Issue 158: Bourganised Chaos

Barney skips the lifts for a self-propelled – and self-inflicted – Alps adventure.

Words and photos by Barney Marsh

It seemed like such a fine idea. In the thick of a holiday to the French Alps with the family – so (in order of importance), ice cream, Orangina, burgers, swimming, uplifts, off-piste descents, Orangina, cheese, bike parks and Orangina – it seemed folly to overlook some of the entertainments on offer on the hillsides across the valley. A chance to sneak away from the fam for a few hours, and explore some of the less touristy places. Yes! Where flinty-eyed walkers would look at us thrusting mountain bikers, and we could nod at each other in mutual recognition and respect. You know, the way they used to 25 years ago before we became so ubiquitous and completely necessary to so many beleaguered ski towns’ summer economies. Much, I suspect, to the chagrin of many locals. 

Bourg-Saint-Maurice is one of those beleaguered ski towns. It’s a magnificently named place in the Haute-Savoie region of the Alps, and for my money the one with the best name. Anything with ‘Maurice’ in it brings to my mind a deep blue blazer, a collection of medals and an extravagant moustache, paraded around on top of an old bloke who’s probably the dictionary definition of ‘spry’. 

This particular Maurice, however, is a medium-sized pile of Alpine Frenchness, almost totally reliant on the ski industry in the winter. It’s a transport hub to Les Arcs, Tignes, Val d’Isere and others. In the summer, the funicular that runs from the centre of town up to Les Arcs 1600, and the buses that connect from there to Les Arcs 1800, 1950 and 2000, are free for foot passengers. The money from these comes almost exclusively from mountain bikers who are charged for day, week or monthly passes to use the funiculars and the lifts.

A ride less ordinary?

But that’s not to say that there aren’t things to do here that don’t involve lifts and berms and whooping and nervous people on hire bikes dressed up like Stormtroopers. The funicular, Les Arcs and all of that are on the slopes to the south of Bourg. The northern sides of the valley are not festooned with lifts, or berms or restaurants in the middle of nowhere selling surprisingly tasty burgers and the trails are of the natural variety. This means, of course, that they are much, much less frequently ridden. 

My pals James and Raluca had a plan. James has long been a military history nerd, and on a previous trip the two of them had visited two of the forts that still haunt the mountains hereabouts. The route between them was, according to James, something a bit special but the climb up the road to the top one was rather grim. So a plan was hatched. We’d ride up the valley to the east of the forts, over the pass at the top to a local beauty spot called ‘Le Cinq Lacs’ (can you guess why?) And down to the first from the north. It’d be a cinch. 

“But why”, I hear you cry, “are there so many forts thereabouts?” You didn’t? Oh. Oh well. Right. I’m going to tell you anyway. 

You see, although Bourg is now firmly in the ‘picturesque, but very reliant on tourism’ category of French places, it wasn’t always this way. A couple of thousand years ago, it was known as Bergintrum and was a key stop on the Gallic side of the Alpes Graiae Pass. And even then, there was a military presence – it’s been fortified for a long time.

But in the late 1800s, France and the newly minted Italy (it was only really unified in 1861, fact fans) had a particularly impressive spat. Previous fortifications apparently weren’t cutting the mustard, so in the 1880s and 1890s, France began a frenzied fort-building spree in the Savoie area, as did Italy over the border, as you’d expect. Although there was a military presence here until really quite recently – Bourg hosted a battalion of troops as recently as 2012 – tensions between France and Italy have been pretty cordial since the end of World War Two. Even before that, the two forts we’d be visiting had been decommissioned for quite some time – since the 1920s. Absolutely well worth an explore. 

But first we had to get there

The road up the valley carved by the Le Charbonnet River is, initially, a bucolic affair. Tarmac petered out to gravel after a kilometre or two. The previous evening’s rain had damped down some of the dust; butterflies absolutely gagging for a drink were clustering around any old grotty puddle on the trail, only to panic mightily at our approach and lurch drunkenly into the sky in front of us in an effort to – I don’t know, impersonate snow? Escape? If it’s the latter, they made a proper pig’s ear of it – they flew into us way more often than they flew away. I’m sure I ate a couple. 

The track was relatively easy-going at this point, although the valley sides were starting to steepen ominously. It rapidly became clear that I was underprovisioned (one desultory bag of supermarket confectionery worms is probably not enough) and underpowered compared to my companions. Raluca was chatting happily and still spinning away from me, and James had recently confided that he has an actual, honest-to-goodness coach. I was hopelessly outgunned, There was the slimmest of slim chances that I might be able to keep up on the descents, but I’d just have to forge ahead and pretend that everything was completely fine on the climbs. This proved tricky. It took all of my resolve to pretend to be absolutely fine, yessir, no problem here, let’s go! – even as I crammed sticky, shaking fistfuls of sugary French worms into my slathering maw at ever-decreasing intervals.

