Hopefully I'm not setting myself up here for a severe amount of p**s taking but .....
A group of us are thinking of heading to the Alps for a few days, but I am not keen on the chair lifts/cable cars. Obviously if we were downhillers we'd need them, but is there a reliance for XC as well ?
all mountain biking is cross country
there's certainly no "reliance" on lifts for any mountain biking
you can use them as much as little as you like
You don't *need* lifts, but given a lot of the longer rides involve 4 or 5 lifts, going up several hundred metres at a time, you'd have to be a climbing god to get the best out of the area we were in. In 5 days of riding unicycles in Morzine, we did over 10,000 metres of descent, I hate to think how much it'd hurt if we'd have had to ride 10,000 metres of ascent too. To put it in perspective, that's significantly more than the height of Everest, and we were only slow unicyclists - on bikes with their fancy freewheels and suspension and all that, we could easily have done double that.
Even with lifts, you end up doing a fair bit of climbing on most of the decent xc routes.
The lifts are also jolly cheap for a weeks pass, I bet if you headed out there, you'd be too tempted not to pay up in the end.
Joe
just to echo what the others said, why not use the lifts and then do a few thousands meters of climbing that way you will get some really long descents and the best of both worlds.
Plus if you climb after the lifts, you will get a lot of the trails to yourself
Its a height thing Gents, Cable Cars scare the **** out of me, the lifts I'd need to see videos/pics of. I like being high up, just not keen on some of the methods to get there.
No lifts needed, but the climbs are long.
Went with Bike Village, before lifts opened, was superb.
Climbed a vertical mile in 13 miles, came down in 9 miles 😀
Its a height thing Gents
something like [url= http://www.trailaddiction.com/backcountryweeks.php ][b][u]this[/u][/b][/url] might interest you... a mixture of pedalling and vehicle shuttles to get to endless untouched singletrack
either that or just go to Les Arcs and use the funicular (train) to get up the hill, and none of the chairlifts
If you're scared of cable cars, lifts are like that, but faster and with no walls, ceiling or floor.
Cable cars have nothing on the scaryness of some of the steeper trails out there, especially ones with an edge near them.
Facing up to your fears can be good for you anyway. Personally, I used to be dead scared of heights, but I've mostly got over it, by just forcing myself to do stuff like climbing & riding exposed trails. My job meant that I had to go on several of the UK's scariest rollercoasters last week and it turns out I'm not even scared of them now.
Joe
thanks for the responses, I'll take a good luck at the suggestions, Ash, the Les Arcs link looks interesting, cheers.
bike village also based in that area and can and do avoid lifts. slightly more XC based than trail addiction. had an excellent week there last summer.
I went with trialaddiction last year and it was great fun. We used the lifts but I saw all the trailers they use when the lifts are not open. Good guides which help you through the technical stuff if your a bit unsure and great scenary. The food and the chalet are really good to. Hopefully going to try get over there again this year if money allows.