Once! That's how many times I've skied down the Cosmiques Couloir in Chamonix - a forty-five degree, ten metre wide gully that plunges through 800 metres of rock. I'll never do that again! Because this snowboarding experience was only based on two things - my ice axe and my hope. In other words, exactly the kind of "great" day trip that attracts people to Chamonix. People who have something to prove. But I have nothing to prove to myself, not anymore. If I can finish a descent on my bike or snowboard injury-free and with a smile, then I'm happy.
Now I'm standing next to a dilapidated lift station with Swiss pro Ludo May and Chamonix local Jez Wilson, looking out over that nasty, icy gully that scared me so much a decade ago. I'm glad we're concentrating on dirt today, not ice, as a 1400 metre descent begins at our feet. The finest, winding single trail through alpine terrain. We don't need an ice axe here, but you should always have hope if you choose Chamonix as your playground.
"Chamonix - the French town in the Alps has a reputation for celebrating life outside the comfort zone." Dan Milner, adventurer
The 1400 metre descent from Chamonix
Our trail tilts down the mountainside close to the fall line, swinging to the left a few times and to the right a few times - as if someone had drawn it on the map with a pen that was about to run out of ink. We know the challenges, after all, we've just spent four hours fighting our way up here with the bikes on our backs. We know the slabs of rock that hide slippery and slippery in the shade. We know the hairpin bends that only briefly box the trail out of the fall line. But what else should I expect here? This is Chamonix! A French town in the Alps with an "extreme" image and a reputation for celebrating life outside the comfort zone.
A reputation that has been attracting alpinists, skiers and sensation-seeking tourists for a century and has led to the peaks around Chamonix being littered with abandoned infrastructure - like the discarded Glaciers lift station we are standing next to. These remnants of repeated attempts to conquer craggy, hostile peaks are now our excuse for a cool day on the bike. I say: who wouldn't jump at the chance to explore a bunch of old ghost trains connected by a network of singletrack?
We started our mission early and immediately tackled the steep ascent with the glacier station in our sights. As we climbed up through the forest, we took a close look at the terrain: Rocks lying on the trail like a ramp - ideal for pulling off. Roots that we sorted with our eyes to find the best line through the tangle. Rubble that we could either avoid or skilfully ride through. We tried to remember all the features for the descent and hoped that there would still be enough light to spot them - always a gamble when you combine long tours with short autumn days.
Remnants of attempts to conquer hostile peaks
After ninety minutes and six hundred metres of ascent, we reach a clearing next to a granite building: the abandoned Para lift station from 1924. It towers into the sky as if trying to escape the decomposing intentions of the forest, but on the ground the battle is lost; saplings sprout from the cement of the foundations and weeds spill into the dark, damp vaults of the building. We follow inside and roll down a series of formerly decorative stone steps. Machines rust down here; it smells of lubricating oil. A riveted cable car, built in 1937, is still hanging on the rope. Get on? Better not!
Witnesses to the past: suitcases, shoes and precious stones for a quarter of a million euros
We continue our ascent, leave the tree line behind us and discover the ruins of the Pierre-Pointue hut. In the 1840s, it was the first stop on the ascent to Mont Blanc, which had just become popular at the time, but all that remains of the hut today is a square of crumbling walls, swallowed up by juniper bushes. We look out over spectacular peaks and the nearby Bossons glacier. It is notorious for its treacherous crevasses and two terrible plane crashes. In 1950 and 1966, two Indian passenger planes crashed into the rocky slopes of Mont Blanc. One just 60 metres below the summit. The pilot thought he had already flown over Mont Blanc. A fatal mistake. There were 58 people in the first aircraft, 117 in the second - no one survived the crashes, and even today aircraft seats, suitcases, shoes and a severed hand are still found in the snow of the glacier. Once, mountaineers even discovered a metal box labelled: India. Inside: precious stones worth a quarter of a million euros.
After more than four hours, we reach our destination: the station of the Glaciers cable car. We park our bikes, bite into cheese baguettes, drink the best water in the world and look forward to the 1400 metre descent.
