I was more prepared this time. I left around 2pm, which was a little too late for a comfortable ride as it turned out it got quite hot and there was still a bit of ambient humidity from the morning rain. My tire had been repaired and the bike checked by the nice folks at Mountain Cycle in Voiron. I still need to buy a tool kit to take with me on the trail and a couple of spare tubes but, this time, I had plenty of water and food if needed.

The goal was to establish a baseline as I can envision this itinerary becoming a practice ground as it provides a good but not too long climb first and then a technical (though not terribly so) descent, for a total riding time around the hour mark.

As usual, here is the itinerary overview as recorded by PathTracker on my iPhone:

La vierge noire – baseline (click to see the interactive version of the itinerary)

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I thought I had figured out an itinerary but after climbing as much as I could, I got stuck and ended up having to backtrack. It wasn’t that bad in itself because I very often have to backtrack because I took a wrong turn somewhere even when I follow an established itinerary! However, it did contribute to lengthening the ride.

I guess I should now state that I decided to go riding after work and it was around 8pm when I left. These days, daylight in these parts is good up until 9:30pm or so. That was my first mistake of the day: taking off for a ride without knowing exactly how long it would take me when I knew I couldn’t possibly ride more than an hour and a half (at least, not on single track as I don’t own any kind of lighting equipment).

Anyway, everything was going OK. I had backtracked, found my way back up according to the directions I had read online before leaving and reached the end of the first part of the track, interrupted by a short flight of stairs. I carried the bike up and reached the Bastille without further issue. At this point, though, I started to get a little thirsty and that was my second mistake: leaving without my camelback, so no water and/or food. The reasoning was that it was supposed to be a short ride, so no need for a backpack. Wrong!

I finally reached the intersection I was looking for, climbing up from the Bastille towards Mount Jalla. Instead of proceeding to the top, I turned East taking the Vierge Noire (Black Virgin) track, which is the path I took on Saturday to finish the ride and that was very fun. I started to proceed down the path a little more cautiously than last time because I could feel I was getting tired and light was getting dimmer.

Even so, I had a great time up until the third of the descent. At some point, I started getting weird reaction from the bike: my back wheel was drifting. That’s when I realized that I had blown up the tube on my back wheel. Not sure how it happened and really it doesn’t matter. What did matter was that, here I was on a rather technical downhill single track, a blown tire, night starting to fall, still two third of the way to go and about 3 kilometers more after the end of the track to get back home. Not a pleasant situation to be in.

Not having my backpack, I, of course, didn’t have a spare tube or tools to change it. Anyway, I didn’t really have time (or really room, as the trail was quite narrow and steep) to operate on the bike as night was falling. I decided to wing it and spent the whole descent with my weight as much on top of my front wheel as possible, which wasn’t a very comfortable position to be in.

I managed to get down the trail and kept going, still with my weight on my front wheel, after I had reach the end of the trail until the road started to level up. I then walked all the way back home.

Here’s the overview of this little adventure, as usual:

The unforgiving virgin path (click to see the interactive version)

In the end, it wasn’t all bad. Still had some fun and thrills. I now know a short ride, close to home that wouldn’t take more than an hour and a half, provide some good exercise and a fun downhill component. More importantly, I learned some valuable mountain biking lessons:

• Never underestimate how long a ride will take. Always make room for unforeseen circumstances.
• Never leave without a backpack containing some water, food, a spare tube and basic tools to make minor repairs if needed.
• If you’re going to ride close to dusk, either make sure that you will be done before night falls, or get yourself some night riding equipment.

More tips from singletracks.com on how to avoid disaster on the trail.

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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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Unfortunately, as my camera is not waterproof, I won’t be taking any pictures during, which could have been a lot of fun.

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Not long after moving to Grenoble, I bought a mountain bike itinerary book and I thought I’d follow their indications for this trip. Everything started rather well at my rather slow pace with a nice weather. Of course, it started getting colder as I climbed and ended up having to put my jacket on.

After about an hour of climbing, I was rather ready for the descent and that’s where the troubles started. Turned out the descent path was rather impracticable. To start with, it started a little too technique for my riding level but that’s not usually a problem: just unmount and pass the obstacles. However, as I was hiking down with my bike on my shoulder, it seemed like there were way too many tree trunks across the path. Now, you have to realize that this is/was a single track on a steep hillside with bushes on either side so there wasn’t much room to navigate or avoid any obstacles. Plus, many of the fallen trees were too high to be jumped over (I was able to slide my bike under several of these trunks).

