Les Gets Mountain Biking Review

Thankfully this weekend the weather took a small break from being terrible and we had bright sunshine for first lifts on the Chavanne in Les Gets.

We started off checking out the start of the XC ride called the Tour du Plateau de Loex which is on the trail map marked as a black, accessed from the top of the Chavanne and then over to the right into the Nauchets bowl. The Nauchets lift was closed today due to (apparently) too much snow, but the only major patches of snow we found were on the trail we'd chosen, so we were wondering why it was closed..? Admittedly there were a lot of boggy patches with all the melting snow, so perhaps they're just waiting for it to dry out a bit more before letting the hordes down there.

After getting to the corner with great views of the Mont Blanc range, we turned tail and headed back to Nauchets and headed down the first blue we came across (Triple 8). It's a great little trail with some nice flowy corners and wasn't even that wet, in fact there were a few dry rooty sections when we were expecting a slippy bog fest. The trail's 2.2km long and takes you down -270m back to a fire road and then the bottom of the Nauchets lift.

We headed back down towards the main trails via the green La Mouille Ronde which was where we came across the longest, wettest, cow-pat filled part of the days riding. Big patches of really deep clay-claggy and very wet mud just went on and on, so I'd recommend giving this a miss for a few weeks until it dries out, which is a shame because there are a few trails that pop out onto it...unless you don't mind looking like someone's pebble dashed you in mud that is!

So with only 1 lift open (which meant the bargain price of 10 euros for the day) we went a did a few laps on the main red run under the Chavannes lift. There have been a few small changes made to the track since last year, with a couple of different corners and hips, a road bridge over the road by the lake half way down, a handful of more table tops in the jump park (no wall ride though this year) and a few small changes to the 4x bit right at the bottom.

Not content with just riding the same track over and over, we'd seen a few guys off in the trees to the right of the lift as you're going up the lift, so we thought we'd have a reccy and see how that was riding. Locals built it (so you won't find it on the maps) and it's been christened Donkey Todger* (names have been changed to protect the innocent!) Needless to say after a dry, techy rooty start, it sooned turned into half a wheel deep of mud in places, and then there's the log bridge across the river with a scary drop in (see pics)... again one to leave for when conditions have dried out again.

All in all it was a good days riding with an obligatory luch stop at 412 for burgers and chips, and we timed it perfectly to bail out just as the weather turned back to heavy rain again. Roll on a few weeks time and it will be the Passportes du Soleil weekend happy days:-)

A few little bits of news:

• There's a new blue trail that's been built in Les Gets in the Nauchets area (no 13 on the map). It's called L'Arpette and is a short, flowy 1.9km with -105m descent. You'll find it leading off to the right from red trail L'Encape.
• Although we've been waiting to hear back from the lift office about the two replacement lifts in Morzine this summer, (info was a little vague about them definitely opening) it appears they are, as they're on the trail map and on the summer Portes du Soleil lift timetable (download it from the link at the bottom of the lift opening dates page.) So it definitely looks like they are running (as well as bike buses) to get you back up to Les Gets in place of the Pleney gondola.

Thanks to Tom Humpage for the photos.