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Mythical Magazine Trails

More trail hunting, Chablais, Haute Savoie, France

I think it was last winter when DIRT Mag (RIP){recurring theme} printed two articles on the state of Morzine and the northern French Alps.  Many of the pictures where from Chamonix, but remained unamed in the captions in what I can only think was a ploy to keep the location's secret.  For me, it was easy to spot, a Cham local, the Le Tour trails have been mentioned on this blog many times and will continue to be written about.  

There was one other photo in these articles that caught my eye. It was of a very specific looking modern metal cross somewhere in the pre-alps before Morzine with a stunning looking ridgeline coming off it. Thus the hunt began, first online. It didn't take long thanks to google and camptocamp.org to find the location of this cross. Today the hunt continued out in the mountains, after talking about it all last summer. Finally it's been ridden!
The cross with the ridge going right to left
 Unfortunately plans to go with Rich fell through when he pumped too much air into his Reverb dropper post and blew a seal, or something along those lines...
Another crew was over in Pila riding the final section of the freeride home run. It seemed like a lot of money for a lift pass to ride the bottom of one trail...

Looking across to the Saleve, Petit Saleve, Geneva & Jura Mtns
So I span my way up the 1000 metre climb from the Valley Verte floor towards the pointe. I was overtaken by some fast French enduro boys, but after a quick bite to eat we arrived at the top at a similar time. I had a quick chat and they said to watch out for the steep start of the ridgeline in the muddy conditions. I cautiously began despite my excitement for the long and potentially brilliant descent.

Stupidly I saw a rock step and still hit it flat out and ended up putting a slice in my front tyre that was just too big for tubeless sealant to re-seal despite my best pumping and tyre spinning efforts.  Tube in, and I continued through loamy, leaf covered mostly smooth singletrack. For the rest of the descent you'll have to imagine following a ridgeline but within light beech, spruce and birch forest.  Steep rocky sections were interspersed with rooty flowy sections.  Think Servoz, but more intense.  There are a couple of short fireroad sections to briefly rest between more fairly steep trails nearing the bottom.  These seem to be old footpaths that have seen a tiny bit of work from a caring mountain biker that enable you to stay on the trail when the slope steepens..

A great descent, and one I can't wait to show people!
It's opposite le Mole, so the ultimate day would be to combine both peaks which would equal around 2500 metres of vertical descending...and climbing...

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