Chamonix Bike Blog

Tag: La Saleve

  • Une Tranche de Tarte Française*

    Back on the lifts already, lazy wins the day.

    Seen A Slice of British Pie yet?

    Grand, innit. I’m not completely sure if it’s a good thing or not that the best bit of bike filming I’ve seen in years is so good because it’s emulating edits (or “videos” as we used to call them, what with them generally being actual physical things rather than just interweb) from 15+ years ago, but that’s not really important. It’s mostly grand because it’s a tour of the Uk’s regional accents with some pissing about in the mud thrown in for good measure.

    Trees, damp earth, bit of gradient, motocross clothes, #enduro bike, poor photography. All the ingredients you need.

    And everyone(ish, probably, maybe, I don’t know) on the internet loves it, so it will dictate MTB fashion for the next year or so at least. Hence, ever keen to get in at the start of the curve, a trip to the French alps version of a muddy British forest. La Saleve.

    Mati on a shiny 2016 Banshee Legend and a less shiny Saleve trail.

    The carpark was filled with folks 2016 toys. New bikes, new parts, new clothes. Some folk were even getting their new pro-model clothes with their name on it…. Lots of shiny clean stuff ready to get covered in the perma-damp clay of La Saleve, though it turned out not to be too muddy and the waterproofs of the first lap were quickly ditched.

    The most useful "new" thing to have on your bike on Saturday. New rubber.

    Every time I go to La Saleve I ride some trails I never new existed and Saturday was no different.Helped no end by being with folk who actually knew where they were going.

    Pan-shot not friday. Ben is pretty rapid on a bike, fortunately the breeks make him easier to spot in the woods.

    Whilst following someone with a rough idea of where the trail goes does help with navigation, some of them thar French riders are kinda fast on slippy, steep, technical trails so you could quickly find yourself going sideways into trouble. Just as I was thinking even Bruni would be struggling to keep pace with me I nailed a perfect 2 wheel drift into tree headbutt.

    New helmet tested, no damage done.

    "Case or No Case" A new gameshow coming to Saturday night telly soon.....

    Alas not everyone was so lucky with crashes, Mati picked a fight with a tree stump and managed to do something fairly unpleasant to his shoulder. After missing most of last summer with a broken collarbone he was pretty gutted but strapped himself together with an innertube and got on with getting off the hill whilst Ben went to find a van and the rest of us cruised back to the carpark and sort the gear.

    Crash padding on the trees. Safety first kids.

    A shitty end to a great day playing about on bikes. And continuing that theme, as an anticlimactic end to the post, here’s some information. The 10 ride pass is now 46.30euro, you canny swap it between people anymore, but you can take a photo of the QR code and show the lifty your phone instead. It’s like the open university this blog. Informative AND fun.

    One of those drops that photo smaller than they are. Nina makes short work of it anyways.

    *Just to make everyone absolutely clear, the title in no way implies any relationship between the bike handling skillz in the film and us lot up La Saleve, it’s just a lazy link into something interesting happening now and saves me having to think too much to get the posts up and running.

  • Saleve: The trail strikes back

    Imagine if the Ewok had telepheriques.

    Saleve is not that well known for it’s biking, but on the off chance you meet someone who’s ridden there one of the things they’ll tell you is it’s a bad choice in the wet. Slick and slippy mud coating roots and smooth limestone with steep gradients to maximise your travel from the trail and bike if/when you fall.

    It’s wet just now, but Sandy and I figured it couldn’t be more wet than Chamonix where May started with the average monthly rainfall dropping on the 1st, then the 2nd and 3rd not being much drier. As a result of the sky falling, the mountains started falling. Huge wet snow slides coming off the Chamonix Aiguilles reached as far as the valley floor, and rockslides on the Aiguille Rouge side did the same. Lots of trails cross under these avalanche corridors, so the Petit Balcons Nord and Sud, and anything above them, have been closed by the Mairie until further notice.

    It might be wet in Saleve, but not as wet as elsewhere.

    Which doesn’t leave many options to ride a bike.

    So we went to Saleve.

    Sort-of grippy trails.

    Unsurprisingly, with the cloud level being about 1/3 the height of the hill and the rain still falling lightly, there weren’t many other people waiting for the telepherique. The first lap was down the usual well built official(ish) trails towards the front of the hill, though we opted for the network of tracks down towards Monnetier as they’re less built so we wouldn’t trash saturated berms or jumps……and they’re a little less steep so we had a little more chance of making it down attached to the bike.

