Sunday, July 04, 2010

The Alps Day 2

Having heard the Mountain Style event was on in Chatel today, we pulled the xc bikes out and headed on over.

Sitting on the lift I suddenly felt a bit exposed without a full face helmet, full body armour and a downhill bike. I thought to myself "what am I doing? This is France! I need my big bike!". From the top of Super Morzine we headed down a rocky trail down into Les Lindarets, and I soon stopped worrying about the lack of protection and just got on with riding and loved it. The tracks were a lot rougher, but nothing my fettled Marzocchi 55s couldn't handle and the Meta simply felt awesome. Eventually we made it over to the Mountain Style event were the competitors were still practicing. I don have any photos on the phone as I didn't want to risk breaking it but suffice to say they were going big. We watched by the the top were there was an insane 2 tier wooden drop. Only a few riders took this line and boy did they go big. The riders kept the crowds entertained with tricks, including backflips and 360s off drops.

The clouds rolled in and we jumped on the lift out if chatel before the lift closed. We headed down a new track from the top and found ourself deep in steep, breaking bump infested berms all the way down. Down here I forgot about the 100mm travel (which I later found was mostly locked out) and played catch up with some downhillers. We arrived at the bottom to find the lift up to Avoriaz closed because of the storm, so we had no other option but to head through the crazy goat village of Lindarets and down the road into Montriond, past the lake and overtaking several cars in the process!

Overall it was an awesome day. Some awesome trails, some awesome freeriding from the pros and it was great to be out on the xc bikes. No heavy bikes to lift on and off lifts and total freedom of being able to pedal instead of pushing or blowing out of your arse trying to pedal a dh bike.

No mechanicals and only 1 crash when Alex took a dh bike only line.

Day 1: awesome, time for a beer I think.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

4 Comments:


Farqui said...

I've seen a few reports of new trails over there since our visit last year - enjoy.

Oh and "this post is useless without pictures"! :p


Dangerous Dave said...

Ta. And yeah, needs pictures but I don't want to risk breaking my iPhone after I trashed a phone 2nd day out here in 2006!


Dangerous Dave said...

Pictures and videos of the event can be found here on our chalet host's blog: http://markinmorzine.blogspot.com/2010/07/chatel-mountain-style-friday-practise.html


uphilla said...

Brings back 'happy memories' of our trip - wish it was not so far away or I would be down for a weekend.
MTFU with the phone and get us some pictures! Grab some bubblewrap from one of the bike shops and stick it in your pack. My Nokia survived despite numerous 'offs'