Anyone know anything about the cross-country routes round Châtel? All the tourist blurb says there is 90k of waymarked routes but I can’t find anything more specific. Any advice about a biking holiday in Châtel in general welcomed. Hoping for XC and easy downhill at the bike park.

I will be honest, there is loads of really good riding but I am not sure how much of it you will find without a guide, although there is a pretty good book, can’t remember the name but it has a yellow and black cover (not the bike fax one that is a bit crap)You can buy it locally. The down hill courses in chatel are generally not that easy if you are an xc rider on an xc bike. The Passportes du Soleil route is not a bad starting point as well. You can do quite a good xc ride around Monte Du Grange which would be 4 or 5 hours and the pas du montagne from Plaine dranse back to Chatel is always a nice one. Also Col du Saix above Petit Chatel to the lake and down the Jenkins trail (look at a map). Its a 45min/ 1 hour climb with a steep techy fun descent.

If your riding is like your name ignore my reccomendation of Jenkins and keep away from the bike park. Sounds like it might not be your thing.

PdS map is a handy starting point. Has a few XC type routes on it.

Liked the traverse from Morgins over to Les Crosets. In the bike park, the Panoramique and Serpentine runs were fun on XC hardtails (and handy link back from Morzine/Avoriaz and the goat village side.

Lol, thanks for your advice. We will be on AM bikes and will stick to the blues and greens at the bike park. We wondered how much riding there was at the superchâtel side, as we thought it would be quieter. Maybe take the PDS route down to Morgins and go up the lift there? On my map the route down from Plaine Dranse is also on the PDS I assume this is the one you mean.
Cheers for the help. I think the book you mean is the guide vtopo to the PDS. The English version is £40 from Amazon so we might see if we can get it cheaper over there.

Andy, cheers. Is that the pds route as well? By traverse it sounds like there is a route along the top. My map stops at the border (need to order another for the Swiss side).

The blues and the greens at chatel are excellent. People is one of my favourite trails ever.

I posted a message a while ago asking for guidance on a route from Chatel over to the main Rhone Valley (Aigle). I got very little answer. We’ll be doing it next Sunday as part of a Geneva to Milan Transalp

C

Yes that traverse from above morgins is part of the pds route and well worth doing . Views of dents du midi are great. If it is dry the down hill tracks in morgins are great as they are smooth and flowy and not busy. Super Chatel down hill has been shagged for last few years as if is not maintained any longer. I picked up that guide book in English in a shop in Chatel for about €15 a couple of years ago. The Chatel bike park is rad gnar to the max, fat boy go pro heaven, high 5 dude. Not my scene I’m afraid, and there is far better riding if you are prepared to pedal.

The trails make my cup of tea, not the people who use them out the image they portray. If it has gradient and is fun I’ll happily ride it. 😀

Chris e there is a fantastic route from Chatel to the valley. Ride or chair over the ridge to border and down via torgon to the valley floor. It’s about 1900m lovely descent and then a short distance on the flat to aigle. It’s either an 800m climb out of Chatel of super Chatel then morclan lift.

Scott the more people that stay in the bike park the better as far as I am concerned. Leaves all the best trails empty.

AGC,

That’s better! I’ll check that out, We fly into Geneva 2:30pm on Sat. Then ride 60K to beyond Boege. Then Sun to Les Gets, Morzine, Avoriaz, Aigle and hope to get up above Leysin before finding a hut to stay at and going towards Gstaad. We’ll be on XC bikes, happy to use lifts (where the fall on our route)

C

Cheers for all the help. Routes with gorgeous views always welcome.

The Chatel bike park is rad gnar to the max, fat boy go pro heaven, high 5 dude.

No problems, we’ll just go round them.
😆

I’m not sure if it effects you Chris but the Torgon lift is closed this summer.

expect to see LOADS of ‘VTT interdit’ signs, if you dare to venture outside the bike park.

i even got abuse from a french vtt’er when he saw that i was heading out of the park.

i won’t be rushing back.

(having said that, there are some lovely trails, if you get up early, go looking, and get lucky)

If you are coming from avoriaz take the pas du Montagne from plain Dranse to Chatel. It’s a short pedal up and a long traverse descent, it will be on any map. If you take the morclan chair out of Chatel ride along the border ridge a short distance, sharp right short steep descent then a left short push up. This gets you around a tricky ridge traverse that would be a crap carry with a bike. You can then follow signs and trail towards torgon. There is a really nice woodland descent that should be marked if you keep your eyes open. They sometime use part of it as an extra loop on pds route. You can then continue it past torgon to the valley floor. Good times

Email me for a bunch of suitable *.gpx files.

Ambrose

Thank you very much
Ygm

Is that the pds route as well? By traverse it sounds like there is a route along the top. My map stops at the border (need to order another for the Swiss side).

PDF Map here…
http://en.portesdusoleil.com/portes-du-soleil-domain-map.html

Orangey route on the map (PPdS event follows a similar kind of route I think?). Traverse is not really along the top, but kind of half way up.

Didn’t see any VTT Interdit signs anywhere, but did get told off by Swiss ramblers that the Arete du Berroi route that became popular is not a bike path (I think they are right).

Think there were supposed to be some newer blues in the Chatel-Torgon area, but the weather was bad the day we went round that loop, and wanted to get a move on.

AJC,

this is the route I’d looked at just from guessing on the maps and a bit of google-earth all done a few weeks ago. Is this what you think is a good XC way over from Chatel to Aigle?

Chris

That route has missed all the single track. You need to catch the chair to the top of morclan. The route dosnt seem to be marked on your map but is signposted and is actually in the book mentioned above. There are little silver metal Mtb signs showing the descent to torgon. If you can google a map of the torgon loop from pds ride it will be on that. You then ride through torgon and follow more trail to the valley floor. The only road section is the last couple of hundred m.

Will look at it and get back to you. Bear in mind the map I marked up is 600km+ from Geneva to Milan, via Gstaad, Grindelwald etc!

now back to my memory map……….

C

route (in red) put onto my Memory Map. First on the French maps then on the Swiss Topo maps

C

Oooh- where did you get the Swiss Topo’s from?

swiss topos are online – http://map.geo.admin.ch/

There’s about 4 or 5 routes that I know of to get down to the Rhone valley – get to Monthey and then you can get the train back to Champery and you’re back in the PdS lift pass area.

Also managed to ride to Lac Leman last summer: Morzine > Chatel > Morclan > Lac d’Arvouin > Col de Verne > Lac de Tanay > Le Bouveret.

And a very good overnighter can be had if you ride down to Monthey, across the valley to Bex, then get the train up to Gryon – ride up about 600m to refuge Giocomini

Next day you get a top drawer descent back to Monthey -> train to Champery -> home by Lunch time.

Will look at that.

For the swiss-topos, we have a very clever friend who rides Transalps with us. He wrote a bit of script that downloads all the tiles from the web (from the Swiss Topo site) then auto-stitches them all together and converts the whole to Memory Map. A task that’s supposed to be impossible to do, but I did say he’s very clever! We have them all on DVD to use as and when on MM. That allows us to print them out any scale, any size on the works colour A3 laser

C