    Surprisingly the trails weren’t too bad. With so much water about the mud was pretty thin and didn’t clog you or the bike too badly. The trails were even grippier than I’ve ridden them in places where they’d washed the bedrock completely clean.

    Sandy staring out at the clouds, confused as to why they're below him instead of above. Raining.

    Back to the carpark we rinse off the bikes and head up for another lap. Just as we reached the top telepherique station we broke though the cloud, blue skies above and extensive views of more cloud but below us instead of above.

    Heading down the hill meant we’d lose this rare opportunity to top up on vitamin D (when you leave Scotland, your ration gets taken away from you. Aye, you thought it was methadone everyone was queueing for outside Boots, y’ken noo eh). Also, I’d heard there were good trails in the other direction than we normally take so we chose not to choose dh, but chose something different. Pedalling up the hill.

    Descending into the lost valley. I think we could hear dinosaurs at this point.

    Turns out there’s a Buddhist retreat and an observation station up there. And some roads, the odd field, cows etc.

    Might also be some views but all we could see was a sea of clouds stretching out into the distance. There’s also lots of handy direction signs, one of which suggested we head for the Telepherique (Gare Inferieure) via the Grande Gorge.

    Occasional bouts of riding interspaced with trying to walk.

    I will now suggest to you that you don’t, but we didn’t know that at the time and dropped in. To be fair the trail was pretty good at first, a little on the narrow and exposed side, but nothing too bad. Then however we reached the gorge bit of the name, which was less than grand on a bike. Steep and narrow on a mix of rubble and slick rocks which would have been challenge enough just downclimbing normally in the current conditions, but whilst trying to hold onto your bike was pretty tricky.

    It could have been worse. We could still be there.

    Fortunately it didn’t last for the whole descent and, despite some false starts where we thought the difficulties had ended buuuut they hadn’t, we were back on some good trails again.

    Escape to ridable trails!

    In fact, as we got further down the hill they went from good to great (grand even? Too much, ok.). Surprisingly reminiscent of Finale with undulating trails snaking through deciduous forest and peppered with limestone rocks that could either be a risk to your dérailleur or something to pop off and over depending on how confident you were feeling.

    The biggest difference was the vibrant greens of the forest which you can only get after a good downpour.

    Just remove the rain. And the mud. And the fresh green foliage. And you're in Finale!

    More exploring to be done, but not today. Might try and go in the dry too next time. And not on May the fourth. Saving you from poor titles it will.

    Sandy trying to get his junior kickstart on in one of the washed out bits of trail.

  • Saleve, because pedalling uphill is hard work.

    If you can't get an action shot due to the light, stick with a silhouette

    Earning your turns, pedalling up the hill, is great for achieving a smug feeling of self-righteousness and superiority, but it’s way easier to take a lift. Looking for an easy life we headed west to Saleve and its year round uplift.

    It’s a popular choice for out of season riding (though it’s been closed for 6 months for refurbishment) so if you want more info, here’s what happened last time we went.

    You don't NEED a Dh rig for Saleve, but it is a lot of fun

    The 10 uplift ticket is still 43euro, still valid for a year, still shareable amongst you all, but now gets scanned by a smart phone. The photo’s are still rubbish too, but you try shooting fast moving objects in a forest on an overcast day, with a wee camera and no flash gun before you complain.

    There was the odd bit of good light, fortunately Lorne was in the right place at the right time

    The weather’s been a bit damp recently and Saleve has a reputation for not drying quickly but even so we were a bit surprised at just how slick the trails were on our first lap. The wind and heat of the day helped dry things out a bit and as the day went on things got a bit tackier, but you were still never far from a sideways moment.

    Spence about to get sideways

    If you’ve not ridded at Saleve before then you won’t know how much of a maze the trails are. We were basing line choice at each junction on which way we were sliding at the time, so by random the first couple of laps were on the longer tracks over towards Monnetier and their pedal back uphill to the last bit of trail towards the lift station. Great for Lorne & I, less good for Spence and his new DH bike.

    Lower sections of the hill are more gravelly, so drain better....and ride faster.

    The shorter more direct lines were more slick, though were seeing most traffic from the locals (all of whom seemed to have mud tires on, almost like they knew what conditions would be….). Fortunately mud is pretty forgiving to fall on, so it was more entertaining than terrifying.

