2008 Morzine Trip
24th July 2008
By Jonathan Collins,
Instructor, Snowdonia Cycle Hire & Training
Morzine, French Alps – July 3rd was the start of our annual trip to the Alps for some Downhilling - this year we decided we needed 10 days of gravity biking!
We rode a vast range of tracks including some of the good old well-know ones like the ‘Swiss National Course’ aka ‘The Swiss Wall’, ‘French National DH Course’ and ‘French World Cup Course’ and a stack of others. But those Frenchies have been busy building new trails like the new Jump Park in Les Gets, which is a track with more bermed bends and tabletop jumps than anything else I know, and some nice new trails in the valley down to Chattel.
Whilst riding over in Chatel I bumped into Darren Berrecloth who had been riding the Chatel slope style – he came second! After talking with Darren I thought it best to try and ride the slope style course – basically I couldn’t. It’s crazy, crazy gnarly stuff – only for the best in the world! For me it was more like rock climbing (but down) with a 44lb downhill bike on my back.
For the last day I thought we needed to end with a big ride-out, so we took off and used 13 different lifts of which we only used two of them twice and every downhill run we did was different. We covered 66km and managed just under 20,000 feet of downhilling. This last epic took in a huge area and I’m not sure if it’s possible to do much more in one day with a downhill bike. If anyone fancies giving it a go and wants the routes just drop us an email.
Our Hotel was Le Grand Tetras which is run by Cyril and his family. It’s a very nice hotel and very good value for money and, most importantly, is in a good location only a few minutes walk to the town. If you want to book please quote ‘Jonathan-Wales’ as your booking reference.
The Airport transfer was by David and Sarah at Rolling Road airport transfer – very friendly, reliable, nice vehicle and good value for money.