Strava lines

After much grinding and yet more switchbacks (and surreptitious French worms), we passed a holiday cabin. As tempting as it was to crowbar the door open and embrace failure with as much breaking and entering luxury as possible, we continued up yet more switchbacks, through sudden, fierce thundery squalls (dear god, let this not be the weather further up), until eventually the trail narrowed and turned into a surprised herd of cows. This made cycling tricky. 

French Alpine cows are famous for their cowbells and their Gallic demeanour, so we attempted to irascibly shrug our way through. Presently, after much grumpy mooing, we were faced with a beautiful vista full of pointy things. Some very, very large and mountain-shaped, and others smaller, approximately the size of a chest of drawers. Hard to ride over, essentially. One thing lacking from the view was gentle uphill trails. The valley walls had become near vertical. This… was troubling. I’d studied a map and Strava at length. The preposterously closely drawn contour lines on the map belied the reassuring trail that Strava had bestowed upon the pass. There was definitely a passage through. It’d all be absolutely fine, honest. 

We’d stopped underneath a freshly dislodged-looking boulder for some lunch, my pathetic whimpering having succeeded in making James and Raluca pity me enough to fling a savoury pastry in my direction (it was delicious). But we needed all the nourishment we could get as the trail now turned into a push up a rubble and boulder-strewn scramble, before crossing the river. This high, though, it was a simple process; the river was little more than a stream (albeit a furious, extremely cold, glacier-fed one), and this was followed by a simple push-with-occasional-riding up to what appeared to be a vertical wall of rock. 

I’m joking, of course. It was a vertical wall of rock and grass.

The only way is up, Barney

Previously, I quipped that everything would be fine. Unfortunately, there were two prerequisites not mentioned for this to be true. The first was a top-of-the-range head for heights. And the other was an absolute bargain-basement sense of self-preservation. As the trail became steeper and steeper, and then STEEPER in capital letters, I started to question many things, lots of which involved my life choices. A man with a long grey beard, shorts and the sort of hat that was in fashion in Manchester in about 1990 asked whether we were going to the Five Lakes, and looked slightly alarmed when we replied (in very shaky French) in the affirmative. He wished us luck. As we routed the corner, we saw why. 

In front of us was a rocky outcrop that would’ve made for a fun scramble, but for the monumental precipitous exposure to our left. A glorious vista, to be sure – but less glorious if you slipped as the vista would come to meet you in a messy explosion of organs. We were carrying bikes – never the most useful or least cumbersome things when trying to scramble up a series of steep rocky ledges. But perhaps the main thing that rendered the whole endeavour tricky was that I am a massive, massive coward. 

Perhaps it’s my encroaching years, an appreciation of the swiftness of the passage of time, a decrease in my reaction speed – whatever, it seems that my ability to just press on through with little regard to the consequences should anything go wrong is getting much more narrow in focus as I get older. And if I find myself able to appreciate the majesty of novel scenery, especially with a bike? Well, these days I also find myself imagining how it might look as I bounce off it at semi-regular intervals before splatting on the valley floor. It’s most disconcerting. 

Hold on, won’t be long

Raluca, perhaps the most can-do, letsjustgetonwithitshallwe of my companions, climbed the ledge first. James then passed bikes to her, and my role was to cower behind them pretending to document the moment by taking photos. It was an arrangement that worked well, especially for me.

Once up and over this obstacle, there was a brief pause to get our breath back before we were faced with the next one. Which was essentially the same, but even more so. Steeper. More vertiginous. So we ended up doing the same thing again, climbing up in stages, desperately trying not to slip, and passing bikes to each other. Only this time with progressively browner shorts. 

Eventually, though, just before I was about to sink to my knees and bawl my pathetic eyes out, we reached the top. One more minor carry, one more short, thrutchy push, and we were there! Lac Esola was the highest point of our ride at 2,320m and we jubilantly rode along its shores of a lake which, if I’m honest, resembled nothing so much as a slightly oversized high-altitude pond. 

As we rode, we interrupted and were thus scowled at by a young blue-haired French couple bedecked in punk T-shirts – a stark reminder that there was clearly a much easier way to the lake than the one we’d chosen. This was perhaps not the chorus of congratulatory angels I was hoping for to justify our relief, but it would have to do. There were four other lakes of course, of allegedly iridescent beauty, but they were much higher up, so frankly they could do one. 

