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5 of us are heading out to Finale next month and I want to plan some routes in advance so we don't get too lost while we are there.
Clearly there are a ton of trails on trailforks, but the difficulty is picking the better ones and linking them up. I figure we would get a shuttle up to the NATO base or Din first thing, do a combination of trails back to finale, then another shuttle up to nato or din in the afternoon, or is there a better lunchtime pickup point?
If anyone has Strava/GPX links to their better days out there they would be much appreciated! We have 5 days of riding to plan for.
Cheers!
Would you consider guiding? As it really depends what sort of trails you want to ride.
You can easily make a day of 2 uplifted runs to the NATO base and picking your way back down but the trails do very quite an amount in terms of style and technicality.
A guide should know and pick the right riding for you.
I've raced and ridden there - annoyingly some of the best trails I've ridden are a bit 'out there' which makes them hard to build into a loop.
For 50 euro a day, someone like Finale Freeride will give you a full day of guided uplift.
That will give you a lot more riding tim than going to the top and back down twice and open up some other ares beynd Cafe Din & Nato base - you'd get to ride a bunch of the upper trails a number of times before ad after lunch and finish with a long run to the bottom.
One of the group has been before for a few days and doesn't think we need guides, I am open to the idea of guiding on a couple of days though (harder to convince the others though).
Even so i'd still want some routes for DIY days.
I think we are generally happy with most trails, we are on Enduro/Trail bikes not DH and we've all raced tweedlove etc without many problems, no idea what the trail level is out there though! Youtube vids look ok (but they make rampage look rideable).
PMed you a few Strava links including Little Champery, madonna della guardia, ale ale and more trails.
When are you going OP? I'm going next month with a guy and a woman who have both done EWS there a few years in a row, they hve good knowledge
Plus one for the guiding. I wouldnt want to be wasting time searching around & trying to link the trails up, although some seem to like doing that rather than just cracking on & riding the good stuff.
I saw too many people slogging uphill as we whizzed by in the uplift last time i was there.
The first two years I went there I just did pedal days and the last three I've organised mainly uplifts and it made it so much better. Some of the tracks were getting a little worn last spring and so I think a guide who can take you a bit further off the beaten track, with an uplift would really pay dividends. We rode some fantastic tracks further out and to the side of Finale that were fairly new and you definitely couldn't find without a guide. We've always used Lou at Just Ride (www.justridefinale.com )
It's not so much that you need the guiding part, more that you get a day's uplift where the van is waiting at the bottom of the trail, waiting to take you to the start of the next one. You get a lot more riding in.
Getting a one-off uplift to Nato/Din and riding down to the bottom and doing same after lunch means riding maybe four trails. A day's guided riding might see you ride eight or ten.
The Defender Tour that Freeride Finale do is good if you want a day of more mellow singletrack riding BTW.
May as well pimp my blog: http://unduro.co.uk/riding/that-riviera-touch-finale-ligure-and-molini/
I think the Defender tour is no more, sadly. But there's the "WIld Enduro" which is mellow, and there's another new simialr tour.
Hmmm, the website touts a "new defender tour" now...
http://www.finaleligurefreeride.com/freeride-tours
Wonder what the story there is. Did you do the old one? Really nice trails I thought.
Yeah, done the old one a bunch of times.. it's like a day off after all the battering on the rocky stuff. Wild Enduro is similar - did it in October, both that and the Defender are covered in a thick blanket of leaves tat time of year - great fun guessing whether a pile of leaves is a berm, or just a pile of leaves 🙂
No idea what the new Defender tour is but I'm headed back there next mnth so will be giving it a go. I think there was some issues with access to the land - one of the original owners of Finale Freeride (Fabrizio) knew or was related to the owners, so it was through goodwill that they had the access. Hopefully the new on is as much fun.
Thanks guys for the advice and strava links, the guiding does sound great to me, might have to work on the others...
If you have any especially good guided options (e.g. defender and wild enduro mentioned above) then feel free to add them in!
I rode the karma trail which was the first stage of last years EWS and thought it was excellent. We repeated the stages from the first day of the EWS but ran out of light for X men. I thought it was thoroughly satisfying day out. Will definitely ride karma trail when i go back.