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.
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. 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.
From the train station in Sierre you follow a red line to the Crans Montana Funicular. Its included in the Swiss Pass
The Village is very touristy
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 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
Muddy!
Fortunately they have a bike wash station!
The next day the skies were blue, the air crisp. We decided to attempt the ride from Plaine Mort to Sion.
The Gondola to Plaine Mort
Snow!
Wind in 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
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 Merange 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.