Val D’Allos is a ‘family’ ski resort above the small village of Allos in the Maritime Alps of Southern France, about 2 hours by car north of Nice. In essence, Allos is the quintessential French mountain village: sleepy summer time hotels, narrow streets, old buildings, and a couple restaurants. And it’s surrounded by amazing, jagged peaks. Which are littered with amazing trails—many of them accessible via the lifts at the Val d’Allos ski area or via a quick shuttle up to the Col d’Allos. These trails pretty much just scratch the surface of what’s available in the area, too—a little race called the “
Trans Provence” runs just across the valley and opens up even more ride options.
What’s really important about Val D’Allos, though, is that it’s the birthplace of French Enduro racing—the first ever French Enduro race was held here back in 2002—the 10,000 Down. The brain child of Fred Glo and a few other like-minded mountain bikers, the 10,000 Down offers racers 10,000 meters of descending during a weekend of racing on the trails at Val d’Allos; it’s a ridiculously good time. The race is usually held the last weekend of June, and from that point on, the chairs provide daily bike access to the trails until the end of August.
The town and the ski area may be small by mega resort standards—Val d’ Allos only offers 1000 or so vertical meter descents back to the village of Allos, and a handful of trails to ride. Nor are these pure DH trails—a 150/160mm travel bike is all one needs in Allos. Why make such a big deal over riding at Allos, then? Because the trails that do exist, while few in number, are fun as shit. And then there are all the other trails in the area—the ones that descend the Col back into town, as well as trails that are part of the Trans Provence (for beta on those trails, just stop into Sylvain Barbotin’s bike shop in the village of Le Seignus above Allos and spend a few minutes talking ride options with him). Even better, Allos is relatively unknown, and remains largely free of the crowds that can swarm a place like Whistler or Livigno.
Adam, Lars, and I had come to Allos with a simple, three-part plan: ride the chairs at Val d’ Allos for a day, grab lunch, and then shuttle the pass at the end of the day and the next morning, then pin it for an Italian Super Enduro to be held in Medisimo, some eight hours away…
Part one of the plan ran like clockwork. We caught up with Sylvain and Alex early in the day as they prepared to start marking the tracks for the 2014 edition of the 10,000 Down. For us, this turned out to be a stroke of incredible luck: the main chair to access the bike trails is going to be replaced this summer, and would only be running for the trail crews for the 10,000 Down and the racers the following weekend—there will be no public access for 2014. But with Sylvain and Alex’s help, we managed got the free ride up to the top to savor some of the goods we had sampled during last year’s EWS race. We rode hard all morning, reliving memories of last summer’s racing, sniping photos, and generally having as much fun as three single track connoisseurs can have when they’ve got an entire bike park to themselves.
Part two of the plan was a lunch stop at Auberge les Gentianes… anyone care for the 15-euro ‘le plaque du jour’ ? Don’t mind if we do... But that was where our carefully crafted plans derailed: how were we to know that we were settling into a five-course meal? Incipient food coma from that feast meant retiring to the comfort of our rooms at le Plein Soleil hotel to digest a bit before stepping up to part three of the plan: shuttling up to the top of Col d’Allos for the sweet, 45 minute, 1200m ride back into town for dinner at the hotel.
Unfortunately, during “nap time”, the weather had started moving in. With a sharp eye on the looming chaos, we pinned it for the pass, hit the trail, but as we got to point of no return—either return to the car or drop into the valley—the weather gods weighed in with thunder, lightning, and an ominous curtain of rain sweeping right for us. A two second pow-wow saw us turn tail and pin it back to the shelter of Lars’ Ford Galaxy—pretty much just as the weather hit us. That kind of weather—thunder, lightning, and torrential rain—in a high mountain pass is never fun, even within the confines of the Galaxy; we were the only vehicle descending the Col on the singletrack roadway back into Allos proper…
The anger of the gods continued throughout the night and well into the next morning before clearing off. We were eager for redemption with another attempt on the trail from the pass, but Adam’s ridden those trails in the wet before, and the high clay content of the dirt up in the high pass would have meant anything but a good time without a full day to dry out. Based on that assessment, and knowing that riding the pass would also translate into an 8 hour drive to Medisimo, Italy with three filthy dudes plus our equally wet, filthy bikes and gear sardined into the Galaxy, we opted to save that trail for another day. But we will definitely be back…
Feeling a little under the weather today, I'll get a few of these energy-packed glasses