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Morgins

High quality trails, high quality riders & high temperatures!

Tiff from 'Dream Guides' & Biggie wanted to get some training in at Morgins before competing there on Sunday in a timed race down all four of the trails. (the camera didn't come out till the afternoon so no pics of Aussie Chris, Tiff or Biggie I'm afraid)

          Chris' photo's here: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Rich, Tom H and I headed over early to get going in the heat.  We headed over and down to Martigny, along the Rhone Valley and then back up again in about an hour and half.  It was pretty busy in Morgins with the local market as well as people from the Portes du Soleil and other local Swiss towns making the trip up for course practise.  The trails where not too bad though.  We just had to make sure we always pulled over properly, and before starting riding again we'd have a good look up the trail for any fast locals we might cut-up. 

Postcard Swiss ski village

We started on the 'blue', and compared to the Les Houches blue I've ridden lots recently it was quite an eye opener.  A real downhill trail with big rock and root sections to test your skills.
me trying to smooth out some roots

We rode a different line with Tiff, Biggie and Chris once they arrived which again was a great mix of berms, rock sections and big jumps.  They wanted to keep going and going to learn the trails so we went and had a well earned re-fuel.  Unlike our gourmet trip to Pila, we decided to just go to a supermarket to save money, but that was expensive enough!
re-hydrating Ellie style - same photographer, just not quite the same with me as compared to a blonde!
After lunch we did a few more laps, including the incredibly steep, but sweet "white is black".  We had a little session of some sections to get some photos and just slow the tempo down due to the 30.C + temperatures.

gap time for Tom H

Rich railing berms as fast as ever

Tom H railing another perfect berm

Rich going down a fairly smooth section

"with Rich's puncture and this, your not helping us looking man-ly Oli" I was told whilst snapping photo's of alpine flowers

me on a steep hip

Tom H gapping again
Overall, it was a great days riding in another location.  It is always great to ride a new place, however fast we feel we are. Compared to the locals we felt a little bit poor.  In Cham you get to ride the best of everything: flowy XC, tons of technical singletrack, steep DH tracks like Vallorcine, but for pure DH riding it lacks what the Morzine, Chatel, Morgins, etc have.  We all decided though, that if we lived in a place like Portes du Soleil then perhaps we wouldn't get the variety of riding that you can elsewhere.  Or the great access from Cham to other areas.

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