Monday, July 20, 2009

Some call me Stephan, you may call me 'elp

Latest post and exploits from de mountains, had friends Suzanne and Trevor out for a couple of days, much BBQing, wine drinking and a hal baked attempt at drowning ourselves, good weekend all round!

The sun's been out for a while and it's been getting up to 30 odd degrees in the shade! Really hard to keep beer cold but ideal weather to get wet and enjoy the melted snow.

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We drove out to AN Rafting's base just outside of Morzine looking at the river running alongside the road thinking it looked way to rough and the rafting must be downstream only to arrive and find that, that was the exact bit of river we were heading for.....and that the previous nights summer storm had swollen the river from 15 cubic meters a second to 50! Time to dig out the armbands and possibly rubber duck then!

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Our instructor/guide/river guru introduced himself as Stephan but said we were welcome to call him 'elp, funny boy. He knew his stuff and had us hurtling through all kinds of rapids and waves and drops forwards backwards sideways whilst insisting that the most important thing to do if the raft capsized was to keep smiling.

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Is it a bird, is it a plane..............

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Soon to be rafting, sans raft!

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Grrr, serious rafting face, must, paddle.

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Spot who's in control of who gets wet then.

Mountain Spaces
Catered, Self Catered and Adventure Holidays
The French Alps


www.mountainspaces.com

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Just in Pictures...

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Trails...

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Dark Trails.

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Fun...

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When Shared.

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Nice!

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Getting into it.

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Tweaks.

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Cheecks.

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Gareth gets arty by mistake...

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Choo Choo.

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Thanks G Man.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Verbal Dia....Diaorh...Diaora..and a spelling problem

Evenin' all

Have started a new blog on wordpress to complement our website, fresh content, pics and all that. Still gonna post in IBFC of course but writing style is a bit more subdued, no swearing on our blog etc, but not here, arse feck, see.

link to new blog http://mountainspaces.wordpress.com/

Also getting ready to launch activity stylee holidays, these pages aren't linked to owt yet as we've not launched them but feedback welcome from anyone who fancies a gander, follow this link, not all of it works and it's a bit kooky at the mo bu the gist of it is right. Gay cheesy picture of us may change or not depending on the level of abuse recieved.

http://www.mountainspaces.co.uk/summer/Adventure_Weeks.html

Posting on our blog in full, really was a good walk and was some of the best single track I've ever ridden, just endless fun, techincal, fast, flowy, roots, had it all.

About a week or so ago I rode a route with Jamie from All Mountain Rental from Morzine up to Avoriaz, down to the Mossettes lift, down into Champery, up to the col de Coux and then down some of the most technical single track I've ever ridden in the Valley de la Manche.

The last part from the col back to Morzine was really spectacular. I didn't have the soul stealer with me so it seemed like the ideal place to go back to for a walk to take a bit more time to take the scenery in and take some pictures.

We drove up the valley and parked up past the Nyon cable car so we could walk the route I'd ridden down. We stumbled on the wooded section which, on a bike, is on a par with the old Super Morzine run under the Super Morzine bubble. Super steep technical root garden down big muddy chutes. Look for this sign on the way down.



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From the wooded section we carried on up the road to the refuge at the Lac de Mine D'Or

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From the Lac it's a short climb up a fire road to the start of the single track running up the valley, there's a couple of different routes to the top, we chose to walk up the exposed grassy slope to get the most of the views.

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From the col itself you can make out the single track running up from Switzerland and Champery, the route we came from by bike.

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Sat right on the border. One leg in Switzerland one leg in France, mon dieu!

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On the way back down we chose to follow part of the GR5 route that runs from Belgium to Nice, the alpine part of the route is something we'd really like to do from start to finish.

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Final river crossing at the bottom before we re-joined the path back to the refuge at the Lac.

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Definately one of the better walks we've been on, lots to see, varied terrain and gaining the climbing split into sections rather than one big slog.
+ excellent walk, awesome views
- quite busy in parts
= One of the best half day walks we've been on 9/10