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Keeping it going all the way back to the valley's

High above Samoens, not biking terrain, but still stunning. Can you spot the Argentiere basin?

After a busy and wet summer season guiding, followed by an exhausting, but exhilarating TRANS SAVOIE I somehow had to muster up the stamina and mental energy for my IML Summer Assessment.  It was tough!
Distant feature recognition
One of many flowers we spent hours huddled around
I made it back to Chamonix (thanks for having me you know who you are) with a urge to ride and use my valley lift pass.  My riding had slowed down a little this season so it was great to ride with some guys on big downhill bikes.  I mean try and keep up guys on downhill bikes.  I am still of thinking that in almost all situations, the Nukeproof Mega, is enough bike.  It's more the pilot that is slowing it down.  There are many good 'enduro' bikes these days and I think they are capable in all but the biggest of hits. And with a dropper post it's easy to ride uphill and traverse undulating trail sections...

 Lucky that traversing ability as we had a trail in mind to get us to Argentiere from Flegere rather than going straight to Argentiere on the valley train.

 The new Flegere lift cabin doesn't see many bikers these days so 5 of us were squeezed in taking up nearly half the cabin.  The footpaths up there are classic Cham flow-tech.  Welcome back I thought!  The end of the trail features many huge rocks and big roots which demand speed and concentration to keep a steady pace down to the village.
Humpo huck!
Once in Argentiere we headed across to our main objective for the day, The Grands Montets lift.  Rich had never ridden up there, and all the others had not been up there at all this season.  It was the last day of summer opening and after looking at the new lift station we hit the classic zig zag footpath down the front face back to the lift station.  It was dry so you could really lean into even the tightest of switchbacks to help you get around and keep 'flow' in order to be able to jump and hop your way down the faster sections. But we had to keep your eyes ahead, as there was always another switchback to catch you out!

 Lower down there are several superb banked corners that you can ride high.  Tom had a go at the really high off camber line which dropped you into a perfect down slope just after a drainage ditch.  He claimed it was easy to keep the high off camber line, and the video on my iPhone does make it look easy, but in reality it looks tricky and is clearly a line that is not ridden very often unlike the lower line.

Andy on the wall ride
Up again and across this time to end up nearer Chamonix.  The Levancher trail takes a bit to get going, but there is a great variety of terrain.  A favourite always being the open meadow by the goat farm before dropping into sweeping lefts and rights with roots to launch off.  Luckily on the fast straight section we didn't come across any walkers unlike earlier on that morning.  Rich and Tom flew down on their downhill rigs.  Somewhere a big bike does have a ploughing through it style advantage.

Around the walkers

Meadows and views
It's great to ride with good friends again, getting back to the usual chit chat and indecisive-ness of where to eat and ride next that group dynamics bring. Funky coloured bread helped some of the group decide what to do, dog walking duty for Andy.  I wanted to ride more, but the other's were unsure.  What about that trail from Brevent that traverses towards Flegere then drops into the trees and gets faster and faster? They were sold.

 The top trail section had quite a few walkers on it, but we were polite as ever and still got to shred and drop all the best bits.  Once we dropped into the tree's we only saw 3 or 4 walkers so we did it all in one go.  And we did pick up more and more speed!  I was able to hang on as Tom used up a few more of his 9 lives and Rich pumped down.

 We still had the World Champs to watch on Redbull tv replay and we were kindly fed and entertained by our Aussie host! The riding on display was highly entertaining if not educational.

 Welcome back to Cham riding, it's as great as ever!

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