Back Home Now

It's all over, I'm back in lovely England. My last week in Morzine incorporated a little bit of last minute riding the steeps on Pleney, followed by some solid cleaning, a thunderstorm, and a delightfully lonely drive back. The weather was a bit different too, it became pretty cold, with plenty of snow on the peaks.

The season has been great, riding has been awesome. Here's a few of my bests and worsts:

Best tracks: Da Trail, Hattock, Chatel Blackshore, Gueps, Dre dans le Pentu, Run of the Mill, probably more...
Best place to ride: Super Morzine/Zore tracks
Worst place to ride: Les Gets!
Best crash: Tackling a tree somewhere down a track on Pleney, good laugh
Worst crash: That one from the beginning of the season, look back through my blog for the pictures. That hurt
Best new thing I rode: Tie between Champery WC track and the step up in chatel, I was chuffed with both of them
Worst braking bumps: Chaux Fleurie track - it eventually got closed it was so bad!
Best braking bumps (smoothest track!): Pleney blue! But the Zore tracks got plenty of maintenance and were usually good too
Best road driven: Col de Colombiere
Best moment: How can I choose?!
Worst moment: Climbing Roc d'Enfer

So I guess that's all from me. I hope everyone has enjoyed my blog and/or found it helpful, it's extremely unlikely I'll be in Morzine for another season, so this is MarkInMorzine signing out!

More Climbing

After Ressachaux I was invited to do Roc d'Enfer, a slightly higher mountain (2244m) out the back of Les Gets. Expecting a similar walk, I thought I'd give it a go. Well, it was more a climb than a walk for several bits. A knife edge ridge high above the valley below. Lots of clinging to what were essentially cliffs, hoping not to fall off.

I don't think it was as insane as it felt to me, I think I just don't quite have the head for heights that I thought I had. Either way, it was the most scared I've ever been. In the photo above, you can see part of the ridge we climbed across. I was very, very happy to turn off the ridge and take a (still fairly steep) path back down to the bottom. Paul's punishment for throwing snow at me was a lesson in geology, all the way down the near 1000m descent.

I think I'll cancel my plans for a quick jaunt up the north face of the Eiger, and stick to mountain biking. Which I suppose is equally dangerous. Fear is a strange thing.

Getting High

Today I hiked up Pointe de Ressachaux. It's about 1100m vertical ascent, which isn't exactly epic mountaineering, but it's the biggest mountain I've done. It takes you up to just shy of 2200m. Even with the encroaching clouds, the view from the top was pretty awesome. Some of the peaks were just popping their heads above the cloud, whilst more clouds stealthily floated up the valley behind us. The sunlight on them created an almost full circle rainbow.

We managed to get a sneaky glimpse of a two chamois (mountain goats) on the way back down before the cloud enveloped us. My legs are incredibly tired now, and looking back up at the mountain, you can't even tell it's there because of all the cloud.