MBMB have a nice chalet near Tacconaz, 5 mins down the valley from Chamonix on the train. Think they only do B+B though, so worth checking that.

Hope Hoops are good, very flexible in terms of hub type and well built.

Bit slidey, good giggle all the same.

Macc Forest’s alright Crazy-legs, just been out with SSstu and it wasn’t too bad, Charity lane was snowy up top and just very wet lower down.

Winner. Will probably be quite a random ride, will depend largely on the weather. Nates on the fatties?

:(

Bear in mind I’ll be slow and pootling, now Taz is coming you can go wherever you like ;)

Tyre swaps are a faff, but other than that I’ve not had any disadvantages yet.

Crag Inn, Wildboarclough at Half 10.

Winner. Might need patching up if my new pedals attack my shins, there’s even a warning in the box… Still meeting at half 10?

You’ll be alright on normal bikes Stu, but I want a play on a fatbike, so bring those too ;)

Find someone with a big van who wants to do the same but needs someone to split costs with? Having said that, you could get an old estate for £500 and £500 worth of Diesel would get you a fairly long way.

I fancy buying a big van after Uni and disappearing into Europe.

Costa Rica?
Spain?
Maritime Alps (Nice)?
EDIT: EU is easy for moving about, does Tenerife count?

Cheers, I’ll be able to see the snowline on the way over in the morning providing the snow’s not too bad early on, hoping my bus isn’t cancelled.

Can’t complain, nothing compared to the stuff some on here are going through. Finish school in June then Uni in September, excited about that.

Forecast is pretty snowy for the weekend too. How much snow is there gb1m?

You’re still welcome Taz, you probably know it better than me anyway. I’ll be a bit slow on the climbs and will probably have to peel off in the middle of the ride but still…

Love our Thule Euroblahdeblah, very easy to load and make secure.

You sure? It’s got red hubs and everyfink.

Riding Hit The North I’m afraid, otherwise I’d love to. It’s wonderful, fancy swapping your LTc for it? ;) Will email you now.

My Smorgasbord and Chunky Monkey went up tubeless like a dream. I really liked my ADvantage tyres, just a shame they don’t do a 29er EXO version.

left Holyhead in a Force 8 planning to go to Dun Loaghaire, 2.5m STEEP waves on a Sweden 42. Broached with a third of the Jib up, turned round after 45 minutes and had a shower in Holyhead Marina. We’d planned to sail across for a race from Dun Loaghaire to M2 weather Bouy and back, then back to Holyhead the next day. So that’d have been 3 Irish sea crossings in 3 days, with a 2m swell and a weak westerly wind. Not fun. Bloody fantastic boat though.

APF, that’ll be fine, particularly if it’s muddy.

Can email you RE some less known stuff if you want?

My Horsethief was approx 13.9kg on our vaguely accurate luggage scales, no idea what it’d be on a set of Park scales though. Was reasonable pleased with that considering it’s got heavy (900g) tyres on it.

Large BFe?

You can climb onto it from the bridge in the Cleave ;) Good luck with the move, how are the cakes?

Where you moving to Mr Yunki? I hope you’ll still be around for some riding in the summer?

Salsa Horsethief with 130mm forks, and 2.4/2.25 tyres. Suitably overbiked I feel.

Because 29ers are just fine ;)

I got a card from Parcelforce saying they’d delivered in to the local post office. This arrived 3 days after I’d collected the item from the post office, and was delivered through Royal Mail’s normal postal service. Online tracking FTW.

Plasma blue is nice, particularly with white forks + rims if you’ve got them. You’d have to be pretty good to pull off neon pink ;) So Neon yellow with black bits or Plasma blue with white bits.

Hope ftw.

Bit of cheeky snow-based fun.

Agree with KoB, have a chat with Phil. He’ll have contact with guides that’d probably be willing to help, but the luggage support and accommodation being sorted was one of the best bits of the trip for me. Navigation’s not particularly difficult, but having a guide means you can ask about particular bits of trail and just follow someone down instead of having to worry about going the wrong way. The climb up to Champex-Lac is LONG, pace yourself on that one. The rest seem fairly comparable to big UK climbs, other than maybe the climb up to the Grand Col Ferret.
Altitude was noticeable on the first, third and fourth days for me, the fifth day was just a case of survival, it does get easier as the week goes on though.
I was very worried about my lack of fitness, but the climbs are long enough that I just ended up going at my own pace rather than caring how fast others were going, which makes it a shedload easier.
Only downside I can think of was that some of the portions weren’t quite big enough, but that may have been due to us being in two pretty big (12ish) groups. If you get good weather for the whole week you’ll have an absolute ball, the trails dry very quickly so it’s not a problem if there’s rain before you go. There was heavy rain the day we arrived, but by the time we went riding the next day everything was dusty again.

Probably fine, I’ve never seen or heard of a broken one.

The Seatstays are designed to flex, eliminates the need for a pivot that would move less than 5 degrees anyway.

Salsa Horsethief, only ridden it once but I love it already. 130mm fork, 120mm rear travel 29er/steamroller/monster truck. Chuffing brilliant. You’ll struggle to get the right bike if you don’t test ride some, having said that I’d never ridden a Horsethief before I got mine.

I did the Tour Du Mont Blanc in August/September and it was brilliant, although the refuges were basic hotels really, rather than the higher altitude refuges. Would definitely recommend it.