After lots of cross country biking during the inter-season, its been nice to spend the last few mondays taking the easy way up a mountain over in Les Portes du Soleil, less than an hour away from Chamonix. Although I was happy enough riding locally when I first got into biking, I have to say that Cham is pretty poor in comparison to some of the great places I've got ride in the last year or two.

While I was in Canada most of my Chamonix biking buddies invested in down hill or free ride bikes. Not wanting to kill my lovely cross country bike rattling round after them, I decided I'd better follow suite. Obviously the lifts are primarily in place for the winter seasons, but the different stations in Les Portes Soleil have made big efforts in making them biker usable - the Compagnie du Montblanc really should get out more and see what other stations are up to...

For the first couple of trips we used Les Gets as our base. Besides plenty of cross country tracks linking up with the other stations. Les Gets has a couple of great downhill runs - this one with a mini section of North Shore. You get a choice of exits - Dave warming up for the drop to his left.

Think Wayne might need to hit it a couple more times before moving onto the drop...

You'll notice that there aren't any photos of myself - there is a valid reason for that - its because I'm crap, but getting better slowly... Dave is just coming out from the North Shore section - by the end of the summer we'll be clearing these rollers, well, the others will!