With Ian over for the weekend from Aberdeen it was time to get back onto the mountain bike. With bike quickly rented we were able to get a quick ride in on the Thursday evening. I had thought that the descent over the back of Les Houches down Hugh's Way to St Gervais would be a great warm up to Alps riding and let Ian get used to his bike. However despite a couple of days of dry weather the trail was wet and the mix of clay based soil and tree roots turned this into a slip fest! Both of us ended the ride with cuts and bruises.
The next day I had planned a tour of the Chamonix valley making use of the lifts where possible. From the Flegere lift we descended to Tre-Le-Champ on a great trail, I was loving the technical riding, Ian less so! From here we climbed up to Le Tour and a slightly dissapointing run on the mtb trail under the top lift. Grabbing a quick Coke at the Refuge de Balme (despite 7euros for two cans of coke we were stictly forbidden from eating our sandwiches!) we then descended into Switzerland on the Les Jeurs trail. An awesome descent of flowing singletrack finally brings you down to the Swiss border at Le Chaterlard. From here it was a bit of a climb up the road to Col des Montets. Feeling the effects of two harder days riding than expecting and nursing some bruises we decided to take some easy trails back to Chamonix and enjoy well earned beer and burgers at the MBC.
On the Saturday we made the most of the continued good weather and headed up to the Index to try to tackle the Chapelle de la Gliere. It's a long (400m) route so we made an early start and despite getting the second lift had to queue for about an hour to get onto the route. It was perhaps a slightly ambitious undertaking for Ian's first outdoor climbing and if hanging around at the bottom didn't help to settle his nerves the polished awkward nature of the first pitch certainly didn't! Still we battled on... the second and third pitches being slightly easier before the fourth led to a tricky corner pitch with some great climbing. The bolting of routes in the alps can mean the climbing is a lot more sustained than UK mountain routes and with 8 pitches still left and energy levels dropping we made the decsion to retreat. This is where the bolting really comes into it's own making the 3 abseils back to terra firma fairly straightforward. Again the early retreat meant we could get the lift down and enjy a few beers at MBC!
By now Ian was definelty after a more relaxing Sunday, so we headed up to the Chezerys slabs and had a very pleasant day climbing in the sunshine. We first tackled Voie Jaune and although the grade was only F4b was 120m of nice sustained climbing. Ian took the chance to "sunbathe" whilst he belayed me on the first pitches of a couple of other routes. With the clouds building and the sun dissapearing behind the hill we headed down the hill for a beer at... yes MBC and an excellent cheese fest at Le Boccalette.
More photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulwestwatson/
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