MTB Morzine

I'd skied in the Portes du Soleil many times before, but had never been there mountain biking. Until now :)

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.

Day 3: Col de Cou + Arete du Berroi
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!

Descent to Champery was fun. Skipped some singletrack, since we'd wanted to make up a bit of time, so clocked 65km/h on the way down in to Champery.
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 :)

Day 4: Portes du Soleil Loop
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.

Day 6: Plateau du Loex
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.

MTB Liechtenstein

I'd never been to Liechtenstein before, despite living only a few hours' drive away, and having driven right past it a handful of times. So I thought I'd use up one of the many 4-day weekends we get in Germany to go mountainbiking there.

Day 1 - Eschnerberg, Austria/Liechtenstein

This is more of a hill than a mountain, that crosses the Austria-Liechtenstein border. The ride was basically one from the the Liechtenstein Tourism site. Started from the Stadion carpark on the outskirts of Feldkirch (Austria) which was a few hundred metres from one end of the tour. To start with, it follows a road round the end of the hill, and then a road winding up the hill to St. Corneli (nice guesthouse and bar there, which would make a handy mid-ride stop if starting at the other end). There are definitely off-road alternatives to get there (I found one that was pretty good as a descent, or a technical rocky ascent).

Then it goes through some forest along the hill top, and drops back down to the valley, where it follows a main cycle path for quite a while, where it crosses the border into Liechtenstein. I think the old border signs have gone and there's a nature reserve landscaping in progress there, so now there's nothing to suggest you're in another country.

After a while it heads up the opposite end of the hill, which is largely off-road, mostly grassy farm track, past lots and lots of cows with cow bells.

Eventually it goes through some forest, mostly on fire road, and eventually descends on the the valley on the north side of the ridge for a bit. Then it heads up a number of hairpin bends off road, through more forest.

Eventually it comes back out on a road and crosses back in the Austria. No passport control these days. I think even Liechtenstein is in the Schengen area now too.

Day 1 - Bregenz, Austria

Stayed in Bregenz overnight, since the hotel there had reasonable prices given that it was a holiday weekend. They have a music festival every summer, with a huge floating stage, which changes every year.

Day 2 - Malbun, Liechtenstein

Given that the weather was supposed to be rain and thunder, and the ride I had planned was going to be a mega uphill leg burner in the mountains, I decided to go walking instead. Again, this was another route from the Liechtenstein Tourism website, this time starting from Malbun, the only ski resort in the country.

It started off as a sanitised footpath, then a bit of landrover track, then heads off a bit more cross country over meadows, and then starts to become a bit of a scramble. Eventually up in the clouds at about 1800m ASL, and still snow patches about in June!

Managed to walk past the Sassförkle, and was heading to the Schönberg summit, but the way was blocked by fresh landslip (I stopped there for a few minutes and saw more fresh rock slides) and more snow. The weather was beginning to turn too, so decided to head back down. Just as well, as the rain properly turned up half way down.

All of the rest of the pics can be seen here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104347553800437592244/MTBLiechtenstein

Skiing in the Dolomites (again)

I had said I wanted to do something different this year, instead of the Dolomites, but ended up in Tignes for a pre-season bash. This meant I could go somewhere new *and* have a trip to the Dolomites on the usual snowHeads bash :)

Drove down to Innsbruck on the Friday, and met up with the others who'd arrived by car from NL, by plane from UK, and by train from Switzerland. Dined at the Stiftskeller, which was very good food for reasonable prices. Then it was off to Arabba first thing in the morning for a good half day skiing (which was very very cold).

Day 2 was off to the Hidden Valley and Cinque Torri. Needed a bus between the 2 since the usual ski run was closed. Shame it was a bit cloudy, since it hid the views.

Day 3 was an easy day out in the blue runs between Campolongo and San Cassiano.

Day 4 was a powder day, so we did a Sella Ronda orange/clockwise loop. Fantastic day out!

Day 5 was a bumpy mogulled bluebird day out to Selva and Ortisei, taking in the Val Gardena World Cup DH run.

Day 6 was the Marmolada day. Apparently it had been carnage the day before, but today, we just skied straight to Malga Ciapela, and got straight on the 1st cable car (of 3) without any queues. That was a first! The run down was excellent, grippy snow, and hardly any people :)

In the afternoon, it was time to play about on some Big Foot "skis" and snowblades. They certainly cannot be taken seriously, but are a laugh for a couple of hours one afternoon.

 

Day 7 Was a trip out to La Villa, taking in the Alta Badia World Cup GS run. At the top of Piz la Ila were some impressive ice sculptures.

Eventually went to Santa Croce for lunch. That's a 200m walk just beyond the end of the last lift on the piste map, but well worth it for the views.

Day 8 was snowing a bit again, and the last day, so we just went up and down the Portovescovo black runs a few times, then back to the Corvara side for some nice easy blues down through the trees, before heading back to Innsbruck.

Final Stats for the week were a bit down on last year, but the powder day, the blades and late starts didn't really help there:
130 lifts, 46336m vertical, 245km estimated slope length

The other pictures can be found here.

Photo Every Week 2011

Didn't manage to complete the 2011 Photo-a-Day challenge after the 2010 success, so fell back to just one photo every week. Here are my 12 favourites for each month.

Jan: Innsbruck

Feb: Dolomites

Mar: Perigee Moon

Apr: Blackbird

May: Sunset

Jun: Bike and Logs

Jul: Rocks

Aug: Loch Morlich

Sep: Forest Art

Oct: Sunset

Nov: U-Boat

Dec: Purple

Skiing Tignes

I've never been to Tignes before, believe it or not. So it was good to be able to get there as part of another snowHeads bash. There had been a bit of a snow drought pre-season across most of Europe, but somehow the pisteurs had managed to keep the Grande Motte glacier in perfect order and had somehow conjured up a perfectly usable "Double M" piste back down to Val Claret.

Most of the week was blue skies and no clouds, but the final day was a bit snowy. Was good to lay a few fresh tracks before heading home.

The journey back was fun. The bus was late, then the bus turned up in a carpark up the hill, so we all traipsed up there with skis, bags, etc. Then it turned up at the airport less than 1hour before my plane was taking off! No idea how a coachload of people got checked in, bags dropped and thru to the gate in time, but afaik, we all did.

So just a few more weeks until the 2nd trip of the season...