Thanks everyone for a great trip and thanks to Duane for making it happen. You quite quickly run out of adjectives for the riding there. I remember doing the Berg and Bush descent from the escarpment last year (Solly's Folly etc) and thinking I hope I get some of this in the Alps. Yes you do, you get to ride it 10 times a day. Something like this would probably map to the Panoramic trail in Chatel, a green run. I left my garmin running and on the average day, did about 60 - 70km of total distance and 5-6 km of total descent. So by the end of the trip it works out to 60km of total downhill! That's probably 6 months of pedalling for most people! There's so many riding destinations in the area, and each of them has quite different riding and feel to it, so you can never even think about getting bored. The first few days we mainly did Les Get as it had been raining a lot, and it was the least muddy. The runs through the jump park are tight twisty berms with little tables and are huge fun. For guys like Rupert there's the airline trails, but I don't go near that stuff! The mainline is nice but the braking bumps are quite severe in places. Les Gets is a lovely town and a very family friendly place. If I ever brought my family, that's where I'd stay. As the weather improved we moved across to Zore. The Zore blue run (post #1777 by CapeDiver) became our go-to trail, because it's relatively smooth and chilled (less steep by Alpine standards), has these great tabletops to practice jumps on, and you can easily roll down the hill back to Morzine when you've had enough. So even after a big day out to Chatel, smashing a few runs on Zore on the way back would be in order. As you head across towards the Swiss side, you get more of a big mountain feel. Chatel is probably the best single destination in the PDS with the greatest number and diversity of trails, but they are all steep, even Serpentine which is a green trail. Everythig about Chatel has a big feeling to it. The berms are often 8 feet tall. It's also where the massive Rampage style stuff is. Then if you make the effort to get to Morgins, which is a stunningly beautiful trip in it's own right, both there and back (totally different routes, using the available lifts), you get to ride what I think are the best individual trails. I rate blue run in morgins as the best single trail I've ever ridden, and if I was a better rider, would probably say that about the red. Colours don't mean that much there, as the Morgins blue is no easier than the Pleney black, and the red is definitely harder. Nobody made it as far as Champery, which is apparently insanely steep and probably not something you'd want to ride if you're a plonker like me especially it's muddy. Towards the end Pleney (the les Gets side of Morzine) had dried out nicely, and although it's a black, it's very rideable even on a trail bike, fast, steep in places, has a bit of everything and just huge fun. The one thing I didn't get to do as much as I wanted was some of the XC ridge rides. There are some incredible areas to explore and I'd like to do more of this next time. The problem is you have to tear yourself way from the downhill runs (although no problem to ride most of them if you're out with a trail lid, you just dial it back a bit). As for the bike, I took a Pyga with 160mm on the front and 140 on the back, and it worked out great. There are places I'd rather have had more bike, but there was no general consensus that you need a full DH bike for this trip, or would even be much better off with one. So anyone who's thinking about it for next year, I hope this gives some flavour of it, do it - it took my riding to a different level, and totally redefined what "awesome" means me when it comes to mountain biking.
