Horrendous traverses into delightful descents

A solo mission today led me to Dorenaz to check out the trails

There seems to be an ongoing theme, the Valais region of Switzerland keeps pulling us over the boarder.  On Sunday we skied what this season was considered quite nice snow in a 40 degree couloir above Finhaut, and today I was near Martigny to sample the trails on offer using the Dorenaz gondola.  The beauty of spring is that you can mix winter sports and summer ones.

About 10 minutes from Martigny you'll find a tiny lift that can hold up to 10 people whilst your bikes are suspended underneath.  I had two journeys up when it was only me.  The maximum number of people that were in a cabin today was 5. A school girl returning to her village high above the valley, an old farmer boy coming to do maintenance on his 'alpage' fields & some other old dears.  It's a strange place.  Very Swiss.  The yellow Poste bus has a priority parking space right next to the lift that runs year round almost every hour.  How, why, what, where and when I'm not 100% sure.  But in recent years mountain biker's have been building official DH tracks.

And of course, being in the Valais the number of potentially good dotted footpath lines on the map is ridiculous.

I started on the downhill course which is well known to be steep.  Call it the new bike, or perhaps because it was the first run of the day, but I didn't really feel it.  Maybe after a few runs it'd go better when you had an idea of what to expect.  Maybe on a proper downhill bike that could handle repetitive steep steps and drops...

Views back to Mont Blanc Massif

So it began, exploration and adventure time.  A tale of highs and low's. Carrying the bike around sketchy traverses tightly gripping onto handrail chains.

I'd found a few potential options on various bike websites.  They all started much higher up from the lift so as I started spinning up the road I kept an eye on the snow line.  Unfortunately I was unable to get as high as I had hoped for one trail so another sketchy traverse eventually lead me to 2/3 of the way down the singletrack.  Brown POW! Deep leaves covered the trail that meandered down the steep hillside.  The switchbacks were perfect.  There was no need to nose manual or hop your way around, just flow around corner after corner.  Lower down, you cross over a minor road a few times on tight technical trails in light forests and then finish with this:

Wild garlic singletrack

The real gem of the day came on my last run that took me around to above Martigny town.  This was part of a descent that in summer can be started from 2124 metres.  I joined in at 1100 metres, and it still took me 20 minutes to get down to the bottom. In short this trail compares to the ultra special Albertville trails.  Where I started from was steep but it flowed with more perfect, not too tight switchbacks, then into a dry dusty trail swooping in, down and around before dropping you into a long rocky section in the open.  I thought I'd missed my right turn, but decided to carry on as the trail was so good.  Just rocky enough to be technical, but still very fast. The trail had seen recent maintenance to the drainage ditch's.  In Chamonix Valley they are built deliberately large to hinder mountain bikers, in Valais, they accept that mountain bikers are part of the outdoor culture and design accordingly.

I hadn't missed my right turn, a little uphill, and the trail texture changes. I was right in the open, just above the vineyards.  The surface was dry, hard and almost sandy.  A perfect enduro section, a little down, smooth across, a rock step, and more smooth ribbon singletrack to follow.

Too good not to show again

Dorenaz deserves some more exploring once the snow disappears above 2000 metres altitude.  For mountain bikers, after the lift another 1000m must be pedalled to get to highest 'goods'.  For downhillers, session-ing the trail straight out of the lift is also well worth a visit.  Get in the flow of it, and it'll be a great "vtt descente".