Video: Manon Carpenter Rides Mont Thabor

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Mont Thabor is 3178m of thin air and epic riding, but there’s no easy way up. You need to earn those turns. In this film we find out just one of the things that Manon Carpenter has been up to since she retired from downhill racing. She’s been off doing adventures! (She’s been doing lots of other stuff, including a geology masters degree…) and this trail trip to Month Thabor certainly had a lot of geology.

In this film, she’s joined by racer turned Alpine guide, Emily Horridge and their respective boyfriends for a four day tour of Mont Thabor, a 3100m beast lurking in the middle of the French Alps, not far from the Italian borders.

(We interviewed Manon Carpenter in issue 126 of Singletrack – you can refresh your memories here – https://singletrackworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/singletrack-issue-126-rocket-science-manon-carpenter/)

Going up. With walking poles! Whatever next?

With plenty of hike-a-bike going on (using walking poles!) the team struggle with endless climbs in clouds, huge outbreaks of tiramisu and some long, long descents into empty valleys. It’s good to see Manon Carpenter just hanging out, away from the race scene that ruled her life for so many years. Emily, too, was a racer for years and has now settled into a slightly more relaxed approach to riding as a mountain bike guide. And you just need to look at the scenery to see why it appeals.

Endless meadows. This’ll cheer you up

It’s a great film about a fun trip through the Alps and you can feel the Vitamin D coming out of the screen. If you’re a fan of Alpine beasts like Mont Thabor and some great natural trail riding, then check out Manon Carpenter’s latest adventure.

French line…

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Chipps Chippendale

Singletrackworld's Editor At Large

With 23 years as Editor of Singletrack World Magazine, Chipps is the longest-running mountain bike magazine editor in the world. He started in the bike trade in 1990 and became a full time mountain bike journalist at the start of 1994. Over the last 30 years as a bike writer and photographer, he has seen mountain bike culture flourish, strengthen and diversify and bike technology go from rigid steel frames to fully suspended carbon fibre (and sometimes back to rigid steel as well.)

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