morzine (or so we thought….).
However, it wasn’t long before we noticed our first problem; Steve was booked for the Saturday and I was booked to start on the Sunday!!…..
Ever the salesman, Steve later managed to sweet talk Mademoiselle into changing me to the Saturday. As this was our first time, we had no idea that the ppds could be done on both the Saturday as well as Sunday…….So it was a done deal, we were registered for the 2010 event.
Soon enough the big weekend is upon us. Steve had done a great organisational job and we were staying next door to Endless Ride with Gareth and his other guests that turned out to be 20 bikers from the Lake District (I think they must have been twinned with Sussex Mtb, all the characters were there!).
The first problem was the interpretation of Easy Jet’s baggage allowance. We were worried that my Attack Trail 6.8 & Steve’s Spicy 316 would exceed the allowance. Steve being determined to win the pre check in weight race, bought a pair of Mavic Crossmax wheels with tubeless Conti tyres (nice). In case anyone is interested, the limit for any one item appears to be 32kG with no excess baggage allowance for bikes. With this in mind both bikes were packed into hired boxes for the flight to Geneva.
The flight was 2 hours late owing to a French national strike (bless them) so that put paid to any riding when we arrived on the Thursday (24th June). Instead we felt the need to ‘warm up/get into the groove’ on Friday. In all honesty this was perhaps a bit of a mistake, a bit like taking a kid to a sweet shop and not buying too many sweets! 45 miles and 6 hours later we thought we’d better stop!!
The Friday evening meal at the Hotel, which was now overrun with bikers, was shared with the Northern boys who all seemed to be equipped with Orange P5’s & Alpine 160’s. Carl, also a Mountain biker, was the cook! The food was fantastic but after too much Single Track & alcohol the adrenalin must have been running and neither of us slept well that night……
Getting up on the Saturday to register at 7.00 am was not good. However it turned out to be a painless procedure and every one was given a goodie bag by way of an Mtb rucksack with a free lift pass that was put to good use on the Sunday. Friday was also half price! With all these freebies and an entry fee of 45 Euro, this has to be something of an Mtb bargain.
We finally hit the trails at about 9.30 via the Super Morzine lift. There was some serious looking coil sprung machinery in the lift queue and most people seemed to have full-face hats. By this time I was feeling a little pensive….
Off the bubble lift we were soon on a long ascent across the ‘Panoramique’ towards Avoriaz. There was more climbing than I ever expected and you wouldn’t want to pedal a Lapierre 920 with Fox 40 RC2’s uphill. These guy’s were pushing. The first thing you notice is the increased lack of breath due to the altitude, but this was soon neutralised with a drop in over rocks leading to the first of the downhill descents and there were a lot of them! (Super Lush in the immortal words of Jimbo).
In some ways for an aging weekend warrior like me, the testing terrain was not always as daunting as I thought because the obstacles, rocks and drop in’s come at such a pace that there is no time to contemplate and you are forced to make very quick decisions on the lines to be taken. However, there is a new downhill trail at Les Lindaretes that certainly induced a fair bit of buttock clenching. It was very steep with 60 degree berms, but having made it down in one piece made the grin factor even greater.
Later in the day a rocky scree slope at Lindaretes claimed its first fatality by way of a hole in Steve’s new tubeless rear tyre. This turned out to be a long story and having stopped at the Mavic service point, Monsieur Mavic claimed to have fixed it but it went down again on the chairlift back to the top; miles from anywhere. Once again this opened the tubeless or not tubeless debate. This was real bike munching territory & I don’t suppose that anything short of solid tyres would be guaranteed to survive!
By now, I was running low on fuel. With Chatel in the distance the rocky trails morphed into bermed sweeping single track leading to a Patisserie & Coke stop. Before this we passed through the Chatel Bike Park, which has some particularly fantastic trails. However, be warned and do not ignore yellow signs with black crosses; they inevitably lead to death defying jumps across 20’ ravines! Do not attempt unless your name is Steve Peat (or Hooper!)
Having topped up and had a brief visit to the Pharmacy for blister remedies (& change my incontinence pants) we headed to the Swiss town of Morgins for a lunch rest stop of soup, jambon & cake. Superb and all free.
Early afternoon having passed over the single track ridge with the stunning views of the Dentes Du Midi peaks (photo with bike in foreground) we like many others took a wrong turn but had a far more interesting decent towards Champary, but we were off the sign posted route. After some tough Swiss riding, blisters on the hands were getting worse and rear brake pads were getting low. Suddenly without warning at the top of a gnarly drop in I nearly collided with a biker walking back up the trail after bottling the up and coming decent! Having had a quick look over the edge I couldn’t blame him. Determined not to do the same I turned round and did another run up and successfully over we went. Its sad but I was chuffed to have done this one….
We descended back into France via Champery and down to the feed stop at Linderettes. Finally the day was drawing to an end as we dropped back down via the ‘Stingers’ through trees to the long, very rooty and fast rocky final decent back to Morzine.
53 miles & 8 hours having registered 37mph off road, the event finished in Morzine Town Square with free beer and a sound track being produced by an unusually good French rock band (no, really!)
Post event we hit Robinsons bar with 60 other grubby and knackered bikers.
Not one was without a major grin from ear to ear!!!!!!
Lessons learned:
• An adjustable seat post would be lovely.
• Carry a spare tyre and at least one tube. Note: buying a High roller in Morzine will cost 40-50 Euro’s! So take them out with you.
• Don’t ride for too long on the day before!
• Spare brake pads.
• A hard-hitting trail bike is good. Not a downhill monster as it will kill you up hills with the thin air!
• Many were wearing full-face hats. Not essential but the terrain makes you think.
Swotty
4 comments
Hummerlicious says:
July 19, 2010 at 7:38 pm (UTC 0)
A great report, looks like an excellent event
Pike says:
July 19, 2010 at 9:59 pm (UTC 0)
That last picture is great, a load of old fat blokes! Gives hope to us all
bigsi says:
July 20, 2010 at 6:27 pm (UTC 0)
Hmmmm one for the “to do list” me thinks
bigdaddy says:
July 21, 2010 at 11:11 am (UTC 0)
That’s tops, I want a go! Nice write up…