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Meanwhile back in Chamonix, speed!

Local knowledge vs. riding skills. Or perhaps it was the bike...

Jarno from Ride with the locals asked me last night if I could show a friend around Chamonix Trails.  Despite a long day riding sweet trails in Saint Luc (read about it here) I was still keen to ride more.  I'm leaving town in a week so it was a perfect chance to tick of some great classic valley lines.

Last summer I'd shown Rich's mates around who were ex UK Downhill racers (read about that here) and admitted defeat to faster riders.  Today ended up being the same.  It was still a superb day out in the mountains.  No doubt about that!

Chris drove up from just the other side of Geneva and met us at Servoz train station where we loaded his car up with our bikes.  From there I directed him up to Flatiere.  This cheating enabled us to miss the first big climb and get descending sooner.  I was eager to show Chris some of the best trails around.  He is the Product Manager for Kona Bikes and was in Europe for work.  Chris's Dirt Mag Intro. He was on a prototype Process 134 so of course had to put it through it's paces whilst in Euro-land.  And from what I saw whilst trying to hold his rear wheel on the trails, he did some good testing.

From Flatiere down to Servoz the trails are running pretty dry.  The perfect switchbacks are fast and really help give that fantastic alpine feel. Even the rock slabs on the secret traverse trail are getting grippy.  The final fast bit into Servoz still has it's muddy patches, but knowing your riding down at high speeds and are then about to face a huge climb, you generally have bigger worries.  So to help us up the climb we ate some French bread and cheese followed by tasty American trail mix.

On the climb we chatted rubbish as if the 3 of us had been friends for years.  Bikes, girls, cars, etc, etc.  Biker's from all over the world can always talk rubbish to help ease the suffering of a climb.  After nearly 2 hours we reached the top!

After Tom G's memory card issue yesterday I was left without much memory on my camera.  When descending we didn't really stop much, but at the top of the climb we had more bread and cheese. Here are a few photo's from today though:
Chris rides in British Columbia a lot & loves a good rock roll. I had to blur the prototype.

Tom H on the trail below the Fiz
Chris nailed this high line straight off
The trail was superb as ever and Chris loved it.  Middle mountain riding at it's best, slow and techy up high and flat out at the bottom. When we got back to Servoz we weren't done, Tom wanted more, so back up the road we span to reach the locals downhill course above Servoz.  This trail has seen alot more shovel work to and our newbie likened it to his home trails in Bellingham, WA.

Descending- European- 1500 metres. American-  _ _ _ _ ft ?  2 A-lines and a Garbanzo?
Climbing- European- 700 metres. American-  _ _ _ _ ft ?
Hours of talking rubbish- 6
Espresso's drank- none, I told Chris to hold off & go to Italy
Garden allotments visited- 1, but we went by twice. Tom's vegetables available in 3 months
Stoked Americans- 1
Tired, but happy Anglais- 2



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