I just got back from Verbier and THE best week of riding in my entire life, including the single best day on the bike I’ve ever had.
I went with Bike Verbier run by Lucy and Phil, two of the best hosts and the best bike riders I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
The pictures are all from the week but the standout day was the last one. We covered about 25 miles, 600m of ascent and 5000m of descent including the fastest, rockiest, steepest, rootiest, **** spitting, side slipping root ragging, roost wrapping awe inspiring descent I’ve ever done. Nigh on 2000m of down over eight miles of single and double track and more hairpins than a hairdresser’s mannequin.
I had the honour of following Steve Wade down one of the sections. This guys is 55 and still fast as all hell! He was riding an Orange 224 Evo with CCDB and Totems. Yes it had a double and bash, but the thing still weight around 37lbs and he pedalled it all day! I was impressed that the Nicolai Helius was more than up to the task of keeping his wheel down the 39 hairpins of the middle section (there’s a video of the entire section on YouTube posted by SingleSpeedStu, search for 'Verbier Secret Descent)
Verbier is without a doubt the best place I’ve been on the bike. Not only were all the trails we rode absolutely blindingly brilliant, in the entire week I think I saw maybe a dozen other mountain bikers and very few walkers. This is an unspoilt gem of a location!
The top of the 'Secret Descent' from Verbier down into the Sion Valley. This is the top of a 500m hike a bike.
This is the Vallon D'Arby descent. About 4 miles of really rocky sinuous single track with a pretty steep drop on the right. Real class!
A bit blurred but a moderate step down on one of the woody trails. Maybe four feet by six feet.
This was the single most nuts section of the whole week. A sub one metre wide rocky shute, steep enough to need chains to help you get down, with a 90 degree left hander at the bottom that leads you into another 180 degree right hander not more than 2 metres later.
No one in Verbier has actually made the shute and the turn but a few people have made it down the shute and then overshot the turn. The ground beneath is less steep than the shute but it's still the steepest, loosest and narrowest single track I've ever seen. It flows into a series of 180 switchbacks so tight the only way around is to track stand and hop.
Needless to say we all carried our bikes down it.
Top of another 400m hike a bike. This is the start of a trail called 'Vortex'. Is this to die for or what?
At the top of a 500m pedal (we have another 500m later in the day)!
Fast flowy single track was the order of the day. About 20m after this and travelling at warp speed, you hit a blind rocky crest with a sharp drop of about 3m! No time to brake!
There should be some more up there soon... Tried watching Concrete Circus last night, and stitching together some photos from that corner on Brazillian. Needless to say it didn't work!
