Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Mountain bike down from Galibier, Briançon

Today we did a mountain bike descent from the col de Galibier back to Monetier. The first section is a little bone jarring with my 10 year old Klein, but still very fun. You start right next to the memorial to Henry Desgranges (the founder of the Tour de France)


It's quite a wide trail on the rockiest parts, so you really just have to control your speed around the turns o avoid ditching down a steep and rock covered hillside. There were several fairly dramatic crashes, but the mountain bike gods were with me today, and I did not flat or crash, despite some very very near misses. I did, however roll through a kind of noxious yellow-green mixture of cow crap and mud which does not appear to come off of clothing. Delicious! The bottom part of the descent, well past Lautaret, was my favorite: quite smooth and narrow trails, with the occasional big rock in the way. Lolo had a nice crash, when he dropped of a small rockm couldn't get the bike pointing in the right direction, and ended up literally in the weeds.

Afterwards, it was into Briançon for more gaufres and a pinwheel for Zoé




Video here (crash at 6:09)

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