First of all I’m new to the forum, so hello!

I’m looking at going to the World Champs in Champery at the end of the month. Rather than just flying and camping for the weekend, I want to ride there (from Geneva), probably spend a week camping and riding and then ride back again.

Does anyone know of any books/maps (French/Suiss equivalent to OS?) or guides to singletrack routes around these areas? I’ve found this website – http://map.veloland.ch/ which supposedly gives some mountainbike trails around the area, but it seems pretty limited.

Obviously the resort will have it’s own pistemap, but I’m assuming (perhaps wrongly) that there will be trails linking resorts?

If anyone has done anything similar, any help/advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
Dave

French equivalent to OS is IGN, online version here: http://www.geoportail.fr/visu2D.do?ter=metropole

The region around Champery is pretty well connected with trails look for the Passportes route, but that’s only a day. I’m sure you can link up some more, though

That’s great, thanks. Only problem is there doesn’t seem to be a legend for those maps? I’ve tried googling to find IGN series legends and can’t find them. Any ideas?

Here you go:

Swiss Maps are online here:
http://map.geo.admin.ch/

The Veloland Schweiz routes contain a very large proportion of fire road and tend to avoid the best single track.

It is very often possible to use resort lifts and ride to another resort with a mixture of lift and own power ascent and mainly single track descent. These trails are not often advertised though as resorts tend to want to keep people rather than send them off somewhere else. A good look at the Swiss maps I linked above will usually give some good routes… but it can be hit and miss unless you know the area.

We did a great XC ride up around the Col du Cou near Champery this year, foul weather but have since seen pics and it would have been stunning wihtout the clouds and rain. Definitely worth it for the ride anyway though.

Don’t have a route I’m afraid as a friend led, but plenty of goggle results for “col du cou mtb route”.

On the IGN maps, generally your best bet for good singletrack is the dashed lines with red highlighting. Dashed line means “viabilité incertain” so you know it’s unlikely to be a forest road. Red highlights mean it’s some kind of waymarked walking route so you know it’s likely to be there!

“Waymarked walking route” BTW, doesn’t mean much and certainly doesn’t mean you can’t ride it. The French will put a signpost on virtually anything!

Nick – thats a massive help, thanks!

ir12 – I was thinking that, apparently it’s pretty easy to get from Morzine to Champery using the Mossettes lift. Once we’re in the resorts I’m hoping it should be easy enough to find decent trails via good old fashioned pub talk and word of mouth.

Chakaping – was that leaving from champery? I’ll have a look once we get the main route sorted out.

Stevo – you just answered my next question! Found some good looking red/pink/purple/whatever colour you want to call it paths linking up to morzine, bound to be some decent riding.

Looking now at going from Geneva-Mieussy day 1, Mieussy – Morzine day 2, Morzine – Champery day 3. Then stay in Champs a few days and then same back again, although we might skip out Mieussy on the way back to save time! Are the red waymarked routes easy enough to follow then, or are the french typically ‘creative’ with their signposts?

We were there over the Passports event. Signs all over the place, some for the event, some for other things, others marking Red/Blue/Green routes.

Basically they drop down the valley, so if you follow it you will get to the bottom. Just make sure its the right valley and it has a lift out of it.

Once we got that in our heads it was fine.

A good IGN map will help, but there are trails all over the place, so you need to be good with a map, or go with the flow and just ensure you get to the right valley.

The cycling routes around Morzine are well marked, as are the GR walking routes. Everything else can be a little vague so you need a good map (and know how to read it) or a GPS. As above there are lots of ‘other’ tracks that might not be marked.

We did the ride from Morzine but looped through champery so I’m sure you could hook into it.

daveg2 – if it’s red-highlighted on the map, then it’s *probably* signposted with the ubiquitous yellow signposts on green poles. Probably coloured splodges painted on rocks/trees along the way as well – e.g. GR routes are usually red & white markers.

we went to champery when doing the passport earlier this year. We are going back during the champs based in Les Gets and planning to come over to Champery during the week.