Following the departure of the previous guests, and as late July drew towards August we were kept busy by several more groups of great clients enjoying our Ultimate Alps holiday. Our first few weeks had been a little unusual, as through a combination of short stays and custom trips we had yet to run our “normal” week – which consists of 4 days based from Chamonix and 3 based in Alpe D’Huez.
New arrivals Robin and Jane were the first guests to get the full experience – and had a very packed week, during which they both said that their riding really came on in leaps and bounds. They had ridden in The Alps previously, with the most recent occasion being a visit to Les Arcs last summer – which Robin described as being very technical and steep....but once the first days’ riding in Chamonix had drawn to a close both declared that the riding here was “something else altogether”!
We woke to a virtually cloudless sky, and as we rode the epic Border Patrol route the weather was absolutely perfect, and allowed an amazing view back down the valley from high in the mountains. It was a bit cooler as we rode higher out of the valley – which often causes a pretty spectacular temperature inversion with the clouds (they get trapped between the layers of warm and cool air) and today was no exception – fluffy white clouds and skies which were almost as bright as Jane’s jacket (she was letting her secret roadie shine through with her lycra and fluro combo)!!
As we crested over the pass into Switzerland we had a quick switchback tutorial, as Jane was not terribly confident on the steeper, rockier ones - a real feature of this route. After several runs through one particular corner she finally cracked it – and as her celebratory whoops echoed down the valley a president was set; every time for the next week that Jane cleared a tight switchback you didn’t need to see to know that she had cleared it – there would be a loud cheer, followed a moment later by a cry of “did you see that – did you
?”!
The second day saw us riding the Passeportes Du Soleil route, which Jane highlighted as her fave day of the trip – we had to keep moving at quite a pace in order to ensure we got round it’s 70k-ish length before the lifts closed, but both Robin and Jane really put the hammer down and had big grins on their faces from start to finish. At one point we emerged onto a road near Avoriaz, which had seen a major stage of the Tour de France pass through it a few days earlier – and the pair acted out a recent famous scene by riding up the road trying to head butt each other – which in retrospect I reckon was just an excuse for a bit of a scrap!
Jane really came to form as we descended into Morzine on a very rooty natural trail – after just a couple of days her riding had totally transformed – far more confident and controlled than at any time the previous day.
By the time we arrived at Alpe D’Huez the guys were starving hungry, and were keen to try out the hotel restaurant – they loved it so much that they barely ate anywhere else for the rest of the week! The following day, full of fuel we ventured out onto the local trails in slightly damp conditions on a technical XC loop which takes in a section of the Megavalanche course – one we designed for riders who want a taste of the famous route without riding it’s full length. The route inadvertently highlighted Robin’s personal biking demon – there are some beautiful flowing sections of singletrack, but there’s a steep drop to one side of the trail in places...and he was finding it difficult to remember the old mantra “look where you want to go, not where you don’t”! However it was Martin who, after stopping to take some photos decided to give it some welly to catch up, and then proceeded to drop his back wheel over the edge, leading to quite a lot of swearing as he bounced along for 50 feet with only one wheel on the trail before the rear tyre finally caught and propelled him back onto the singletrack!
On their final day the daring duo became the only people this season to take on the huge challenge of our “Defiance” route at Les Deux Alpes – a genuine monster, the climb begins at 1600m in the super-high-altitude town, and climbs to a genuinely lung-wrenching 3200m where the trail gives way to snow and glaciers – where you are met by skiers and snowboarders coming the other way! It took Jane and Robin about 4 and a half hours to make it to the top – where they met Martin, who had been, erm, “forced” to “regrettably” sit out the climbing due to a damaged wheel (he snapped 4 spokes the previous day) whilst he did a quick rebuild. Coming down took slightly less time – about an hour! A special route was chosen to ensure Jane got to see the marmots she was desperate to spot (and we saw quite a few eventually) and having reached the town centre again Martin collected the van, whilst the other two continued downhill to the valley floor below – making for a monster drop from 3200m to 960m!
The week had gone really smoothly overall – until Jane reached the last 50 yards of the final descent of the week. Martin pulled up in the van to meet back up with them to find Jane looking a little woozy and battered – she had unfortunately come a cropper just a few feet from the car park, and gone over the bars onto her face! It goes to say a lot that she was still smiley, bouncy and full of enthusiasm despite her last gasp visit to the floor.
I think it’s safe to say we all had great fun that week, and it all went very smoothly....but in the last blog I mentioned bad weather and hinted at a week of mishaps and amusement? Ah, well.....as we bid farewell to Jane and Robin we headed to the airport in order to collect our newest and largest group to date – and that’s where things really started to get really lively.....see Part 3!
