Day 12: Verbier will challenge you all

11 Jul 2011

Day 12: Extreme trails in Verbier. Make no mistake, Verbier bike park is built for riders who know what they are doing! The trails here are like nothing we have encountered in the URT so far, and offer more natural ‘roots and rocks’ type trails when compared to the manufactured berms of the previous days. There are only a few officially marked trails but they are technical and challenging for any standard of rider. Verbier Bike Park chief and former UCI World Cup downhiller Fabrice Tirefort was our guide for the day. Known as ‘Trifon’ to his mates, he set the tone with our warm up run on the blue “02 Tsopu” trail, with some twisty rooty turns made all the more tricky with the rainfall over night. Hit a root at the wrong angle/speed and the bike just slides right out from under you. So we knew we were somewhere that required 100% concentration. We then stepped up to “01 Tire’s Fire”, Verbier’s official race course used for the 2009 European Downhill Cup. This has everything a big DH course should have; jumps, drops, fast turns, tight turns, rocks, roots, and even some wooden north-shore to keep you entertained. We followed a 12 year old kid called Loris down this trail. Trifon coaches Loris, along with a couple of other up and coming riders in town, and I have never seen a 12 year old ride so fast. So we were hoping some of Trifon’s expertise would rub off on us! Finally we checked out “05 Woooohhh”, the new black graded trail. This was harder than any black (or double-black) trail seen on the URT so far, with super technical turns and big big drops. This is as advanced as it gets.

In the afternoon we took the camera equipment back up the hill to some of the good spots identified during the morning. There has not been much riding in woods up until this point as we have always been based above the tree line at each bike park, so we took the opportunity to take some pics in the trees. As always a few of the best here and some more on Facebook…

Something different tomorrow, exploring the local area a bit to see what riding is on offer outside of the main bike park. Riding with the MTB Suisse crew so should be a great experience. Just no uplifts!

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