Flo's Alpine Mountain Unicycle Trip

Mon

Nov

2009

Written by Brent Boswell

I received a very lengthy and detailed trip report from Flo on his latest Mountain Uni ride he did with his brother Marc in the Alps. Included are some breathtaking photos. So here is the entire article done by Flo. I kept all the grammer and spelling as is because those who know Flo will appreciate it more. By the way for those that don't know, Flo is from France who came to Cape Town last year to study Engineering at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, and to learn to speak better english. He is an amazing rider and the smoothest rider I have seen. Enjoy....

Hi Amaonetya!

There is too much time I didn’t gave you news from France

So here I am !

First of all, let me inform you that this year, I’ve moved to Saint Etienne in order to follow a pure mechanical engineering formation in a better school. And I’m now 50 kms away from Lyon, a playground for numerous unicyclists, they’ve also got an excellent basketball team. I definitely need to go and meet them one of this week ends! Well, unfortunately I’m not riding a lot since September

That’s why I’ll speak you about an excellent week I’ve spent during my holidays in July:

There were times that my brother Marc and myself were dreaming about a long ride in mountain. The first point was to found a place for it, in the Alps of course but Alps are larges and varied. We found two interesting domains: Maurienne and Vanoise, Vanoise is a very cool nature reserve but the rules inside are so strict and we didn’t managed to obtain an authorization for ridding there.

So the place was fixed in Maurienne. It took us two days for finding an interesting route on the map afterwhile we called the refuges to book the nights, we were first thinking about spend the nights in a tent but the tent and the sleeping bags were too much heavy, with clothes and food, our bags were already weight 13kgs...

Departure

The 21st of July, Dad drove us to the place of departure which was located in south of Valloires, a ski resort. We started at 12 following a jeep track going through the mountain pastures. That was not so steep but we quickly get struggled because of the weight of our backpack so we did half of the way on foot up to the refuge.
There, we were really well welcomed by the walkers and the guardian, they were amazed by those crazy men riding on half a bike. We put of all our stuff on the dormitory, showed them some few tricks and leaved the refuge for a little off track ride up one of the peaks around. In fact, we did almost all of the way up on foot but once on the top, downhill was a pure pleasure, we were feeling so light after ridding with all this weight on the back!
When we came back, many people were out of the refuge and congratulate us. We learnt that they were watching us since the beginning of the downhill.

The day after, we leaved the stuff on the refuge as last afternoon and had two long rides around. That was excellent to warm up for the week by a day ride vacuous.

Marc crossing a torrent

Myself learning to use the brake

When we came back, it was time for dinner but as we weren’t eating the dinner sold by the refuge, we were unauthorized to dinner inside thus we eat on a table outside enjoying a wonderful sunset behind a crest!

For the third day, we had planned a long crossing up to an Italian refuge. The first part was a single-track going slightly up on the side of the mountain. We were a little afraid about the rideability of this path which finally appears not only rideable but incredibly pleasant!

As one goes along, we were forgetting the weight of our backpacks and managed both some beautiful gaps over obstacles. Following to this crossing, we started a consequent way going up on a valley (700m difference in high) and we attached the unis on the bags.

There was a lot of wind on the pass

When we reached the pass, we were in a hurry because the route was still long up to the refuge and it was close to 19h... So we did it as fast as possible and then arrived at 19h45, Ouf!

Thought we were dead tired, we accepted to show some few tricks to the son of the guardian and a group of English people tried to ride the unis. When someone tries a uni, it is always the same laughing episode and I would never grow tired of it!

This afternoon, the guardian offered us the dinner: Polenta, meat in sauce, and spaghettis bolo with bread and parmesan, Mmm! After three days of dried food, we were more than glad to eat those plates!

The following day was also a big one, we wanted to reach the top of biggest mountain of the landscape called "mont Thabor" (3200m). From the refuge, it was possible to see it up to the valley: a gigantic black mountain with some remaining traces of snow... We get up at 5 then leaved the refuge early and started to ride until the beginning of the real uphill where we decided to push the unis then to attach them on our backpack. As we were well trained by the days before, we didn’t feel any pain to cross up the 1500m high going to the summit.

The Thabor

On The top, we did a long break for chatting with others walkers and cooking the lunch. As you can see on the picture below, a little church has been built there. Unfortunately, it was closed and we were unable to visit it...

No! We don’t have teddy bears anymore, those are just pets.

Myself on the upper point of the Thabor

We started the downhill at 12 and everybody was amazed to see us ridding on this really steep part, an old man (but definitely young in his mind!) told me that he should try that in order to keep healf and started to run behind us, that was so funny!

The descent, few MTBers told us they were unable to ride it on two wheels.

In the middle of the downhill, we turned to the east, in the direction of the last refuge: "les Marches".
This day was the better of our week. We were at the top of our abilities and enjoyed a full afternoon of downhill riding! We arrived to the refuge at 18h30 and had a very interesting talk with the guardian about his job (he his volunteer for keeping the refuge and earns money only with the meals, definitely, we weren’t good clients!), his cow and his mule before taking advantage of the hot (and free) showers and the beds.

The following day, we had all the morning of easy downhill... (Easy?? we even manage to lost our way and ride off track during more than hour before to recognize a place on the map but it doesn’t matter..)

But... were is the path???

We finally arrived to Valmenier1800, another ski resort. Following to some few shopping, we took the road to join Valloire, were a friend was keeping us a tent and some few stuff for a bivouac.

Valmenier1800

We took the stuff and walk few meters up to the village to find a place for planting the tent and there... SURPRISE! We missed to bring the pipes of the tent! And we didn’t just missed those at our friend’s home but in Annecy when preparing the journey!

So we didn’t had the choice and slept on the tent material, fortunately, the weather was really clement and we managed to have an excellent night.

For the last day, We had planned to climb the "col du Galibier" on the road, a pass well known for cyclist competitions like "tour de France". What we finally managed easily, biting by the way many riders on race bikes, we were so proud of us!

It took us the morning to ride it. We also did a break because of a lot of consecutive punctures on Marc’s uni. The tape rolled inside the rim was dead and the tube has been cut by the holes drilled on the rim. The solution was to roll paper toilet between the rim and the tube.

Once to the top, we took some tracks going back to Valloires where out mother picked us by car. That was the end of our trip!

On the car, we were already guessing what will be the further one...

Hope you’ve enjoyed my article (did I managed to be clear in English?)

Cheers,

Flo

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 08 December 2009 09:50 )