Switzerland 2014 Day 6 – Crans Montana

Switzerland 2014 – Valais – Brig, St Luc, Becs de Bosson and Crans Montana.

Switzerland once again calls, this time we choose to explore some lesser knows areas with Martin Buetler of Alpine-Trails. As a local rider he knows where to ride, when and the best way to hook up the WanderWegs.

We wish to thank Tourism Switzerland, Valais Tourism, Brig Simplon Tourism, Sierre Anniviers, and Crans Montana for their support.

Day 6 – Crans Montana

Lee has been wanting to go to Crans Montana for awhile. After hearing about it from other riders, hearing about the epic descents on hard to reach wanderwegs it was on his hit list. This was to be our last ride in Switzerland. As fate would have it, the weather turned on us the last couple of days and it rained in the valley, which meant there was snow higher up.

Tour de Plain Morte – Crans Montana from Lee Lau on Vimeo.

 


From the train station in Sierre you follow a red line to the Crans Montana Funicular.  The ticket price is included in the Swiss Pass

 


The Village is very touristy

Bike Park

Our first day we were going to do a ride in the valley off a Gondola, but the weather was quite variable. As you can see at this particular time, the skies were blue. We decided to go for a couple of runs in the bike park instead of second guessing the weather. Right now there are 3 trails, each between 5-7km long. We took the 6 km long Mont-Lachaux track which is a flowy, bermy trail with optional easy lines for beginners. You can see some excellent photo’s by Alex Boyce from MTB-Mag.com HERE. Unfortunately by the time we got to the top it started to rain HARD so we just booked it out of there.


The Gondola to take you to the Crans Montana bike park.


Top of the trail, nice


Nice berms.  Martin practising sliding through slick greased corners


Muddy! Lee’s little Swiss cow totem got a bit dirty


Fortunately they have a bike wash station!

Tour de Plaine Morte

The next day the skies were blue, the air crisp. We decided to attempt the ride from Plaine Morte to Sion.  We took a chance to see how much snow there would be. There was enough to make the high alpine rocks icy and sketchy.   So we turned back and rode some lower forest trails which unfortunately had gotten the double whammy of getting wet then getting hit by cows so Lee got to practise saying chue scheisse, chue flade, merde de vache, merda de la muca.


The Gondola to Plaine Morte


Snow!


Wind in the alpine

One of the rideable sections getting to the climb to the alpine


Snow at the top, mostly ice but enough


Heading to the high point


2927m, BRRRRR. We decided here to not go further as it was pretty icy


So we head down

To the sub alpine we go


We go through some muddy cow pastures, the rains the day before sure didn’t help


Don’t fight, just keep on eating


We have Coffee and Meringue at Cave du Sex


Then we head down to the forest trails


Techy and fast


We stayed at the Hotel Olympic. Check out the Tripadvisor reviews HERE


Standard breakfast


Nice rooms. We had the half board meals which were ok. It seemed to us like it was a chore for the waitress to serve us though. On the third night we ate at Molino which was awesome.

 

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