The Champéry-Morgins Bikepark is the local hub for mountain bikers from all five of the Swiss Portes du Soleil resort villages: Champéry - Les Crosets - Champoussin - Val d'Illiez and Morgins.
The newly renovated bike park cosists of 9 downhill tracks, 7 Cross Country trails, 1 World Cup trail and 2 pump tracks! Comparing to other resorts in French Portes du Soleil this bike park is steeper and attract more advanced riders, however for this year - the park team did big efforts and built some tracks for intermediate riders, and made a lot of improvements - "chicken runs" on black trails as well.
The Singletrail guide & coach team had a great day out, in below blog post Chris summarises his day on a bike:
Pulling up in the car park in Champéry only one word came to mind...MUDDY! Most of the week before had been torrential rain but that didn't seem to have stopped the hardcore Valais downhillers from getting the first lift at 9am, to ride the first laps in the Champéry bike park. (Note: The Champéry bike park is the ultimate playground for advances downhillers)
By the time Andras and I rocked up at around 11 AM the car park was littered with mountain bikes and riders that looked like they had been dragged through a warzone, making out the bike manufacturer was tricky due to the caking of mud covering all recognisable logos.
We convinced ourselves that the trails must be drying out by now so we bought our tickets and boarded the cable car to travel the 1000 vertical metres to the top of Planachaux.
We set off down the black trail which heads towards the start of the Champéry World Cup downhill track and within twenty metres we were covered in mud, my thick tread tires had turned into a pair of brown doughnuts, I had mud up my shorts, up my nose and who knows where else but it was insane! We were only going about 5km/h but it was probably the most adrenaline filled ride I've ever done on a bike.
I lost control and recovered more times than I can count. The time when I did become parted from my bike the landing was very soft. As we popped out onto the road in the town of Champéry and managed to get a bit of speed up to clear some dirt from the wheels we both had huge grins on our faces.
We did in total 5 laps and took in most of the runs that were open, each lap the track got drier and the ruts got smaller making the root sections more manageable and the berms more fun. Andras found some nice river gap jumps.
On the final run down the mud had packed in enough that I felt happy getting the camera out and we snapped a few pictures on the black run above Les Crosets. Overall it was a great day on some super fun trails and a good way to start the mountain biking season!
PS: Four & 1/2 days until the Verbier Bike Park opens it's doors! The question is, who will get the first lift?
See you soon!
Chris