The ski resort of Les Portes du Soleil is the world's largest interconnected lift-connected area. And as some of the lifts are in operation for hikers in summer anyway, many mountain railroads are trying to improve their summer business: with the help of mountain bikers. The conditions are excellent for freeriders who are flexible and swap their gliding equipment for rolling equipment. A downhill rush - and all at a bargain price!
What does the plagued powder addict do in the hot summer? Apart from sweating in stuffy office buildings or dusty libraries, the obvious choice is to escape to the front. So throw the bike in the car and head for the Alps. More specifically, to Portes du Soleil.
The bare figures don't make for particularly exciting reading compared to winter. What are 24 lifts and 15 downhill trails, a well-signposted network of paths and challenging mountain hiking trails in the age of mega resorts? After all, this is the largest area in Europe with lifts in summer. The price of the day tickets of 16/64 euros per day/week sounds just as interesting.
After a relaxed journey with a short stopover in Bern to pick up our fellow riders, we quickly headed uphill from Champery in the morning. The destination of our downhill tour was Les Gets. A first slide in the mud on the freshly laid track down to Les Crosets took some getting used to. From the Pointe des Mossettes, a flowing singletrail led us past Lac de Chesery towards Avoriaz. As the view of the retort town did not meet our expectations of a mountain village, we followed the signposted tour with small climbs towards Morzine. Bored of the signposted forest paths, we decided to stay off them and stick to the mountain hiking trails. Good decision!
On a steep and narrow forest path
Which was very much to the taste of the Swiss riders, we descended quickly to Morzine. The numerous cafés filled with expensive bikes also answered our question about the reason for the extremely empty roads so far. The mainly English chic crowd probably prefer to admire the brand new technological wonders in full body armor from the cafés instead of using them.
We reached our destination for today's tour via the egg-shaped Pleney gondola: Les Gets. The trails there are very well developed, peppered with plenty of small and medium-sized jumps and relatively easy to ride for everyone. Only the many braking bumps and the closed upper lift detracted from the enjoyable ride. A little more maintenance would definitely be good for the trails. As the time was already very advanced, we unfortunately didn't have time for a lunch break and headed straight back. Shortly before Les Crosets at the Pointe des Mossettes, we found our favorite trail: La Grande Conche - an alpine downhill trail with an elevation gain of around 600 meters. The upper section is very rocky and slightly exposed, while the lower section is flowy and flatter over lush alpine meadows, garnished with beautiful jumps and full-throttle banked turns. Before the final descent down to Champery, a couple of nice local riders took us for a quick ride down a secret singletrail they had created. The fact that the moisture in the steep forest of the World Cup downhill had lingered a little longer didn't exactly make this trail any easier, with its many steep hairpin bends and cross-country root carpets. After around 6,000 vertical meters of downhill, we had well and truly earned our after-work beer with a short refreshing dip in the mountain stream with this extremely challenging finish.
Another downhill tour
with a massive amount of vertical metres was planned for the second day via Chatel and Morgins. Once again, we headed from Champery via Les Crosets towards Avoriaz. This time we opted for a mixture of the signposted forest trail and a few freeride interludes on the ski slopes. Via Les Lindarets and the Chaux Fleurie lift, we wanted to let off some steam in the Chatel - Pres La Joux bike park. In addition to a medium-difficulty downhill and an alpine slopestyle course in the upper section, the Pierre Longue chairlift further down offers 8 different routes. In addition to a North Shore section and 3 easy slopes, there are around 5 routes with a high degree of difficulty in the steep forest. Whereby the description "rideable" is only partially valid from our point of view. How you are supposed to ride parts of these extremely steep routes with wide jumps and drops in the dense forest smoothly will probably remain a mystery to us. Judging by the tracks, this seems to be at least theoretically possible.
Unfortunately, after 2 laps the devil struck and we had to visit a bike store to fix the loose spokes. Apparently, despite the great routes and lots of advertising, Chatel doesn't place much value on bikers. To find a competent store, we first had to search the whole village. We only found what we were looking for about 200 meters further down in the valley.
The onward journey was also delayed by the poor bus connection and a somewhat incompetent lift employee. After a short intermediate climb at the pass near Le Corbeau, the route took us down another beautiful singletrail with views of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc to Morgins. Via the La Feuilleuse chairlift, we had to pedal hard once again to catch the last connecting lift in Champoussin. To our surprise, we didn't meet anyone at the lift station apart from a few uninterested looking cows, even though we arrived a good 10 minutes before the lift closed. We didn't find Swiss serenity combined with French savoir vivre particularly funny in our situation. 300 meters uphill are great for your fitness, but bobbing 19-kilo bikes and the constant view of the actually planned ascent aid spoil the fun of the ordeal. It goes without saying that the wasted calories are replenished with cool beer in the evening. A good portion of homemade "Original Obwaldner Älplermakronen" rounded off the necessary calorie intake perfectly.
The pearls of the routes explored
were now to be picked out on days three and four. As we prefer technically difficult routes and mountain trails, we decided against another tour to Les Gets. Instead, we tried to ride the most difficult and interesting routes between Avoriaz, Pre La Joux, Les Crosets and the World Cup downhill route in Champery. The WC downhill in particular demanded all our courage. There was often a risk of falling and steep sections of up to 45° over several meters ended in tight hairpin bends. We probably didn't quite reach the best time of the downhill pros, but we were still happy to have survived this section halfway without crashing. The mountain trails from the Pointe des Mosettes towards Les Lindarets were much more relaxed despite the many bumpy sections.
Unfortunately, the trip had to be ended prematurely after day 4 due to an approaching bad weather front. However, the beautiful landscape and the bike-friendly attitude of the mountain railroads are reason enough to visit the Portes du Soleil region at least one more time.
Infos about the Portes du Soleil bike area
Daily pass: 16.- Euro
Weekly pass: 64.- Euro
