MTB'ing in the Alps

ali$tair

Never done it before but 3 of us want to go this summer. We will be driving down, but just need to know best places to stay.

Firstly, Morzine or Les Gets seem to be the biggest/most popular destinations, am I correct?

Found this place (link below) seems quite reasonable, anyone stayed there or know of any better places?

http://www.riders-retreat.co.uk/index.php

MountainMonster

No idea, but that place looks amazing! Wanna go so bad. What would be cool would be to arrange for a huge group from BR to go, gives me a chance to escape the misses and go ride for a few days!

jonnyashworth

I did used to do the winter seasons in morzine and can tell you what an amazing place it is (it has a huge expat population) good bars and beautiful mountains. I am also looking at going out to the alps for the first time this summer but have been lead to believe that morzine les gets are pretty DH orriantated and that you really need upwards of a 160mm bike to get the best out of the reigon. Further south in the alps Merribel is apparantly much more XC orriantated. Hope this helps

Anonymous

€135 to €225 per person, per week, sounds like a great price and seems there isn't any underoccupancy fluff as you'd get trying to book through a travel agent if you're a single person. Do have to muck in with other guests you may not know, unless you've booked out the whole chalet.

Morzine / Avoriaz area is great, though I've only done it skiing. Loads of vertical. Plenty around the ski area of Avoriaz, but also quite a descent to Morzine (the climb the other way is one of the TDF mountain stages). Lovely scenery. I can quite see it would have some excellent DH and XC descents.

Meribel is a dump, but again I can only comment from skiing. Popular destination for Brits with the whole place made up of cheap tiny self catered chalets and there's crap all in the town other than some tacky Brit bars. It's at the base of the 3 Valleys which in the winter is massively overcrowded (and overrated if you ask me). Not a very picturesque place and some parts of the 3 Valleys have some awful concrete accommodation. No idea what it's like in the summer though, and don't know if the MTB trails are in the same area as skiing.

Dave_P1

I've always stayed at a place called Le Boomerang in Les Gets. It's in a nice little town, always does good food with a busy bar too.. Morzine is a bigger town with more going on which is 5 miles down the road from Les Gets. It's more central if your going to head to places like Chatel. Having said that though, you won't have any issues with staying in any of the places and heading to Chatel as I have done that plenty of times.

ali$tair

deadkenny wrote:

€135 to €225 per person, per week, sounds like a great price and seems there isn't any underoccupancy fluff as you'd get trying to book through a travel agent if you're a single person. Do have to muck in with other guests you may not know, unless you've booked out the whole chalet.

Morzine / Avoriaz area is great, though I've only done it skiing. Loads of vertical. Plenty around the ski area of Avoriaz, but also quite a descent to Morzine (the climb the other way is one of the TDF mountain stages). Lovely scenery. I can quite see it would have some excellent DH and XC descents.

Meribel is a dump, but again I can only comment from skiing. Popular destination for Brits with the whole place made up of cheap tiny self catered chalets and there's crap all in the town other than some tacky Brit bars. It's at the base of the 3 Valleys which in the winter is massively overcrowded (and overrated if you ask me). Not a very picturesque place and some parts of the 3 Valleys have some awful concrete accommodation. No idea what it's like in the summer though, and don't know if the MTB trails are in the same area as skiing.

I know €225 a week and you can choose between an indoor pool or outdoor pool and indoor jacuzzi!

[/b]jonnyashworth

Apparantly all DH routes have a 'chicken pass' so if your not up to that bit you just go round and rejoin afterwards.

Dave_P1

That's not true regarding the DH runs, some have chicken runs but a lot of them don't.

Anonymous

Depends what you mean by chicken run. Are they avoiding the DH section entirely or just the massive drop/jumps? I'm fine with DH runs but just can't do the big drops and jumps, and so long as there's a chicken run round them I'll continue on.

Dave_P1

In terms of jumps / drops, then yes, there is often a path around.
When you get to very technical sections with rocks then there won't always be a chicken run.