Alps Part Deux, Part Two

Here it is-the biking bits after a suitable delay-why oh why do we have to go back to work! Basically we (me-Daryl, Dave, Gavin "Legwood" Edwards and Mike) went to Les Gets, Morzine, Avoriaz, Champery and broke all course records, aired some new undiscovered gaps etc. etc. Day 1-They have now relabelled the "Barel Gap" on the Les Gets 4x to the "Legwood Gap". Day 2- Daryl and Mike raced Sam Hill down the Champery World Cup course-Sammie couldn't cope with the pace and crashed out. Day 3-Dave broke the course record formely held by Chris Kovarik on Pleney in Morzine after some slick overtaking of Finter in the final wooded section.....Anyway back in the real world
Day 1-Straight on the case in a bid to make the most of our 3 days of biking we tried to rediscover all the trails from our foray 2 years ago. Rode Chavannes and rediscovered those legendary braking bumps (not again thanks), then Mont Chery-still steep, then over to Morzine after jumping the fences on the not so official anymore Les Gets-Morzine link!! Then a blast down Pleney, followed by a trip over to Avoriaz and a blast down some new runs through the woods which were very good indeed. Good days riding for all, except for me binning it hard on the road right in front of a car on the way home-smooth!!


Day 2- We took a linear route straight over into Switzerland with the aim of getting to Champery to have a look at the worlds course (and maybe kid oursleves into riding it). Some very good natural trails made a nice change from the man-made stuff, took away from the dissapointment of the lift not running on the worlds course and us missing the top of the other DH track. We then ran down the rocky route right back to Morzine-with a couple of dozen stops in between for Mikes punctures!



Day 3- We used this as a best of day so tried to ride all the favourites and did a pretty good job in-all. Including finding a secret trail running under the super morzine lift which was frankly-savagely steep and rooty-but thankfully dry. This made for some technical and intense riding and Legwood ending up 10 foot down off the side of the trail in what kind only be described as the upside down position-bike atop! Dave and I then ran Pleney again and got some great camera footage and set what we thought was a pretty good time-5 and a bit minutes to the fireroad-I have since found out 4 mins is a v. good time so make of that what you will (we slow!!)