Up here, high alpine meadows lolled bucolically between extremely big pointy things. Dotted prettily hither and thither, we could see colourful flowers, interesting-looking insects and (at the other end of the scale) more cows. Julie Andrews was conspicuous by her absence.

The occasional walker looked somewhat startled as they rounded a corner to see three tired cyclists donning knee pads in preparation for the ride to the forts, and back down the valley. At least they weren’t scowling.

Giddy with relief, fatigue, the first downhill and, possibly, French confectionery worm-related additives, we picked up speed. The trail offered smooth flowing entertainments, spiced with the occasional steep section and the odd river crossing to keep us on our toes and also to keep those toes nice and damp. Eventually, the descent switched from singletrack to some extremely swift, open (and actually enormous fun) doubletrack, and after a couple of kilometres of this, we peeled off down another trail as the first fort heaved into view.

Make cheese, not war 

Fort de la Platte was apparently more of a barracks than anything else. It’s a formidable-looking thing though, frequently reinforced throughout its service life from the early 1890s until it was decommissioned in 1915. At that point, it sported four hefty gun emplacements, but these are now vegetable gardens. (Make peas, not war? Anyone? No? Suit yourselves). It squats on the hilltop like a big grumpy concrete jelly and glowers malevolently over the valley below. But although it’s not been a fort for over a century (and was only used for less than 24 years) it’s a surprisingly popular place. Not only is it still drivable to, with care – a gravel track winds its way up many, many switchbacks to reach it – but these days it’s a privately owned near-impregnable cheese fortress, where Beaufort and Tomme de Savoie cheeses are aged. So presumably it’s also impregnable to mice. 

Sadly, we didn’t have any room in our packs for cheese. Instead, we cut off a little slice of singletrack for ourselves that ran perilously between the fort and a steep drop (although we were getting used to these by now), and then erupted extravagantly down the hill, along a ridgeline of sorts as it made its way to the next ruin. 

I think I may have mentioned in passing the rain we’d had the previous evening and the occasional grumble of a thunderstorm and squall we’d ridden through on our climb a few hours earlier. Here, they served to make what would ordinarily be a steep-ish, but largely non-technical trail into something rather more spicy. There was traction for days, until suddenly there wasn’t and I found myself riding with as much mental emphasis on my clenched sphincter as my loose wheels. Which is better than clenched wheels and a loose sphincter, I suppose. But what should have been easy, gradual, high-speed corners were turned into mortally challenging nightmares: available traction was a completely unknown quantity until you were past the point where it wasn’t, at a speed which made the discovery much more of a regret. It was honestly a miracle that we (OK, I) didn’t crash horribly; James’ abundance of skill and Raluca’s rational analyses of given situations both being attributes I lack.

The Fort of the Thing

Still, just about in one piece, we rode (James and Raluca) or squeaked (me) our way down and over another crest to the Fort du Truc. Despite being of a similar vintage to Fort de la Platte, Fort du Truc (the internet rather amusingly translates it as ‘The Fort of the Thing’) looks rather more ruined than The Cheese Castle. Apparently, it’s in private hands and there’s no access – which is fine, as there’s little to see beyond some grumbly mounds of earth and WOOOAH DEAR GOD a spectacularly high wall we were suddenly riding along the top of. This was terrifying – there was a steep, scrabbly little trail with a switchback, followed by a little left-leaning stepdown chute thing and then we were practically riding along the top of the wall: there were maybe a couple of feet that separated us from oblivion. I got James to ride this several times for the camera because I’m lovely that way and he needed the practice. 

We continued to drop down, past the fort, across a road and onto another treat – a truly superb slice of technical singletrack which switchbacks its way down the hill. Each corner was a different puzzle; there was just enough straight-line singletrack in between them to allow you to regain your composure before the next one. Here’s a two-stage stepdown; there, you need to hop your rear wheel once, twice. The next was a nasty little crevice that’d catch your mech off if you didn’t watch it; another necessitated a little more back-wheel hopping. Absolutely joyous. There was even more delicious singletrack; wooded, rocky, fast and exhilarating; slow and thrutchy, before we’re spat out at La Rosière for a gentle spin back to town and the obligatory celebratory beer and pizza. 

Every time I head over to the Alps, I find it harder and harder to leave. From the smooth roads and the swift medical care (I broke my wrist there a couple of years ago; cue lighting fast treatment and a 30 euro cost) to the food: it’s hard not to fall in love with the place. Couple that with the comparatively reasonable cost of staying there – we’ve paid far more for a lot less in the UK recently – and the superlative trail and uplift network, and it’s somewhere I’ll keep coming back to over and over again. 

But, if I’m totally honest, I’m not sure I’ll approach the forts from that direction next time…