Me and the girlfriend are looking for a 7 night holiday in June in the Alps. We are wanting to fly and take 2 bikes. We want to do a few days riding and a few hiking, but want to be based in a hotel. Will be hiring a car from Geneva and arent to fussed which areas we go to. The riding will be mainly xc stuff but will still want to use uplifts as well.
Have any of you guys got any reccomendations?
thanks
My experience is from 10 years ago, but we had some good walking and old skool MTB hols around Chamonix and Aosta. In Cham we walked on the other side of the valley from the Mont Blanc Massif and did plenty of lower level MTB (VTT) in that area too. The same in Aosta, plenty of Alpine walking around there and biking at lower levels that were graded like in the UK (ie by distance rather than technical difficulty). Not sure what it's like these days with the new cable car assisted DH stuff, but those old easier XC routes must still exist for the Euro masses, it can't all be just big bikes and full face helmets, the like of which appears in all the UK mags these days.
The guidebooks we had were:
Chamonix:
Haute Savoie and Monte Blanc
(in English)
Aosta:
In Valle D'Aosta con La Mountain-bike
(in Italian, added extra er.... comedy/grief).
Chamonix is great for what you want but is very touristy in my opinion. What sort of walking are you after? Take a look at the Morzine area (Portes du Soleil). Most of the websites really push the DH side of the area but there are hundreds of km of superb XC trails available, uplift ahoy! Goodness me- I love telepheriques!
A good start would be this book,
http://www.vtopo.com/?-VTOPO-Portes-du-Soleil-English-
and a suitable map, the 1;25 000 IGN ones are pretty good, although if you wanted you could easily use your time just following the routes in the guidebook- it uses IGN maps anyway.
Its about 3 hours from Geneva by car but last summer we spent a week in Interlaken and a few trips hiking round Grindelwald - 'North face of the Eiger' fame. Great place to visit including the towns.
Plenty of cable cars and saw a few bikes kicking about:
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Any excuse to get the holiday pics out.
We went to the Zermatt valley last year & that has everything - also not that spoiled by over use like some parts of the Alps.
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More pics [url= http://s393.photobucket.com/albums/pp14/zermatt08/?start=all ]HERE[/url]
Try Chatel in Portes du Soleil region excellent xc and dh trails,thera's a lot of good hiking on offer and some descent climbing routes in the area,it's on the Swiss border so easy access to Swiss resorts,it's a bit quieter than Morzine and usually a bit cheaper too.
There are very few chairlifts running in the Alps in June. Portes du Soliel probably has the most, but even then it's a very limited service compared to later in the summer.
We'll be running van uplifts based from our place in Sainte Foy (Tarentaise Valley, Les Arcs area) during June. Loads of great walking to do around here as well: [url= http://www.whiteroomchalet.com ]Sainte Foy Mountain Bike Holidays[/url]
Another vote for Chatel. Easy access to Switzerland and the rest of the Portes du Soleil. Good walking and Via Ferrata locally. The Sixt Fer a Chaeval area also looked interesting for multi-activity break. If the same as last year the only lifts open before the PDS event were the main ones in Morzine and Les Gets and the main lift from Champery.