Second to last day in Chamonix

Thursday brought clear, perfectly blue skies and I was pumped to ride. Good thing, because we had a doozy in store for us. We rode a series of rooty and rocky singletrack all the way to Montroc and then continued on up to the lift The “bubble” as they call it there, took us up a little ways and then we climbed for 35-45 minutes the rest of the way to the top of the Col de Balme. There is a little stone restaurant up there and at the top of the Col is the Switzerland/France border, with a sign showing the border. This was just a stone’s throw away from the very monstrous climb we had done Tuesday and I could see the singletrack at the top where I thought we had been starting to descend. We had lunch and then started the descent down into Switzerland.







This was a VERY cool descent that reminded me a lot of some of the riding here in Oakridge, Oregon. It starts out in the open - high up on the Col and then drops drastically via a set of switchbacks.





You can see some of the others in our group waaaay down there.





No joke, that’s what we had just come down.



Heading into the dark forest soon.







The singletrack continues on into the dark in the trees; rooty, and rocky with some really scary fast sections on the side of the cliff.





It lasted forever and dropped us out in a tiny town where we then rode back on the road to Chamonix.



That was a brutal road ride back up and I was totally dead by the time we reached the chalet.