Day 6: Trail Development in Tignes

5 Jul 2011

Day 6: Enduro at Tignes and on the road again. Another crazy busy day yesterday so we’ll cover those activities – better late than never eh? We sent Dan up with the POV camera to collect some more Rider-Cam footage. He returned a couple of crashes later, sulking that the trail had kicked his ass. But at least we got the videos, one of the best will appear here later today (with awesome new intro sequence – comments welcomed!).

Meanwhile Tim and I met up with Max Higel. Max is the Tignes Bike Park chief and founder, responsible for trail development and everything else involved in running a bike park. He showed us some of the trails currently in development (so still closed to the public) including a green run aimed at providing real options to beginners and those with little experience of bike park riding. ‘Smoothie’ will open soon and offers a really fun ride to experienced riders too. We then explored the Enduro trails, ‘Rocky Trail’ down to the second half of ‘Wonderboisses’. These offer some really different natural trails without the manufactured berms, and some sections of trail took us directly across open alpine meadows. The trail was steep, tight, and technical and a totally different kind of riding to the Downhills. It might take a 10 minute pedal uphill to get to the trail head but it is easily worth it.

A quick burger in Tchuss, the best in town (along with the Loop), great value and they even bake their own buns! Then we were on the road again, this time to Alp d’Huez. No crazy road bike races encountered this time so we arrived and set up in the apartment without any problems. WorldBikeParks team members Paul and Mark were already set up there having sorted the accommodation out and arrived the day before us. But seriously, the apartment is full of little ornamental hearts, it’s the kind of place you take your fiancé – felt like we were intruding on some romantic weekend! Not the setting for a week of hard mountain biking but as we all love our bikes then we’ll let it slide. Few beers and a catch up in Sphére Bar and then we crashed. Big week ahead!

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