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A few of us are planning on heading over to Morzine in mid September but noticed that the lifts close after 8th or 9th. Are we wasting our time going or are are there other ways of getting up other than riding? Is there easy access to other routes, XC, etc? Cheers.
Plenty of good XC routes but you would spend a lot of time climbing. You can drive to near the top of most of the hills then either collect the car or have a designated driver. I thought some lifts stayed open later so you might be lucky. Much better to go earlier if you can it's fantastic riding with lifts taking the hard work out of it 🙂
Moraine isn't great out of season - very little open, we struggled to get lunch there last October midweek. You'll be doing a lot of climbing on road and forest road for not a lot of reward IME.
You could look elsewhere in the Alps - Samoens in the next valley is ace, went there at end of October and while all the ups were self-propelled we had some of the best riding I've ever done. Samoens is a proper town too so most bars, shops and some restaurants remain open. We were probably climbing 1000+ metres a day but for that getting 70-80% singletrack descents.
The tarentaise is another possibIlity - around Bourg St Maurice - Bike Village, White Room and Trailaddiction run in that part of the world. You might even be able to line up some out of season guiding with them.
Or you might be better in southern Spain.
Cheers guys, will check out Samoens and other possibilities. Can't change the dates unfortunatley as it took a lot of hassle to get a week where all seven of us are off work. Couple of non climbers on board so don't want anything too grotesque.
I would not go there if the lifs are shut. You will either be riding up a road for hours in granny, or stuck in the valleys looking up at massive hills.
I'll second Samoens. It's a lovely little town and there's lots of superb waymarked(ish) xc routes. Pretty sure there's a map available from the tourist info office. Top tip: check out the almond croissants from the boulangerie near the gondola
Morzine without lifts is like a pub without beer IMHO!
Yes, for Samoens we started with the map from the Tourist office plus the blue IGN map which gives you a better idea of terrain, gradient and whether it's a path, vehicle track or road. We carried both maps as the waymarking is a bit vague in places. The red, blue and black gradings are as much effort as technical difficulty; some of the most enjoyable trails were marked blue while there is plenty of "black" forest roads.
Over the week we rode most of the stuff accessible from the Joux Plan, Samoens1600 and Morillon access roads below about 1500m (the town is about 700m or so). Generally aimed to climb 500-600m then loose a chunk of height, climb a bit more, loose more height so it was more than one big up and down.
Just flicked through my pics and really, really want to go back. Now.