Far above our heads, just a stone's throw from the infamous Cosmiques couloir, we can see the tiny fragments of a third abandoned lift station clinging to a rocky outcrop another kilometre higher - a tiny, steel foray of industrial know-how and rivet-studded bravery. The lift station was built as the tsunami of industrialisation swept across the Alps and engineers promised to conquer the mountains with the help of technology. "That's crazy," says Ludo, shaking his head at the towering silhouette. Ludo grew up on the other side of the snowfields of Mont Blanc, near Verbier in Switzerland. He has known the mountains since he was born, but this hair-raising cable car amazes even him. It was planned as the penultimate station of the long cable car to the 3842 metre high Aiguille du Midi - today, thanks to a modern gondola, the most famous and most visited landmark in Chamonix.
With this lonely platform in the rock, in thin air and buffeted by storms, the engineers had wanted too much. Four workers fell to their deaths during construction, and one froze to death when he tried to spend the night on the summit. I later learn that the steel beams used to build this mountain station were carried by the construction workers along a path between crevasses onto the nearby Mer-de-Glace glacier - an ambitious two-day hike that makes our own four-hour climb seem ridiculous. But whatever the risks - Ingenieur's ambition is hard to contain, and this mountain station up here is quite literally the pinnacle of Chamonix's engineering ambition in its determination to conquer the seemingly unreachable peaks for paying tourists.
Alpine pleasures have to be worked hard for: the yin and yang of adventure
Whether you're building a lift or hauling a bike up the mountain, alpine pleasures are hard-earned: the yin and yang of adventure. For thousands of years, people have been willing to take risks in pursuit of rewards. Whether it was to trade with distant lands back then or to chase the endorphin rush triggered by a hairpin bend over the abyss today. Whatever your personal comfort zone, it's in our blood to test its limits and try to renegotiate the non-negotiable. Chamonix is certainly not the only place in the Alps that encourages you to do this, but it is a very special place - regardless of your approach to the mountains and your choice of sports equipment. Today our choice is bikes. As the sun sinks towards the horizon, we set off on the descent - and are all tingly about what it will be like.
Perhaps this trail is the epitome of adventure, reduced to the basic elements: risk and reward.
I pause for a moment, interrupt my flow with a pedal stroke on a particularly nasty hairpin bend and think about the history that took place on this mountainside. The scree field around us once echoed with the howls of skiers who, armed only with primitive equipment and a pioneering spirit, were let loose on the unprepared snow slopes. There was even a French ski race here in 1927 and a World Cup the following year, more than fifty years before I got my hands on my first pair of skis, which were far too narrow back then. I look at the
comfortable suspension of my enduro bike and its thick tyres and swear never to curse a trail again.
Our tyres crunch through granite gravel and ground frost until the tree line swallows us up. The sun is low and we have to hurry. So: brake sparingly, find your rhythm, create flow! We roll through an alpine playground, swing the rear wheel through hairpin bends, push off over rock slabs and end up back on the towel-wide trail with eyes wide open and hearts pounding, because the abyss lurks everywhere.
Flowtrail? The ruins of the first Olympic bobsleigh run from 1924!
A sea of rocks becomes a larch forest, stone pools give way to root fields. We bounce and carve, curve and roll over branches, clumps of earth and stone slabs, roll along a bubbling glacial stream and reach the Mont Blanc tunnel - another place that experienced a tragedy. In 1999, the engine of a Belgian lorry caught fire in the tunnel. Trapped in a traffic jam, people panicked, 39 people died and the tunnel remained closed for three years. We rush past the tunnel with its constant traffic jam and turn into a mini-canyon with vertical walls of moss-covered stones: the ruins of the very first Olympic bobsleigh run - it was built in 1924.
Tall pine trees grow around the old track and hide it in a tunnel of branches. They sprawl out of the stone walls, bursting the cement as if to undo the glory of the Olympic past - a past that was characterised by serious injuries and four deaths and ultimately led to the bobsleigh track being shut down in 1950. We wind down this kilometre-long track, let ourselves be carried through the turns and have to hold on tight to the handlebars of our bikes on this stormy ride - because anything can happen here, but please don't fall!
In the last light of the day, we slow down at the bottom of the valley and look back at the towering peaks behind us. We watch the distant glacier station glide into the darkness, as it has done every day for almost a century. Silence and cold are in the air. Chamonix is a place of spirits and a place of adventure and endeavour - it always has been. We smile at our own
modest achievement and at the blatant descent we have just completed.
Measured against the spirits that surround us here and by Chamonix standards, our triumph may be tiny, but here, amidst towering mountains stubbornly guarding their rewards, every victory is sweet.
