Off to do the Pass’Portes Du Soleil in a week or so, but staying in Avoriaz Thursday-Thursday and keen to do some longer jaunts out during that time and not just the lift-assisted trails.

Are there any good round trips that can be done from Avoriaz or Morzine?

Looking at the map here: https://www.morznet.com/item_files/avoriaz-bike-trail-map.pdf

There’s an orange ‘mixed use’ trail that runs from Lindarets down to Morzine via Ardent (which we could get to via a ‘Blue’ from Avoriaz, hop up the Super Morzine lift and then work our way back to Avoriaz via trail/lift depending on how dead we are.

Does this sound feasible/sensible? Or any other alternatives? We’re both reasonably fit but not sure how the altitude will affect us obviously, just looking for a more pedally day or so in between trail run days.

We will have a car so some travel within reason is no problem to get us to the start of a circular route.

Cheers,

James

Get this book – got plenty of routes in it. Perfectly possible to get back to avoriaz from Morzine – Get on the Super Morzine lift, then on the zore lift. then either down into Les Lindarets and get lift back to Avoriaz or climb up the road to Avoriaz.

book link

That looks perfect thanks! The question is, will it arrive before next Thursday? Time to find out…!

Seem to remember mine took a while to arrive ……

A nice loop is from morzine, up the super morzine, along the ridge to avoriaz, down to the mossette lift and up it, past the refuge, down the valley to linderettes then carry on down past the lake to montriond then along the river to morzine. This crosses a few bike trails and lifts so you can add extra bits in. A nice scenic ride. Not very tech and with little climbing for a lot of miles using the lifts.

Another route I like starts the same then from the top of mossette there is a long downhill to morgins. From morgins you can use a combination of lifts back to mossette on the Swiss side or head towards chatel and linderettes

These are long rides with a bit of climbing but the lifts doing most of the work

there’s a good XC-type trail from the top of the Joux Plan summit back down towards Morzine.

Thanks @nickjb the first one is roughly what i was planning but as we’ll already be in Avoriaz, the Morzine to Avoriaz lifts & ridgeline would be at the end rather than the start.

Edit – Adding the Mossettes lift looks like a very good way of extending the plan i had formed actually, cheers.

Will certainly add the second route to the itinerary as well, and the Joux Plan idea.

Doing the Pass’Portes du Soleil on day 3 will likely give us a good idea of places/sections that we’d like to revisit during the week also.

This is a nice day out recommended on here, specifically the bit circled, and doesn’t come up in the Passportes at all, though i went astray a bit on the descent into Esserts- there’s people on here that can probably sort you out with a GPX to avoid wasting half the height loss on a fireroad.

No worries with altitude. It’s not that high round there. Once you get to 10,000ft+ then maybe.

Nice off-piste, Col de Cou route is a great day, and great scenery. Though more AM than XC, but depends on your definition of XC. I see it come under XC routes sometimes. Bits of it I struggled to ride, though was fun. Route I did involved bit of a serious climb/push to get to it.

When i say “XC” I mean we’ll both be on 130/150mm full-suspension bikes and not averse to some naturally tough terrain, just not bike-park style gap jumps and big drops down rock faces etc!

More than happy to walk up/down things occasionally if they’re unridable to get up into the mountains to explore a bit rather than just plummet down the same lift-assisted hillside all day. I guess off-piste would be a better way of putting it.

Bookmarked for a few weeks’ time!

Those are good routes nickjb, cheers. Hadn’t considered heading down to Morgins from the Mossette.

Word of warning on the Col de Cou -> Champery route: The middle section has big No-Bike signs at either end of it. However, the French/Swiss walkers you pass will happily stay out of your way, give you a big smile and wish you well, provided you’re being civil. But god help you if you come across a single English rambler type…