Northbound and Down do Europe – Morgins Switzerland

I was keen to exercise the use of my lift pass and ride one of the less visited resorts on the outskirts of Portes du Soleil. This time, together with two UK racers I had met at Chalet Nantegue, Jack and Charlie, we planned a daytrip to Morgins, Switzerland which we had already decided was going to be epic.

To get there we had to take the “Super Morzine” gondola and “Zore” chairlift before cycling over to Avoriaz and taking “Mosettes” chairlift all the way to the French-Swiss border. From there we rode down the fire-road all the way to Morgins. All in all it didn’t take us more than an hour and a half to make our way over, we didn’t have to pedal uphill once and we found that the effort was definitely worth it.

While sat on the chairlift, we saw that changes had been made with the addition of new jumps and sections of tracks. With four official tracks to ride we started out on the high speed green which had great flow and big corners. The amount that the different tracks varied meant there was never a boring run. During the day we rode all the tracks from the steep, rocky and rooty black to the jumpy and flowy yellow trail. After trying all the tracks we decided to session the top half of the red track into the bottom half of the black track. The top of the red track was amazing with awesome berms and switchbacks galore, at least 20 in a row. So if you want to learn how to ride berms quick, then you should definitely visit Morgins.

For lunch we treated ourselves to some awesome burgers from “Black Chilli Restaurant” just up the road from the lift station. Unfortunately we misunderstood the pricing a little and they turned out to be pretty expensive. In Switzerland they still have the Swiss Francs currency (CHF) so you can pay in euros but if you don’t want to have a pocket full of change in Swiss Francs then it would be best to pay by card.

Some more runs were smashed out before leaving Morgins at 3:30. The lifty suggested leaving at this time because any later and we might get stuck in Chatel. This is because on the way back from Morgins, you had to pedal up the road from the bottom of the lift, over the border back into France and then roll down into Chatel town. From there we had to wait for a free bus that took us and our bikes on a 10 min drive up to the Chatel Bike Park where at 4:30 we took the last lifts up and over into Lindarets bowl before rolling down the road back to Morzine stopping off at lake Montriond for a swim and to relax. Finally a delicious dinner was waiting for us when we got back to the Chalet Nantegue before heading down to the pub for some beers. An awesome ending to another great day in the Alps.