Today we headed west out of Briancon and looped round the mountain to Puy St. Vincent.

On the way, our progress was delayed by an unpleasant reminder that cycling carries particular risk in this part of the world. Our vehicle was stopped while emergency services tended to a roadie on the descent to Les Vigneaux. It only takes a smallish rock fall at 40mph to bring a rider down. The ambulancemen said he was pretty ripped up.

Our guide Steve told us about Briancon hospital which tends to have a ward just for cyclists – broken bones for MTBers on one side, flesh wounds and skin grafts on the other for roadies. This… didn’t really help my nerves if I’m honest!

The weather today was again in the high 20°’s and the trails were completely dry.

Puy St. Vincent

St. Vincent is a quieter family oriented ski resort (one that my sister-in-law skied regularly when the kids were small) and this could be seen on the mountain bike trails. Despite being mainly empty as the French returned to work after their summer break, what riders there were tended to have young kids in tow.

On the slopes my disquiet from the road crash settled down. Growing familiarity with the Radon Swoop and some nice man made trails through the woods and under the chairlifts felt great and progressive.

We started on the Les Pres chair and from around 6,000ft (1830m) dropped a couple of miles back to the start on a lovely flowy green ‘family’ trail. Back up again, we did the same but on a longer blue before taking the Crete des Bans chairlift up to 7,400ft (2270m) and a long, long blue seguewaying into a red took us all the way back to the bottom for lunch.

The Prof took the opportunity for a big gap drop along the way. I teased myself that it was quite do-able(!) but decided it was too early in the week for me.

Lunch was OK, again I over-ate with a burger while Lloyd and JR limited themselves to a healthy looking Poke Bowl.

After my burger I felt over-full, so the first shortish run didn’t feel too great before we headed back to the top of the mountain once again. This time we took a lovely long, more natural trail out the far side of the ski area and once more back to the bottom of the resort.

All these trails were starting to add up.

The last chairlift of the day took us all the way back to the top but this time a long natural track along a high pasture brought us five and a half miles down the mountain. As we descended the trail turned into narrow, quite technical and rocky paths.

The last section opened out once again and was fast and high speed. Lloyd distanced me quite easily on his Lapierre as we finished off 20 miles of descent for the day.

Summary

Overall, I really enjoyed Puy St. Vincent and I felt pretty good as I got used to the Radon. The natural trails were my favourites (especially the last one) but it was good to get some practice in on the numerous bike park options as we managed to squeeze in a lot of runs.

I was surprised I had any energy after the previous day’s efforts but another 20 miles of downhill didn’t feel too bad (until we walked up to the Old Town in Briancon for dinner!).

One thing I did notice was how many pedal strikes I was getting with my Funn platform pedals. They are a one-sided clipless design and in theory gave me options if I couldn’t clip in.

In reality, my Specialized shoes have quite a hard rubber sole which means no grip, so I was continually trying to clip in at the start of sometimes tricky sections. A nice idea that didn’t really work for me.

About the author

Matt is one of the founding Molefathers of the Muddymoles, and is the designer and main administrator of the website.

Having ridden a 2007 Orange Five for many years then a 2016 YT Industries Jeffsy 29er, he now rocks a Bird Aether 9 and a Pace RC-627.

An early On-One Inbred still lurks in the back of the stable as a reminder of how things have moved on. You can even find him on road bikes - currently a 2019 Cannondale Topstone 105 SE, a much-used 2011 Specialized Secteur and very niche belt drive Trek District 1.

If you've ever wondered how we got into mountain biking and how the MuddyMoles started, well wonder no more.