    Mud might be ok to bail onto, but razor wire is added incentive to stay upright

    With the reputation for being muddy you’d hope that there was a hose for cleaning off bikes at the station, but it turns out you’re not allowed to use the hose that’s there. Old toothbrushes are a very inefficient way to dry clean a bike.

    There’s still more than a month to go until most resorts open for the summer season, so it might be time to find the old spike tyres in the shed and invest in a power wash.

    Toothbrushes, no substitute for a hose.

  • A Saleve for the uplift blues?

    A view to a kill....

    After 2 weeks of pretty poor biking weather (grand for getting the ski season going though)  whilst the Brevent lifts were open, the skies have cleared and there’s been wall to wall sunshine.

    Locked, loaded & ready to roll

    And frost.

    It is November after all.

    Unfortunately the Chamonix lifts are closed so, always keen to let someone else do the hard work, we loaded up and headed out of town for some mid November lift access mountain biking. Got to love the alps.

    Up above the streets and houses

    45mins to 1hr from Chamonix and on the outskirts of Geneva is the tourist lift “la Saleve” You can buy a single uplift for about 6euro or for 43euro get a book of 10 passes which you can share amongst a few riders and are valid for 12 months from purchase. Bargain. The front face of Saleve doesn’t look too promising for biking, unless you’re filming for Where the trail ends but there’s a network of trails winding down from the top through some fairly unlikely looking terrain.

    Jan, La Saleve enduro routeWayne straight line

    When we arrived it was cloudy and freezing cold in the carpark, irritating as it was sunny and freezing cold back in Chamonix, however heading up in the lift we got through a cloud band 1/2 way up and into the sunshine. Still cold though.

    Once at the top tracks head off in all directions with several popular XC bike loops around the top. We were here to ride down though, so crossed the road and followed the traverse path for a few minutes to where the proper trails start. Despite looking like unofficial tracks, the trails are marked with little bike symbols. Nevertheless, the turn-off from the road can be easy to miss. It’s about 100m down the tarmac road, on your right and a sharper turn than it first looks. Once onto the trail though, just keep following your nose! There’s a huge number of variations, if you want to get to the best of them, speak to a local (there’s plenty of them about!)

    Jan: on the trail, in the trees

    The top half of the main trail is a great example of what good trail building should be. Fast and flowing, despite the damp and slidy conditions, with well constructed jumps which look intimidating but ride smoothly if you commit. It gets pretty tight in places with tree gaps little wider than your bars, but the berms keep you on the right line and in the gaps. The limestone geology also makes a change from Chamonix’s granite with a bit more grip in the wet than we were all used to.

    The lower section is very good in the dry… it wasn’t dry today. The claggy mud was sticking to everything it touched, leaving everyone with semi-slick tyres. Low speeds meant none of the many, many crashes were serious and generally it was easier to slide down on, or at least near, the bike than try to walk.

    Jan guinea pigging the gap

    As a contrast to the fast, full-face style tracks that take the more direct line down, there are some enduro-style trails that take a less steep line further east to the village of Monnetier. These don’t get ridden as much, and you can tell. The entrance, roughly 200m down the start of the main trail, which breaks off right was covered in leaves and without Wayne’s local knowledge we’d never have found it. Once on the trail the line was a little more obvious, but still well covered in leaves. Hopefully next time it’ll be easier to see where we’re going as it did mess with the flow a bit! To get back to the lifts, head through the village, cycling uphill (wouldn’t be much fun with a DH rig this bit) for about 10 minutes till you round a left hand hairpin and see the gravel road which you use on the main DH tracks on your right.

    Robbie on the last section of the trail

    The last section back to the gondola is common to most of the tracks. The trail starts as a walking path with singletrack cut-throughs to avoid steps made for walkers. Then you get to a long series of rock stairs cut out of the cliff with a fair sized drop to your right. fine in the dry if there’s no one walking up, but not even the local heros were riding them today! After this the trail gets interesting again, with yet more great trail building work.

    Jan on upper sectionJan and Wayne main descent upper section

    After a summer of riding trails in the high alps, Saleve feels almost like going back to the riding in the UK. Lots of trails built by locals with whatever materials are available, damp slidy dirt despite it not having rained for several days, lots of trees, except here you have a gondola to lift you 660 metres rather than a farmers trailer or pedalling.

    Cheers to the trail builders for a great days riding.