Champery holiday

disquieting_museeuws

Hi,

Me and my girlfriend are staying in Champery for 10 days or so at the end of August, and we want to do some gentle mountain biking (no mad downhill stuff, thanks!) We're both sometime ex-racers on the road (and a bit off-road) so don't mind getting a bit knackered on the uphills.

Our stay doesn't have to be a cycling holiday per se, more like looking at some mountains with a bit of riding around.

Is it possible to do this sort of cycling, or are even the cross-country trails a bit rough / extreme? Browsing this forum re. the Alps / Morzine etc has put a few doubts in my mind. Would we be better off with road bikes?

Also, what's the bike hire situation like in Champery?

Obviously have browsed online but any direct advice / experience is useful, thanks.

UH DH

From what I remember, Champery has a little bit of xc stuff. There's a route going up the valley and over, I think, Col du Mine D'or, which lads down to Morzine, then it's a good ride back without too much downhill stuff.

Thing with the Alps is there are tons of stuff to do thats not extreme. There's also a train that stops in Champery so you can ride down the valley and get it back up again.

Best advice, there's books on routes in the Portes Du Soleil. Pick one up before you go and plan some routes.

disquieting_museeuws

Thanks UH, any more advice is welcome no matter how general or trivial.

How easy is it to get to the Col du Joux Plane from Champery, I wonder?

UH DH

Col du Joux Plane is the ridge of the plateau above Morzine and over the mountain from Les Gets.

To get to it, if using an mtb, you get the cablecar up from Champery, ride down a fairly easy downhill into Les Crosets, up the Mosettes Suisse and either down Puncture Alley, which is a really rough fireroad, or you can take a nice sort of footpath past Lac Vert and down to Les Lindarets, then you go up the lift to Avoriaz, nice long road ride down into Morzine, up the Pleney, round to Les Gets, then up Chavannes, down into Nauchettes, up the Nauchettes lift and you're at the start of a ridge that goes up to Col du Joux Plane.

Other option is to do the Col du Cou from Champery straight down to Morzine, then just ride up to Joux Plane if you've already done a huge climb.

If roadriding it, you'll be going down the hill to Troistorrents, up to Morgins, Chatel, down past Abondance and over the Col du Corbier, up the valley through Le Biot and St Jean D'Aulps to morzine, through Morzine and up into Joux Plane. Not a short ride. Would take at least 90min in a car.

If you used the lifts to get there though, most of the ones away from Morzine shut around 5ish, so you have to plan carefully and watch the time.

tourdriving

Info fore Champery area and more http://www.bikepark.ch/
Bike hire http://www.bikeshop-champery.ch/ 1874 Champery (MTB_DOWNHILL)

disquieting_museeuws

In case it's interesting / useful to others - we did a couple of days with hire bikes from bikeshop-champery (link in post above, situated under the cable-car station). They were well set-up Scott cross-country bikes, not cheap though at 70 euro each for a full day. The shop guys were OK, put on spd pedals and bottle cages for us and looked after our bag.

We did about 41 kms on the first day, doing 2 routes from the top of the cable-car in brilliant sunshine (Route du Lait and Les Stations). The other day the cable-car was on a reduced 'bad weather' schedule so we went up just once, for the beautiful Route du Lait again, plus the valley run of Les Rives (still plenty hilly), totaling about 30 kms.

It was all good rideable stuff, lots of descending, most of it reasonably shallow and sweeping. It was my girlfriend's first time on an MTB (though she rides a cyclo-cross bike offroad), so she 'done good', I reckon!