Archive for August, 2010

Cherie Oates keeps kickin’ ass! Today, she climbed l’Index, a delightful, alpine rock tower in the Aiguilles Rouges above Chamonix. It was her first time ever on rock at 69 years of age. No sticky rubber for her, either. She climbed it all in trail running shoes!
It was another amazing day that taught me a lot about how much the right attitude counts in life.
Oh yeah, her 32 year old son Cody did well also.

After a fun filled week long mountain bike across the Swiss Alps with my wife, I’m back in Chamonix for some mountain climbing.

I’m now climbing with the mother and son team of Cherie and Cody Oates from Aspen, Colorado. Cherie, 69, is the oldest person I’ve ever had the pleasure of sharing a rope with. The weather forecast for later in the week looked a little dubious so we decided to get right after it and head up to the Cosmiques hut, our starting point, right away without any prior acclimatization. Since they both hail from a Colorado ski town, the altitude was not too much of an issue for them. I think is suffered more from the hastened schedule than they did.

We covered over a mile of vertical on our round trip to the summit from the hut in 6 hours up and 5 to return by the same route. It was quite windy up high, which made for some cold conditions and much drifted, soft snow covering the track.

Where’d day 5 go? It rained, so I’ll spare you the details about hopping on a train to Zermatt & skip right to the final day riding in Zermatt.
The weathered cleared, but the temperatures stayed cold. We decided to spend our last day sampling some of the many mountain bike trails accessible by trains and lifts here, all of which have great views of the Matterhorn. In half a day of riding, we coveted over 8,000 feet of vertical in descent! For our last trail of the day, we tried out a lap on the local World Cup downhill course, which was humbling. Needless to say, our XC bikes were not ideal for this and we walked several of the wild, steep section and gap jumps. It was pretty cool to see firsthand, though and a great way to finish a fantastic tour through the Swiss Alps.
I can’t wait to do this one again! Maybe next year? Now it’s back to Chamonix to begin a Mont Blanc climb.

The Queen stage! I know, that term is over used, but this day’s ride really was the best of the entire tour for us. It was also one of the most difficult. We crossed from Evolene to Grimentz by way of the Pas de Lona & Basset de Lona (another pass).
This involved over 6,000 feet of climbing (no lift assistance on this one), 1,000 of which was hike-a-bike & some of the best riding of the trip. 30 minutes out of Evolene found traversing nice, forested single track to the small village of Eison. After an obligatory stop for a shot of espresso, we continued up on steep roads, gaining another few thousand feet to above treeline. More climbing on single track through high, alpine meadows brought us to the steep scree path to gain the Pas de Lona. At 2,800 meters (9,200 feet), this was the highest point yet along the tour and allowed passage into a magnificent, wide hanging basin replete with a small, blue alpine lake. 2 miles of flowing alpine single track through this fairy tale like mountain landscape brought us to another short climb up the Basset de Lona.
We descended on a steep jeep track for over 2,000 feet to the turquoise lac de Moiry, formed by a large dam to generate hydro-electric power. Below the dam & within sight of Grimentz, we hopped on to more technical, rocky yet rideable single track through the forest into town. Grimentz was another beautifully quaint Swiss village that, like many of the others we had already passed through, is off the radar screen for most foreign tourists.
This was a first rate ride in it’s own right & a great part of our tour thus far.

Brutal! So much for counting on stopping for food and drinks at the various villages along the way. Little did we know that most cafes are closed on Tuesday. We climbed over the big hill known as Sex Pey (yes, that’s right) with only remnants of food from the previous day.
The morning started by waiting for the light rain to let up. By 10:00 it did and we were off for the next village of Vaysonaz. A cable car took us up 2,000 feet to where we hopped on some forested single track and on down towards the bottom of the big climb. The 3,000 foot climb involved a lot of paved road, but we had no complaints as it offered relatively efficient climbing. Eventually, we hopped on single track to finish the climb. Out of food and long past lunch time, we were feeling hammered.
The next section of single track was a two mile traverse of an alpine hillside on a technical and skinny track. Normally, we’d be pretty psyched for this type of tricky, obstacle strewn trail, but being famished made it difficult to appreciate. The traverse ended on a long, windy road down to the lovely Swiss Village of Evolene, where we promptly found some tasty raclette!

Verbier-Nendaz
The weather looked ominous when we left Verbier in the morning. We considered taking a rest day, but it wasn’t raining after breakfast so we decided to try and at least make it over to the next valley. Again, we started by using a lift for the first climb. At the top we descended from the Croix de Coeur to Tsoumaz on nice, spongy single track. It went by too fast and we passed through the village on paved roads. We continued on to the small ski village of Nendaz and it started raining so it is here for the night.

We started by bus in Chamonix to the village of Le Tour. A couple of lift rides and 5 minutes of pedaling later & we were at the Swiss border on the Col de Balme. Riding down from here 3,000 feet to the village of Trient started out in wild flower strewn alpine meadows. We entered the forest and continued down on some steep and very technical single track with dozens of tight switchbacks. This was the fun part.
Then came the not so fun part: the Bovine trail connecting the Col de Forclaz to the village of Champex. We got a tip (from a non mountain biker) that the Bovine trail would be great. It would be, if you were hiking, which is what we did for most of the trail while shouldering our burdens! 4 hours later, we arrived in Champex.
Tired from bike hiking, we descended pavement and took the train on up to Verbier in time to beat the torrential thunderstorm in the evening.