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A road
trip to Champery in the Portes Du Soeil region. Stunning
scenery
and some top trails in the sun. By Mark Freeman
Picking
dates that were suitable for all four of us
was difficult, which is why we ended up arranging our trip to Champery
in the
Portes Du Soleil in mid-June; one week after the 2007 UCI World Cup and
one
week before the opening of all of the summer lifts for Passportes Du
Soleil.
No
problem, I had done my research whilst skiing out
there that winter and whilst I knew that a lot of the chair lifts and
links to
other towns in the region were closed, the main Cable Car, or
‘Telepherique’,
in Champery was open, and that there were plenty of routes down the
mountain
from the top. We were driving and so there was always the option to
drive to Morzine
or Les Gets and possibly explore further afield – maybe visit
Verbier or Bex or
Rochers de Nayes near Montreux. We weren’t too afraid of
pedalling up a couple
of mountains if needed!
Trail Hunting
The
departure arrived and we loaded up Matt’s Blue Bus
with four lots of bikes, spares and clothes for the week. Worries that
we would
be taking too much and overloading the bus were unfounded.
The
drive down wasn’t too bad as far as
a 9 hour drive from Cherbourg
goes. We chose Cherbourg
as our nearest ferry
was Poole, half an
hour’s drive from where we
live. So the most convenient ferry port in the UK
for us happened to arrive in just about the furthest French port from
the Alps! We
elected to travel and eat on the hoof. Literally
stopping only to fill up the van with fuel and buy food.
We were greeted on the first morning by
beautiful blue skies, snow capped peaks and warm temperatures. The view
of the
mountain Cols that make up the border between France
and Switzerland
as we walked off the Telepherique was fantastic.
Electing
to take a route in one of the
guides from the Tourist Information, we were back down to the village
waiting
for the next lift back up within an hour. This first descent was a
little
disappointing. Although the descent was over 700 metres it was mainly
double
track gravel roads. Pretty sanitised and not much different to fire
trails at
home. At
this point we got chatting to some locals, and realised we were going
to have to hunt out the good stuff. We were advised to try the climb up
to Col
De Cou, then follow the ridge overlooked by the Dents Blanche back to
Barme.
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Bullish Behaviour
A 40 minute push under mid afternoon sun reaped its rewards with a
cracking ride
along a narrow, scary track on a ridge before descending a tricky trail
with
tight switchbacks to Barme. Once past Barme the trail turned into a
fast, loose
and rocky double track descent that brought us back to Champery.
The second
day the sun still shone and we drove the hour and a quarter to Morzine.
We parked and bought a lift pass for the Morzine / Les Gets region. We
got chatting to a large Irish chap wearing body armour, riding an out
and out DH bike. He eyed us up and down and said in a full Irish lilt,
‘you’ll be looking for XC trails then’
whilst looking
at our ‘All Mountain’ bikes. Then he told us we
might find
the Pleney DH a bit ‘out of our league’.
This was like a red rag to a bull. “It’s not what
you ride it’s how you ride it…”
Unfortunately not soon after on the Chaux Fleury downhill in Les Gets I
managed to pringle my front rim beyond repair. In a mad panic I found a
shop that would replace the rim and rebuild my wheel by the end of the
day, at UK local bike shop prices. So I found a bar in the village and
whilst drinking a beer waiting for my wheel to get fixed I got a call
to tell me one of our guys, Mark L, had managed to ride straight into
some mud at very high speed and go over the bars landing on his head.
To
cut a long story short he ended up in Thonon
hospital for an MRI scan to rule out any neck injury. Fortunately he
hadn’t
broken his neck. Unfortunately it was a serious whiplash injury that
would
curtail his riding for the rest of the week. Because of this we also >
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Portes Du Soleil Links: (Unsponsored!)
www.champery.ch
www.portesdusoleil.com
www.bikepark.ch
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