With the beautiful weather we’ve been having here, Jim and I took a day out to explore the fantastic Portes du Soleil on our bikes, and thought you’d like to see the photos.
Accompanied by our savvy friend Chris from Rush Adventures who was showing us the trails, we started our adventure in Les Lindarets – a short drive from Les Gets, but you can bike there too. We took our first lift of the day to the top of the mountain, from where we could link a couple of really long downhill runs before arriving in Pre Le Joux. The trails just seemed to go on forever, and took in some great scenery too.
At the bottom, we changed gears and prepared ourselves for the next stage: We climbed steadily (though not too steeply, thank goodness!) up through pretty wooded passes, so that in 20 minutes we were looking down at Linga and the town of Chatel. With its lovely lake and pretty streets and restaurants, it’s the perfect place for a lunch stop.
Feeling refreshed and ready to roll, we went up the Super Chatel lift, and then did a mixture of downhill, cross country and road, until we came to another pretty lake and our first town in Switzerland – Morgins.
We took another lift up and enjoyed a really beautiful and scenic ride down to Champoussin through fields of cattle grazing, and shepherds calling their dogs.
Up another lift to one of the highest points of the trip – at over 2150m we ambled along a great mountain pass high up on the ridge, where you could see for miles in all directions.
After a long descent, often riding on the edge of the mountain, the pass eventually brought us out into Les Crosets, and not a moment too soon as we only just made this – our last lift – before closing time.
The lift took us back to France, and onto the ‘right side’ of the mountain. From here we took a really challenging downhill run, joining onto a great cross-country trail that took us along the banks of the Lac vert.
Now that we weren’t rushing to catch more lifts, we felt we’d earned ourselves a relaxing drink at the very well placed bar/ restaurant at the end of the lake.
We slowly made our way back down to Les Linderes on a long cross-country track that cut through rolling hills of green pasture, soaking up more stunning scenery in the warm late afternoon sunshine.
Here’s a map of where we went, if you’re interested in our route:
View Pure Mountain biking in a larger map
