Tour de what?
The Tour d’Horizon is our mix of an annual company gathering and an internal educational trip. One person from our team chooses a region that they know particularly well or are very interested in and organizes a multi-day road trip for the whole team. As the name suggests, the aim is to broaden horizons. To get to know and test different construction styles, new shapes, approaches to trail design, local characteristics and trends in trail building. But of course it’s also a great opportunity to say thank you to our team and do what we all love so much and what connects us so strongly: riding bikes!
Author: Philipp Bont
The program
This year, the Tour d’Horizon took us to the French Alps from August 25-28. In the late 90s and early 2000s, a number of destinations in this region dedicated themselves to the sport of mountain biking.
Our first stop took us to the Bernex BikePark on the southern shore of Lac Leman. Its latest flagship, the “Chill Trail”, deserves special mention. It was built by Bike Vision Design and freeride pro Vincent Tupin aka “Vinny T”. The Chill Trail is a large and creatively designed jump line, some of which is ridden sequentially. This works by alternately reducing the speed (e.g. with the help of step ups) and building up speed again for the next jumps through short steep passages. It’s definitely not a conventional Jump Line and inspired us big time.The Bernex BikePark also impressed in other respects with its coherent and clearly laid out offer with different trail types and difficulty levels.
Stop 2 took us to what is probably the largest bike park in the world, Portes du Soleil. From Champéry to Châtel, Avoriaz, Morzine and Les Gets, everything is accessible by cable car. Thanks to the countless number of mountain bike trails, almost every bike park enthusiast will find a trail he/she likes here. The frequencies are so high that an excavator is stationed on every mountain for maintenance.
Stop 3 went to La Plagne. A small but nice bike park that still lives a shadowy existence behind the big bike parks in the region, but we really liked it with its beautifully integrated and well-maintained trails. Key finding: a Bike Park doesn’t need to have 30 trails – a small offer, with a clear progression and differentiation does the job just as well.
Our last stop was in Tignes. Gigantism alive and well here in every respect. Oversized infrastructure and real estate as well as trails as far as the eye can see. When it came to the trails, however, the negative aspects of such developments were also noticeable. Maintaining such a large network with not always very sustainable trail design seems to be a real challenge.
List of images
1: Attention to detail – Trail Layout Chill Trail @Bernex Bike Park
2: La Plagne – 6 awesome banked turns in relatively steep terrain
3: Tignes – Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better …
Our key findings
- Less is more! It’s better to have a well thought-out small trail network with high quality instead of building a trail of average quality for every requirement.
- Trails must be as clearly differentiated as possible. The many changing local conditions offer a great opportunity. Building almost identical trails on every slope, using the same surface everywhere (non-local material) and only building a small number of constantly repeating elements offers very little added value for mountain bike guests.
- Whether jumps are dangerous has only limited to do with their size. Good dimensioning, functioning speed management, the right take-off and landing angles, good legibility, sufficient preparation time and good maintenance are far more important factors in planning and building jumps safely. And: jumps are fun!
- The level of difficulty on trails should be as consistent as possible. Trails need to be varied, but the level of difficulty should be as consistent as possible in order to do justice to the abilities of the users. One look from the start of the trail should be enough to tell you whether you can master the trail or not.
Vast Trails Team (from left to right): Leo, Jochen, Dave, Seve, Schnurri, Eddie, Mario, Philipp – Mike is missing (get well soon!)
