Got back from a 4 day trip to Les Arcs and am still buzzing! Can't believe how much fun hurling yourself down the side of a jeffing great mountain can be! Landed saturday morning and were staying in 1950 in a mate's mega apartment overlooking the square. Got out at around 2pm and rode down to the Black 8 run to start things off gently! It was like Aston Hill versus CwmCarn but 20 minutes long and truly amazing.
We then came back up and did the Cachette downhill race course followed by Black 8 three more times and then caught the last bus back up to 1950.
Sadly woke the next day to find rain of biblical proportions that just didn't stop all day and despite several attempts, we wrote it off as unrideable. Ended up making some ramps in the underground carpark with some friends and being 14 for the afternoon which was all good fun!
We had booked a guide for the Monday from http://www.coolbus.co.uk and the plan was to get an uplift into La Thuile on the Italian border, session the singletrack there for the morning and then have a horrible climb over the top and ride back down into Bourg to get the last funicular up at 1930. We awoke at 7am to find it was snowing, but a quick call to Coolbus confirmed it was localised so we were out at 0830 to ride the Black 8 (but slower in the wet!) down into Bourg for the pickup.
45 minutes later the sun was shining and we parked in Col de petit St Bernard and set off down what was the wildest mountain side I have ever seen. The guide had competed in the mega last week and did OK in the final so was a fantastic person to try and keep pace with over some properly off-piste trails with a mixture of singletrack, rock gardens and then down through a stunning Italian village before getting a chairlift backup and coming down some incredibly steep and twisty singletrack. 3 different runs later we stopped for lunch before getting the chairlift backup and doing a horrible 400 vertical metre climb on the granny ring which must have taken 45 minutes or so. Was well worth it though as the descent from there was even better than before with ultra narrow, ultra twisty, ultra steep singletrack through the trees.
A TDF stylee road descent followed for about 10 minutes and then even more epic singletrack down towards Bourg. Half way down the group split and those who were tiring or had had some offs (including one OTB onto a road that split a full face lid!) rode back to Bourg along the roads to get an earlier funicular. The remaining few were told by the guide that what was ahead made the previous singletrack look like a motorway and off we went, basically traversing a mountainside forest through a completely virgin route , making our own switchbacks, sliding on the pine cones and generally having a ball!
A 100m road climb followed, and then the guide's personal favourite training run down into Bourg. We were all pretty tired by this point but I decided I might as well give it my all and managed to complete the circa 5 minute descent about 10 seconds slower than the guide.
All in all we covered about 100k, mostly gravity assisted and it was without doubt the most tiring day I have ever had but one that will stay with me forever - truly epic!
The next morning only four of us had the energy to get back out for a few final runs before lunchtime, so we started off on Black 8 before getting the cachette and telearcs lifts right to the top and sessioning the other side a few times.
Thankfully I managed to break my crashing streak and didn't come off once and despite some fairly big offs within the group, no one got injured. The course I did with Jedi last week certainly gave me more confidence and I found that I quickly tuned in to opening the taps and flowing nicely down.
Roll on next year I say!
Have just uploaded a pretty bouncy chest cam video of one of the guided descents - check out the very lucky Graham about 3.30 through who could have gone a long way down the mountainside had he not hit some soft trees!
Excuse the annoying clicking sound - time to take the silicon to the GoPro mount I think!
