Any excuse to visit the Alpes is good enough for me. Dutch magazine FIETS invited me to go to the Roc des Alpes, the Alpine version of the famous Roc d’Azur festival. We needed some brilliant pictures for an upcoming edition and we got to ride and cover the event as a bonus.
The event has so many types of rides, it’s hard to choose. Eventually, I choose the All-Mountain ride on Saturday (54km) and the Enduroc on Sunday. Saturday we had to wait for the lift for a long time. The PPdS has 11 starting points and thus spreading the crowd, this the Roc could easily try two, we had 3 lifts in the ride and 2 wherein the village of La Clusaz. The lifts in this area do not go as high as the PPdS, so we had to climb the rest ourselves. Not often very steep or impossible to ride, but I tell you… it was a lot of climbing!
The downhills were hard too, difficult trails and challenging verts, plenty of mud and roots made us go slower and sometimes even walk. Near the end of the day, I was tempted to skip the last section, glad I didn’t. MORE climbing of course, but finally a nice fast descent going home and we finished with a big smile.
