How do you deal with Alps in mud? This weekend in Morzine torrential rain on Friday meant the trails were still wet on Sunday. I ended up walking large swathes of what would otherwise have been pristine singletrack just because it was so slippery that your tyres clogged up, and the bike skidded out after riding only 3 feet even on the smallest of turns. I was riding proper Alps singletrack not just the Pleney ad nauseam.

Could I have done anything to prevent this – was it a case of MTFU/technical changes? (I'm not sure that it was – I took that approach early on and have an enormous gash under my chin to show for it!). Was the problem poor tyre choice – I was using Maxxis High Rollers and they clogged in the really muddy bits, which made even the drier sections of singletrack unrideable? Or, third option, were the trails simply unrideable on the day in question – live with it? I think the latter – sometimes you just have to know when to back off – but as it must rain in the Alps quite often I wonder what the rest of you do to deal with it.

My experience of this wasn't helped by SPD use, excessive leaning forward and general lack of flow/practice recently, either.

CX bike ?

Maxxis Wetscreams back and front, Supertacky. Buy the wider ones as they come up a bit narrow so make you more prone to rim damage.

I rode in the rain in friday morn, and hated every minute. Sat I just scrapped and went home. You just have to face it, some days of your week in the alps will be shit.

You rode through winter in the ice and snow???

I found that this helps

followed by this

Tracey

Morzine mud can be like butter IME which is why we went to Sainte Foy this year. We had a splendid time and it was bone dry but if it had been wet, it still would have been great as they trails weren't built from clay.

As CHL says, the trails never, ever get like that round here. It seems to be a bit of a Morzine / PdS phenomenon.

Go to a resort which is high up in a steep valley. The rain will run off naturally rather than hang around. Examples being Les Arcs and Verbier.

?…

I'm really sorry, but I think it might well be a case of "MTFU".

I was in Morzine over the weekend (Fri-Tues) and although it was rubbish weather and very muddy it was all rideable and still a lot of fun. One of our group was riding clipless and (with the exception of one or two sketchy moments…) managed just fine.

I actually think the "proper Alps singletrack" was in better condition than the "Pleney ad nauseam". Where were you riding? On the Sunday we rode from Morzine to Champery over the Col de Coux and the trails were in great condition.

I definitely wouldn't say that it's not worth going to the Alps because you might get bad weather and a bit of mud. If anything, it adds to the fun!

P.S. big thanks to Torico Morzine (bike shop) for first class, friendly service.

It was a mudfest when we were over there, though mainly riding the bigger tracks (Pleney, Dans le Gaz etc). Actually found the harder stuff easier if that makes sense, some of the nominally easier trails had a lot of slightly off camber bits and flat corners that were great fun in the dry but impossible to carry speed through in the mud, whereas the DH tracks were just big berms you could dig into.

But that's different stuff to what you were riding, obviously!

It was lovely and sunny early in the week. We went rafting in the rain. We did toy with riding around mosettes on the rocks to avoid the mud but just left the bikes in the store room in the end. After a week of riding it didn't feel like we were missing out.

Supertacky swamp things seemed to work ok in the mud out there in the morzine/pds area last year.

I must admit that a wet morning on high rollers saw me hit the deck a couple of times, and I discovered that my arse was the the safest thing to use down the champery WC course. Although it didn't offer much traction I couldn't really fall any further…

Morzine/Les Gets mud is what Wetscreams were designed to cope with.

Sorry, I think its a MTFU.

High rollers in my experience only clog if you aren't going fast enough to shed the muck.

If you look at a DH race in the mud, chances are you will find a lot of HR's being used, so mud is should not be a problem.

Granted SPD's wont help for any "foot out" moments.

Super tacky Wet screams front and rear…2.5 help me out in mega thick super sticky mud.

Not great on rocks mind…

I'd guess the advantage of swampthings over wetscreams is that swampies aren't that bad if it dries out (edit: or on rocks!), either.

I've never ridden wetscreams in teh wet or dry though, so may be talking rubbish

thv3 – I've never had a problem on welsh or scottish DH tracks in the wet on highrollers, but suffered in the PDS area. I think there may be some magic mud out there…

High rollers in my experience only clog if you aren't going fast enough to shed the muck.

I love it! Same theory as driving an F1 car: you need to hit a certain speed before the brakes/tyres come to life.

Conclusion = don't ride in the wet unless you're prepared to have a go. Actually that philosophy could be applied to mountain biking more generally.

It did occur to me that I had to ride a bit harder to clear the gunk out of my tyres and get the necessary momentum, but each time I tried accelerating a bit I just stacked, twice spectacularly – there was blood!

The Col de Coux ridge descent on Saturday (closer to the wet day) was fine – I have some class photos of that descent in zero visibility conditions which I'll put on here when I get time. Had to walk a few bits but generally OK.

The Le Bourgeoisie descent into Samoens on Sunday morning was where I began to have problems.

I then did a descent in a nearby valley down to the Giffre river (big thanks to freeridenick for some really class tips here) which in the dry would've been one of the best descents I've encountered in the Alps, and it wasn't even that wet, but the serious mud at the top clogged my tyres turning them into slicks and the trail lower down was just too technical and just a little too slippy (for me) to get the necessary speed up to declog them.

Thanks for the tips on tyres.

nb none of this is to suggest I didn't enjoy it, any day riding in the Alps is a good day!

clips are ok over there imo.,