Saturday: Mount Jalla

I had originally planned on spending the week-end in La Plagne to ride around at higher altitude. Things didn’t turn out as planned (do they ever?) and I ended up having to be in Grenoble this week-end.

I was determined not to let that get in my way of taking my mountain bike for a spin and took opportunity of the good weather on Saturday to attempt the climb of Mount Jalla, starting similarly to my failed attempt riding around Mount Néron but then, instead of going west towards Mount Néron, you go a little further up the valley to the col de Clémencières and then east to switch to the slopes of Mount Rachais and finally Mount Jalla.

Below is an overview of part of my trip (I didn’t run the GPS on the boring parts of the beginning).

Mount Jalla itinerary (click for the interactive version)

After a rather long climb (though I have to admit that I’m getting ever so slightly better at it), reaching the bottom of Mount Jalla with the path creating, in places, a balcony of sorts from which you could admire the valley, was really rewarding.

“Balcony” trail (click to open in Flickr)

Synchrotron in the distance (click to open in Flickr)

I definitely need to improve my climbing technique because I still had to push my bike up at a couple of spots, due to me both being out of breath but also unable to gain enough traction to stay on the bike on the steeper parts. However, the second part of the ride, a.k.a the descent was a lot of fun! A lot of technical single trail with good slope! Fun, fun, FUN!

Sunday: Le Mûrier

I had an apartment visit schedule this morning, which was the reason I had to stay in Grenoble this week-end. Once that was out of the way, and after a very nice lunch, I decided to try another ride, albeit a slightly easier one that from Saturday. Several reasons for that. One, I had ridden the day before and, while I wasn’t in pain per se, I could still feel that I had exercised a bit! Second, today was quite a bit warmer than yesterday.

This ride took me to the south of Grenoble. I forgot to take my camera with me this time, so the only pictures I took are courtesy of my iPhone…

Again, as usual, the ride starts with some city riding to join the start of the itinerary per se. Again, it starts by climbing with all the fun (from my perspective at the end). Despite, this being an easier ride than the one from Saturday, it ended up being quite exhausting combining fatigue from the day before with higher temperatures. I also didn’t pace myself well enough so ended up having to rest quite a bit during the climb which was really steep in parts:

A hell of a climb (at least for me)!

The upside is that, once you were done climbing, you could get nice views of Grenoble. In particular, you can distinguish (if you know it’s there, because the quality of the picture is not great), the Bastille and Mount Jalla almost in the center of this picture:

Nice view of Grenoble from the South.

The descent part was fun but definitely shorter and easier than the one from Saturday. I recorded the complete itinerary this time, though it seems like the GPS lost the signal for a while and recorded some bogus points… :/.

Le Mûrier itinerary (click for interactive version)

All in all, a nice couple of rides. I definitely will redo the second part of the Saturday ride, I just need to figure out an itinerary that will shorten the climbing approach.

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