The La Tania Ski Blog
Latest news, snow, pics, gossip and information from the locals in La Tania – latania.co.uk
All the latest news from around the 3 Valleys from the La Tania locals. A real blog since 2006, not just endless re-posts for search engine optimisaton! Photos, gossip, snow reports, what's on and all the latest on the Apres Ski scene... Now fully optimised for iPhone, Touch and Android Mobiles - just go to latania.co.uk/blog and view on your phone. Our other past blogs & favourites here
Electric Mountain Biking…
Cyclists riding up Cols is common place in the Alps – a weird sport to some and of course downhill mountain biking using the ski lifts to get height is a massive adrenalin sport too.
Electrically assisted bikes are improving year by year as both battery technology and the manufacturing of electric motors efficienct increases. We experienced the latest Rossignol kit last week from IZI BIKE at the entrance to Courchevel 1650 Moriond.
Electrically assisted means you have to pedal for the assistance to kick in (and makes it comply to a bicycle status – electric scooters for example are not allowed on UK roads) and there are 3 settings Eco, Trail and Boost giving different levels of assistance.
As inexperienced cyclists the road from 1650 to 1850 could be quite daunting but just in Eco mode it was a breeze.
From there the Plantrey lift and a little bit of Boost mode on the steep bits up to Col de Loze on the new tarmac cycle track.
Plenty of road cyclists at the top – we took our hats (helmets) off to them, amazing effort…
From the top of Col de Loze the tarmac run down to just above the Rond Point in Méribel is a great white knuckle ride – speeded up x 4 below…
and in real time below…
From the Ronnie there’s a mountain bike track down to Méribel where we had a quick pint to try out the new Jack’s Bar (ex Meribar) before taking Tougnete 1 & 2 to the ridge above St Martin de Belleville – the lifts from St Martin don’t run on a Wednesday when we were there.
From there we headed down the blue tracks to Lake Tueda just above Mottaret.
and up Pas de Lac to the Saulire summit, down the Creux track and along across to Plantrey then down to the Bouc Blanc for a late lunch followed by a pretty easy ride back across to 1850 and down to 1650. A total of 62km including lifts.
The hard tail version of the bike cost €60 for the day including insurance and helmet (further protective gear is also available). We only used 20% of the battery too – think we were too worried about running out of juice and could have use the trail and boost modes much more. All-in-all a great day out!
