The Raid of Val d’Illiez is a mountain bike tour in the famous Portes du Soleil area. It’s actually one of the best tour to discover the place.
As I’m not fond of crowds and enjoy immensely long pauses in the middle of nowhere without anyone to talk to, I chose to ride the tour alone, half and a month before the official raid.
As I’m becoming more apt at mastering my vibes, planing bike rides and avoiding careless drivers is much easier.
Some people are good at story telling, pushing numbers, writing heroic tales, turning a “fetching the bread” ride into an epic adventure. Well, I don’t have such talent. But I enjoy making fun of myself.
So, let’s talk about my MTB downhill skills, or lack thereof. Over the past few years, I made efforts to improve my at best average downhill skills. But living on a flat area, 130km afar from the first bikepark doesn’t help.
So, I followed this track, the raid of Val d’Illiez, which included some MTB downhill trails. By DH, I mean specific slope built for DH MTB. They are classified by colors, much like ski slopes, blue being the easiest, red difficult and black expert.
The one I followed where technical red DH slopes, -20% slopes. I think I would have gone faster on foot and my brake pads almost melted. Next on my list; visit a bikepark. With green slopes..you know, the one for children.