After a while it appeared to me that maybe it wasn’t as random as it first appeared, especially considering the fact that I found white thread on the trail at several spots as well. Was it an attempt to prevent mountain bikers to ride this path? I don’t know but, after a while, it started to get tiring to have to carry the bike under/over fallen trees, trying to avoid brambles (tip: wearing shorts on an unknown trip involving single tracks: not a good idea!).

I finally arrived to a point where I saw hikers climbing up so I asked them how the path was further down, as they asked me how the path was looking further up. They confirmed that the trail quality didn’t improve significantly so I decided to cut my losses and started climbing back up. It was quite tiring to do so with the bike in tow but I was still not too far down, about only a 100 meters straight down, about 300-400 meters following the trail and it was better to have to climb now than get stuck further down the hill.

All in all, it was a little disappointing not to be able to complete the tour, especially since you always look forward to a single track descent after an hour climb! Of course, since I backtracked my path up, I enjoyed the descent on the road back but it cannot really compare to a single track. It was, however, good exercise and I got to see some really nice landscape.

I recorded my trip on pathtracks.com via PathTracker on my iPhone but my battery was getting low towards the end so the end of the trip is not really accurate. Still gives a good idea of what I did.

I will upload some pictures on my Flickr account as soon as I solve my current issue with my laptop kernel panicking as soon as I plug my camera in…

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Despite being used to the French Alps, I’d actually never been that high up for as long before. The base elevation is 9,600 feet (2926 meters) which is already pretty high and goes all the way to 12,998 feet (3963 meters) at the top of the Imperial lift on Peak 8! Going down Lake Chutes was fun. It wasn’t too powdery and not as difficult as the extreme terrain denomination would make you believe, that is, unless you chose a trajectory that takes you on rocks . We took about the same line as can be seen at 1:29 and again at 2:09 on the previous video. You could definitely feel the altitude, though, especially on the hike up!

I had a lot of fun and put some pictures up on flickr for your enjoyment!

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And, yes, I am well aware there are a lot more important consequences (too numerous to list her) to global warming than my selfish little desire of being able to snowboard in deep powder and eat good Alpine cheese afterwards… but it just keeps adding up and getting more personal. Maybe, people will eventually start to care when they feel the impact more directly. And let’s face it, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better soon…

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First, of course, I’d like to wish everyone a very happy New Year and lots of happiness and health for 2006 (and beyond)!

Then, I’d like to congratulate the Denver Broncos for their divisional playoff win over the New England Patriots. It had been a long time since they last won a playoff game and it’s nice to see them advance to the AFC championship for the first time in 7 years. While I haven’t blogged about it this season, I have been following their play (like I always do) and I was extremely pleased with the way they handled the end of the season to secure a second seed (bye and home game, baby!). Of course, while it’s a nice achievement, there is still two games to play and win before they can be where they want to be. But, first thing first, they’re going to have a tough game next week against a very good Pittsburgh team (sorry, Sylvain, but I hope they’ll beat the Steelers soundly and advance to the Superbowl).

So what have I been up to? As mentioned in my last post, I spent a month in France. It was really nice and relaxing to be able to come back home after having stayed in the US for more than a year and a half. I got to spent some quality time with family and friends and that’s something which importance is easy to underestimate. It was also really nice to finally go back to the Alps and snowboard on some real mountains (despite the now traditional lack of snow of the early season). The only trouble spot with that trip was the fact that, while tweaking my board settings, I forgot to screw all the screws tight of one my bindings which basically got removed from the board the first time I applied some pressure to it on the slopes… End result: a nice fall with my binding still attached to my leg but free from the board, making my left leg hit the edge of the board which cut through my just recently bought pants and a still-not-healed gash on my shin.

I also got upgraded on the return trip after giving up my seat on my originally scheduled overbooked flight and I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t wish to always fly business.

I’m also starting to get a better understanding of the JBoss Portal code base so I should become more productive soon. I have also been looking for a new place to live in visiting lots of houses and it’s taken up a lot of my free time. Hopefully, everything will slow down soon and I’ll be able to blog some more.

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On the plus side, I now have a shiny new PowerBook 15″ (the ones with the improved screens) and, despite not being able to get the faster hard drive due to time constraints, I have to say that it’s very, very nice. Let’s try to keep it that way! Also coming up, after a very-interesting looking training, some time in France with my family (I hadn’t gone back since June 2004) and some good snowboarding in the Alps! Yay!

Goddess on a Highway from the album Deserter’s Songs by Mercury Rev

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