Back Home Now

It's all over, I'm back in lovely England. My last week in Morzine incorporated a little bit of last minute riding the steeps on Pleney, followed by some solid cleaning, a thunderstorm, and a delightfully lonely drive back. The weather was a bit different too, it became pretty cold, with plenty of snow on the peaks.

The season has been great, riding has been awesome. Here's a few of my bests and worsts:

Best tracks: Da Trail, Hattock, Chatel Blackshore, Gueps, Dre dans le Pentu, Run of the Mill, probably more...
Best place to ride: Super Morzine/Zore tracks
Worst place to ride: Les Gets!
Best crash: Tackling a tree somewhere down a track on Pleney, good laugh
Worst crash: That one from the beginning of the season, look back through my blog for the pictures. That hurt
Best new thing I rode: Tie between Champery WC track and the step up in chatel, I was chuffed with both of them
Worst braking bumps: Chaux Fleurie track - it eventually got closed it was so bad!
Best braking bumps (smoothest track!): Pleney blue! But the Zore tracks got plenty of maintenance and were usually good too
Best road driven: Col de Colombiere
Best moment: How can I choose?!
Worst moment: Climbing Roc d'Enfer

So I guess that's all from me. I hope everyone has enjoyed my blog and/or found it helpful, it's extremely unlikely I'll be in Morzine for another season, so this is MarkInMorzine signing out!

More Climbing

After Ressachaux I was invited to do Roc d'Enfer, a slightly higher mountain (2244m) out the back of Les Gets. Expecting a similar walk, I thought I'd give it a go. Well, it was more a climb than a walk for several bits. A knife edge ridge high above the valley below. Lots of clinging to what were essentially cliffs, hoping not to fall off.

I don't think it was as insane as it felt to me, I think I just don't quite have the head for heights that I thought I had. Either way, it was the most scared I've ever been. In the photo above, you can see part of the ridge we climbed across. I was very, very happy to turn off the ridge and take a (still fairly steep) path back down to the bottom. Paul's punishment for throwing snow at me was a lesson in geology, all the way down the near 1000m descent.

I think I'll cancel my plans for a quick jaunt up the north face of the Eiger, and stick to mountain biking. Which I suppose is equally dangerous. Fear is a strange thing.

Getting High

Today I hiked up Pointe de Ressachaux. It's about 1100m vertical ascent, which isn't exactly epic mountaineering, but it's the biggest mountain I've done. It takes you up to just shy of 2200m. Even with the encroaching clouds, the view from the top was pretty awesome. Some of the peaks were just popping their heads above the cloud, whilst more clouds stealthily floated up the valley behind us. The sunlight on them created an almost full circle rainbow.

We managed to get a sneaky glimpse of a two chamois (mountain goats) on the way back down before the cloud enveloped us. My legs are incredibly tired now, and looking back up at the mountain, you can't even tell it's there because of all the cloud.

Global Warming

Definitely the cause of the weather we've had. It's been raining non stop for 2 and a half days now. And it's cold. But that means some awesome riding for the last week of the PDS. Though as it happens, today I stuck to Pleney anyway.

The weather was horrible, so cold and wet, I couldn't see a thing with the amount of rain on my goggles. But the riding itself was awesome. Tested myself on some off the main line riding, steep, muddy, rooty. For someone who hates riding in the wet, I was pretty pleased with my riding. I just tried to look past the wetness, and go really fast.

Plenty of this

And these

Busting out the spikes! These tyres really work out here, somehow when it's wet, you still grip. Which is just great really.

Fresh snow I snapped through a gap in the cloud on Ressachaux. Though when I went up to Avoriaz, there had been an awful lot of snow on the surrounding peaks. It even started sleeting on us in the town. Fun!

After riding. Rather wet

The End is Near

Some hefty downpours and epic thunderstorms persuaded me to break out the wet screams for today. I was glad to have them on, but it was nowhere nearly as muddy as I'd expected, perhaps a reflection of how dry it has been over the past few weeks.

Only 1 more week of the whole PDS being open, so I plan on trying to make the most of it. You should too, don't forget to pick up your MarshGuard from Morzine Mountainbike Mechanics though, cos a little rain is forecast midweek. I was damn happy to have mine today, clean goggles all day! The state of my kit shows that it wasn't too bad though, and a little more sunshine tomorrow should give us our dry tracks back.

5 or 6 runs and only a light smattering 

Chatel Jumps

So a few weeks ago I'd hit that step up on Fluid in Chatel Bikepark, but not the double afterwards. After explaining this to some guests, they followed me in, and I decided to lead them off the double anyway, oops! That double is sneaky though, I'd been told to slow up for it, but with a dab of brakes, I still overshot it by miles, wish I could have seen it, it felt huuuge!

Unfortunately later in the day, one of my guests crashed into a stealth drainage ditch coming out of the bottom of one of the runs. After most of us saying, 'nah, nothing's broken' he decided to pop into the medical centre, and returned with two fractured wrists and a cast on each arm. Must be awful, healing vibes to Sam Willard. He did however manage to get a super quick clip of myself and Riders Retreat guests Bruce and Glyn hitting the aforementioned step up on Fluid.


Fluid step up on Pinkbike

Photo Sesh

It's still obscene levels of hot, but complaining about it is banned in the chalet. It's the clearest I've ever seen it. So today we went back up Super Morzine to get some photos. It was a little hard in the woods, with the combination of dark shady areas and bright sunlight, but the super dry, dusty conditions meant some mega drifts were in order. Here's a few snaps of myself and Riders Retreat guest (staff member?) Tom Rogers.

The 2nd corner on the top section that leads into the red and black trails.

It's so loose due to just being rebuilt. Trail maintenance has been awesome this year on these tracks, and some new lines near the top has generated some amazing corners that flow so well. I'm sure as soon as it rains they will be ruined but oh well!

These are some of the flowiest corners in the PDS!

Hello tree

This 180 berm calls for an audacious inside line!

Rooots

An attempted root-double-up...

This small step down has a bit of a harsh landing but is the fastest way down for sure!

...and leads into this small jump over some roots. I tried to boost it here, but found out over the course of the day you can really go a lot higher than this!