Stayed at a hotel near Geneva airport, just over the border in France, right by the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Then on the Saturday morning, headed towards Morzine, where we'd be staying at Flow MTB for the week.
Day 1: Les Lindarets
On the first day, we quickly built the bikes and took the lift up to Avoriaz and a trail down to Les Lindarets just as a sighter. That was our first realisation that the braking bumps would be insane all week. Finished with a descent of the Ardent valley, and along the river back in to Morzine. Even the path down to Montriond was rocky, and I was expecting it to be a nice smooth path used by bathers!
Day 2: Mont Chery + Col de Joux Plane
Just one lift up Pleney and ride down to Les Gets. From there it was 1 lift up Mont Chery, and then ride up towards the ridge. Nice ride along the ridge to Mont Caly (nice restaurant there), and then most of the fun part of the ride is the trail running around the back side of Mont Chery. After this, we took the Chavannes lift back up the Les Gets/Morzine side, and rode round and up to Col de Joux Plane (of Floyd Landis fame). From there, it was mostly descent, all off road, down to the Nyon plateau, and eventually the traverse in to Morzine.
Up Super Morzine again, and the "Swiss Superhighway", and then up to top of Pointe de Mossettes. This chairlift seems to take forever, starts in France, and drops you and the bikes (or skis) off in Switzerland. From there it's a quick descent, and traverse, dropping almost 600m vertical over about 7km, and then a good old uphill techy rocky slog to regain half of that vertical over about 2km, up to Col de Cou and up on to the Arete du Berroi ridge. The views up there were stunning, and the path was ace too, even if there was a sheer cliff about 1 metre away on the left!
Took a wrong turn, so ended up on the DH run down to Les Crosets, which was fun. Then it was one more lift up, and the nice long 17km descent to Montriond again :)
Startes similar to the previous day, but then went over in to the Chatel valley. The "Panoramique" trail was one of my favourites. Then a long gravel road ride to Chatel itself. Weather closed in a bit going up Super Chatel lift, so we decided to skip the blue loops over by Torgon, and carried on across the border again down to Morgins. Had lunch in Chez Gaby in Champoussin (a place I'd been to many times before when skiing). Then it was an ace terraced trail cut in to the side of the mountain back over to Les Crosets, and another repeat of the 17km descent to Montriond :)
Day 5: Chatel Bike Park
Did Panoramique and Serpentine a couple of times. The former is a bit jumpy, the latter, all berms. After lunch, did some of the GR5 trail, and then a blue run back down from Avoriaz to Les Lindarets. This time to get back, we rode along the ridge from Avoriaz, and did the steep rooty descent to Morzine. Needed to to a road side brake pad change though as things had worn out far too much.
Back over the Les Gets side for the last 2 days. Did the "black" XC loop which actually wasn't at all difficult, or long. Mostly was on easy fire road type track, although with quite a bit of climbing at the start. After lunch we did one of the blue runs back over to Morzine.
Day 7: Mont Chery + French MTB Championships
Did a repeat of the Mont Chery loop, but with a variation from the ridge down to l'Encrenaz which gave lots of narrow singletrack with tight hairpins. In the afternoon, we dropped the bikes of at the KTM stand. Thanks to Ffion Griffiths (staying at same chalet as us) for looking after them :) and then walked the French Championships DH course. Lots and lots of drops. Spotted Emmeline Ragot (who was also staying at the chalet) twice on practice runs.
All of the pics can be seen here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104347553800437592244/MTBMorzine
Stats for the week: 293km total ride distance (excluding lifts), 33 lifts.
