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So me and my better half are heading to Alpe D'huez in the summer for a weeks biking and tour watching. We're mainly xc kind of riders (im a partially converted roadie, dont kill me, and she races xc and tri), but loving the idea of trying some downhill type stuff too. We have full sus xc bikes (120mm travel etc) and are wondering whether these are the best kinda bikes to take to get the most out of the place, or whether we should try and beg borrow or steal something 'gnarlier'.
I know its probably purely up to personal preference but wanting to know what bikes you guys have taken there, and what you think the best trails are there (both xc and dh). Also whether 120mm travel type bikes would survive the dh trails!
Alp D'heuz is not really DH resort, you will be there at/just after the Mega so a few trails will be trashed 🙁 like the one under the main lift.
Everything up there is doable but some will be harder/rougher than others, deux alpes is just down the road and has a heap of other trails.
You can do things like beef up tyres/rotors etc to make life easier
Unless things have changed, Alp d'huez has some ( but not a lot) blue/green trails. Deux alpes has more and they are better. If I was you, I would work through the bikes and greens at both parks on your own bikes. Then you can decide if you want to rent something. Bigger bikes are fun though so if you have access to some, take them.
To get to Deux alpes from alpes d'huez, drive into Bourg, go up the valley to and take the cable car up. Saves a lot of hassle in the car.
Cheers guys. Looking at the map there are a few red/black xc trails at Alpe, does anyone know what these are like? Worth doing or better just sticking to the dh stuff?
The main freeride type track under the gondola on Alpe D'Huez was easy berms and rollable jumps and no crazy drop offs, but it was braking bump tastic. The mega qualifier track was really good fun (with a few pretty steep/techy bits), and the main mega route from the glacier was a bit more techy/steep in places (as well as the ski slope bit!). A few mini cliffs you just had to roll down and let off the brakes, with no hope of stopping even if you wanted to.
Having ridden quite a bit in the Lakes, there wasn't too much that was way outside my comfort zone, but the combined effect of being in proper mountains, the relentlessness, the altitude, and some reasonable drops off to the sides in places meant it was quite intimidating for the first couple of days. Like most things it got much easier once you were willing to go a bit faster and be less tentative.
This was in 2009 so courses may have changed quite a bit.
Cant comment of alp d'huez specifically but Xc routes in bike parks are usually just fire roads , marked up to give the impression that there is something for everyone.
Anybody got any 'favourite' trails in that area? xc or dh!
Was there last year. There are around 30 trails in total ranging from 2km of green downhill on grass to a black DH course. There are also XC and enduro routes which are pretty good. I took my trail bike and road bike and didn't run out of trails.
There are a lot of "enduro" tracks running down to Allemont and Oz, they get used for the bottom half of the Mega and are ace fun. Likewise, the qualifier track is great fun, fast and rocky.
If at any point you feel like your brakes are working too well, ride the DH track down to Oz. It's ace, like riding off a cliff covered in 6 inches of dust, interspersed with fist sized rocks. There's some great rock rollers/slabs too!
We did some riding for a couple of days at Les Deux Alpes last July. We have xc hardtails but everyone else we saw has DH bikes. We mainly rode the green and blue DH trails. My other half rode a couple of reds, and we watched some riders doing the black trails. I wouldn't fancy taking a hardtail on the black!
Been to Alp d'Huez for the last 3 years for various reasons (bike hol, family hol/Le Tour, Mega) and I'm off there again this year for Le Tour.
We were all on 100 -120mm xc/trail bikes the first year we were out there. You get some funny looks from the locals - we asked one French guy about one of the black trails marked on the map, he took one look at our bikes and shook his head as if to say "not on those bikes, lads!". He relented a bit when we said we'd already done some of the other blacks.
Since then having ridden 120mm, 140mm and 165mm bikes out there on various occassions, what struck me as most important were that big wide sticky DH tyres that are good on mixed terrain (rocky/loamy), big rotors and wide bars make most difference - not necessarily suspension travel.
And also, the green/blue/red/black trail grades can be somewhat inconsistent at Alp d'Huez. A 'red' graded xc loop in the valley consisted of 15-10km of fire road start to finish..... A 'blue' graded DH run has a couple of forks in it, and if you take the wrong fork you could easily end up flying off a 6 foot+ drop. Also there's a few more blind drops randomly inserted on red and black DH runs.
Its all fine though if you ride within your limits until you know the trails.
I didn't particularly like the upper sections of Les Deux Alpes as it was super rocky, narrow and loose. Lower down was more fun.