Arrived in Les Gets yesterday. Another scortcher! Apartment is good, ground floor level, opens onto a nice grassy area near the start of the Les Gets 4X track. There is also a little skills area nearby, here is me trying out the seesaw, and Gaz scoping out the drop….
Had a few beers and watched “Run Fat Boy Run”. Mostly garbage.
Woke nice and early on Thursday to get our lift passes and I was hoping to get back on the bike. I have brought only the Nomad to Les Gets to keep the van more empty. That didn’t seem to work, the van was still loaded.
Heres Gaz on our front lawn getting ready to shred:
So we got our lift passes and went up the Chavannes express lift to do the downhill. Going up there you could see that whilst the track was dry, it was pretty rutted up.Anyway had a run down. The brakes on the Nomad aren’t anyway near as good as the VP-Free. Need to put EBC brake pads in methinks…. Pretty badly rutted as we saw, still great to be back in the saddle.
Next time up the lift we decided to ride over to Morzine (via part of the Passportes route) – it was whilst doing this that I realised I had no fitness whatsoever. There is a little climb (admittedly it also killed me last year) on the way to Morzine (it has a great prize in the form of a water trough full of lovely pure cold mountain water) – I had to push, feeling completely trussed up in shoulder support and body armour. Gaz was riding in just a short sleeved shirt, shorts and leg armour….
We ended up picking up the bottom half of the Avalanche Cup track that runs down from the top of the Pleney lift in Morzine – I hadn’t really intended to do this, but we were there so what the hell! After not jumping the bridge at the end, I collapsed to have a Lucozade, when this geezer comes up and says “you know that fence is electrified don’t you” at which point I lent back, touched said electric fence, and got a shock right on crown of my head. I said “I do now” – to be fair, I think it was probably about time for electro shock therapy…Met up with Gav and Paul whilst grabbing a burger and frites (food of champions) at the top of Pleney. Pauls got a new Yeti 575 with some serious bling going on – ride hard my friend!
Did the whole of the Avalanche Cup a couple of times, it’s a great track I have fond memories of (apart from breaking my collar bone there 3 years ago) – they have put even more jumps in it now, mostly ski jumps, theres a small double – of course the 10%er (this is a really steep section with netting at the bottom in case you don’t make the berm) is still there, first time I was dragging the brakes all the way, second time let it run, build up a head of steam and “whoosh” rail the berm at the bottom. Called it a day after some shots from the Avalanche Cup start:
Rode back to Les Gets (all downhill) and had a bath – bliss! (only a small bath, but better than the shower only option in 2Alpes)Here are Gazs first spy shots, of a wacky quad bike, high centre of gravity there boyo!
Forecast is now looking good until next Tuesday – happy days!
Oh yeah I bought a jacket in 2alpes just before we left its here, might just get some wear at the cold starts of Mega and Mountain of Hell, but otherwise firmly a winter jacket, here, displayed “Man at Evans cycles” style:
And also well done to Gaz for one again being the keeper of “Le Chat Sac” (the kitty in French!)
1 comment:
good pose!
Post a Comment