Day 3: 3200m, Urban Slopestyle, and Evening Trail Riding
1 Jul 2011
Day 3: Amazing Trails and the Urban Slopestyle. Straight up the glacier this morning on the Jandri Express which to be honest is a bit cheeky as it’s not that fast! But I suppose when you are going from 1650m in the town directly up to 3200m it’s going to take a bit of time to do it! Loads of pro skiers and boarders practicing in the half-pipe ahead of a big comp tomorrow but we couldn’t hang around and watch – too much biking to do. The trails immediately off the top (Canyons, Jandri, Ayton) are loose shale, fast with plenty of tight berms, and the dust that gets kicked up is significant – gets in your mouth and dries you out. The altitude is also immediately noticeable as even a short pedal section gets you out of breath quickly. We took a short detour to climb up about 100m to ride a black trail called Super Intégrale and it was really worth it. This is a much more natural section of trail without the built berms in the corners, tight and then also very steep near the bottom. It also features a couple of north-shore style wooden ramps that on their own are fine but have very technical entry and exit sections. After this a fire-road traverse brought us out at the top of the Oeufs Blanc gondola and the start of the Sapins trail. This was one of the most fun trails I can remember riding in a while (although I expect to be saying that a lot on this trip!), with some fast but tight berms that have you bouncing from one side to the other, left to right, before you really know whats going on! Check out this Rider-Cam video of the top section of trail with Dan chasing me down the hill…
Back in town in mid afternoon, and the Urban Slopestyle kicked off complete with dancing girls and a big French compère with prizes for the kids (tried to get some but lost out, both with the prizes and the dancing girls!). Quick couple of photos from Tim of the best of the action…
Just before 6 we got the Diable lift up to shoot a few pictures in the evening light and with a back-drop of some huge mountains. Got a couple of nice ones – check out the Facebook page for the others, but here is the pick of the bunch, Dan and myself close in a tight berm…
And on the way down Dan collected some more Rider-Cam footage of the Diable trail…
We then had to cut the photo session short as Trail Patrol came down the hill on their Moto-X’s sweeping up the stragglers. So we charged down the green Cretes trail and this trail is well worth a ride due to the incredible views it has to offer. It takes you down a ridge-line and after a short wooded section you emerge at the end of the ridge-line almost hanging off the Les 2 Alpe valley with cliffs plunging 100′s of metres down even further! We were gutted we could not get more pics but the patrol were hot on our heels so we just rode straight through. If you come to 2 Alpes then ride this trail.
Tomorrow it’s off to Tignes for the opening weekend there. Big thanks to the Les 2 Alpes team for putting on a great show and running an awesome biking resort, with special thanks to Héléna, Pascal and Anais. We will most definitely be back here.
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