Day 60: Testing to the Limits

29 Aug 2011

Mark over the jump and Sam round the berm

Day 60: The Jump Park trail and Les Gets medical support. Today was an eventful day. We headed for the trails under the Nauchets Express lift, over the back from the Chavannes. There is something here for every standard of rider, including the black ‘jump park’ trail that comes straight off the top. It starts with a nice gap jump which launches you over a berm which is the first corner of the red “La Déjantée” trail which takes you off in a different direction. We spent a short while here getting pictures of everyone that gave it a go, and practicing the timing to get the shot you see below – Mark and Sam getting it right at last!

We then moved further down the trail to a big northshore drop. Now throughout the URT we have always tried to test the bike parks as thoroughly as possible, and to discuss the other facilities that you may not encounter on a visit here but are nonetheless vital. But I had not planned on checking out this particular factor first hand. An embarrassingly poor low-speed attempt left me coming up short and going over the front of the bike, landing pretty heavily on my neck and shoulders. We had been joined by Ian and Karen from the Alpine Elements team and they were really great in helping me back to the top of the Chavannes lift where the guys radioed for the Bike Patrol. I was escorted down on the lift by Bebe – one of the 2 Bike Patrol staff who share duties so that 1 of them is always available every day of the summer. And with the support of the Les Gets Medical Center team they are pretty experienced at dealing with situations like this.

Ian over the big northshore drop the way it should be done

At the bottom of the lift I was checked over briefly before a short ambulance ride 400m through town to the Med Center. It was becoming apparent by this stage that the probability of there being anything seriously wrong was low but you can’t be too careful with neck injuries so we went through the process. A few quick X-rays and a chat with the Doc revealed nothing serious, and I was off within an hour armed with some pain-killers for a very stiff neck. A real lesson in not pushing yourself when you are already tired, injured, hungry, (add any other excuse I can think of…) but at least it provided the opportunity to experience the bike park support services first hand. Here’s a great shot of Ian demonstrating it properly…

A huge thanks to Chantal, Fabien and the rest of the medical team at Les Gets. Believe it or not they deal with more injuries in the summer due to mountain biking than in the winter due to skiing and snowboarding. And that’s despite the fact that the number of bikers in the summer is considerably less than the number skiers/boarders in winter. Many of these cases are due to a problem that many bike parks face but that Les Gets encounters more than most due to it’s reputation as a major European MTB destination… the appeal of bike park riding to those that have never been on a mountain bike before. Unfortunately many relate to biking all-too-easily as they ‘once owned a bike as a kid’, or they ‘ride to and from work every day’ (do you know anyone that can’t ride a bike?). So they don’t readily recognise the big step-change to serious bike park trails. And when kitted out with a rental full-suspension bike the likes of which they have not seen before, and body armour and full face helmet to stop anything bad happening, then often bad stuff does happen. A great example of this is a recent stag-do from the UK that came to Les Gets for a few days of DH biking – as if it was equivalent to paint-ball or go-karting! 3 of the wedding party met the Les Gets medical team, with 2 going home with limbs in plaster and the groom taking home some nice facial injures that will have made interesting wedding pics a couple of weeks later! It’s great that more and more people are taking up mountain biking, and great that this is resulting in the rise of bike parks, but just maybe there is a debate to be had about providing access to the trails without an initial lesson or introduction? Otherwise medical trends like the one above might lead to resorts questioning the business of operating a bike park at all. Comments welcome. We’ll leave you with one of the cooler pictures that today’s fun and games produced…

Totally un-edited X-ray from today. No problems.