f you’ve ever driven from Geneva and skirted east on the A40 towards Chamonix, you’ve probably noticed the mountainous lump of rock, looming on the right-hand side of the motorway.
You may even have double-taken at a bright yellow excavator perched, perilously high on a cliffside. An unexpected sight for a split second until you realise it’s a massive working quarry, one which fathers and sons of the Chavaz family have been chipping away at for more than century.
You may also have noticed the large cable car rising up and over the road, tracing the line of its sagging cables over the quarry and all the way to the concrete installation planted high above.
This top station looks like a super-sized lady finger biscuit that’s done a runner from a record-breaking tiramisu and is now pointing out across the city of Geneva. I sincerely hope the Chavaz family won the tender to provide the concrete for that giant biscuit.
This humongous slab of rock is Salève. And last weekend, we finally rode it.
Salève is a ridge of peaks that rise dramatically from the level apron of land that skirts Lake Geneva. Its highest point, Grand Piton tops-out at a lofty 1379m.
As with many slopey surfaces in the Alps, Salève is drizzled with a bunch of mountain bike trails. What’s great is that you can also take your bike up on the cable car to get maximum elevational bang for your buck and ride all the way back to the bottom.
Riding here has been on the to-do list for years. You can take your bike up, ride quality trails, and do it for most of the year, even when higher peaks are caked in the white stuff. If it does rain, word has it that it dries out nice and quickly too.
Known as the Balcony of Geneva and being only a few minutes from the city, Salève is regularly buzzing with hikers, climbers, bikers and other visitors. The Salève Telepherique whisks passengers 665m up from the base to an elevation of 1100m in just 5 mins.
Last weekend a couple more father-son duos would be joining the Chavaz clan in carving up the mountain!.. (On bikes I mean… Carving up the trails…).
Thomas and I met up with a dad-and-lad combo we know, along with a few of their friends we hadn’t met before. The new acquaintances quickly turned out to be welcome additions to our friend group and one of them was somewhat of a Salève aficionado. He would end up being our unofficial guide for the day.
We kitted up, gave the bikes a once-over, packed our lunches in our backpacks, purchased one-way lift tickets and boarded the cabin. It leaves every 15 minutes with a limit of seven bikes per car, so we jumped straight on while the coast was clear.
My post-winter bike fitness is still in the ‘pathetic’ bracket and I’d been expecting to turn up for a few downhill laps with minimal pedalling…
I overheard mention of, “A two-hour loop to start off with,” and had a mild internal panic until we clarified that the loop included returning all the way back to base camp. “Phew! Panic over.”
Apparently, a few medium-sized pedals would unlock far more fun terrain and good times.
“That’ll work.”
We disembarked at the top and stopped to admire the view from the terrace beside the giant lady finger. In unison, we reached for our phones and captured the stunning vista stretching over the city, Lake Geneva and the Jura mountains beyond.
With the digital memories in the bag, we saddled up and set off up the main road for a few kilometres. We wound up the switchbacks, passing a large telecoms tower on the right, then peeled left into a gated field. A 4×4 track traversed the meadow and melted into the woodland where we linked up with a blue trail called Crete du Saleve Part 1.
Part 1 descended through the forest more or less back to the top of the cable car. Whilst it’s a steady descent on paper, it felt quite shallow as it wound and undulated through the woodland.
A few small climbs focused our minds on looking ahead and anticipating gear changes. This was more of a cross-country singletrack trail but it was fun and a great little warm-up to get us in the mood.
‘Word’ hadn’t lied and this place was indeed dry. The trails were dry as a bone, creeping towards crumbled and dusty. The sunshine was blazing and the thermometer was climbing into the 20s. It felt more like the middle of summer than the start of April, which was weird, especially as we’d left skiers still sliding down pistes back at home.
A short seamless liaison linked us up with the next trail.
I’m just looking back at these routes on Trailforks to find out what they are called. I’m not 100%, but I’m pretty sure we picked up another blue trail called ‘La Longue’. This one definitely felt steeper and faster. We sped through the tight trees, puffing, panting and grinning our way down until we eventually popped out in the lovely little village of Monnetier.
Big Saleve has a little mini-me nubbin at its northeastern extreme called Petit Salève and the village of Monnetier nestles in the small cleft between the two.
We pedalled uphill, slicing off a corner of the village to find another off-road track working its way up the side of Petit Salève. Our guide for the day pulled off the track and downed tools at a perfect little lunch stop called Cret du Chable. This viewpoint faces out east towards the Valley Verte and the Chablais Alps. Magic!
We all agreed how amazing it all is and how lucky we are to enjoy such beautiful places… Then we all agreed that actually, it wasn’t luck, it was just that we were doing it.
Replenished with sandwiches, water and spicy Doritos that would threaten to spend the afternoon repeating, we were up, up and away again (and then up quite a bit more) for more of the same.
The climb continued over some tricky limestone steps and channels in places and I had to jump off a couple of times to push. I’m not sure if our new friends and the kids had managed to stay on board because they had already disappeared out of sight ahead. I didn’t ask.
Petit Salève and the extra climb were great calls though, because a treat was in store. It allowed us to access a super fun red trail called Petit Salève Descent Part 2.
This little bad boy had a bit of all sorts, faster, steeper, some wide open sections, off camber slabs, switch-backs and a tasty technical rock-roll section that was probably the most challenging part of the day.
We’d been warned about it ahead of time and when we came to it, I just followed one of the kids straight in, he’d followed Thomas, who’d followed our supreme leader. I was hoping that it was a reliable chain of Chinese-whisper line-choices filtering their way back to me. It was… I stayed right, for the top half, then moved left for the second, off the brakes and whipped out the bottom the right way up and in one piece.
You can always tell how good a trail is by the level of grinnage and chatter when you stop and regroup. This one had upped the ante very nicely. Hats off to our point man’s guiding itinerary. I felt like he had progressively turned the screw and ramped things up as we went.
We popped out back at base level and found ourselves a few kilometres from the base station. A rolling fire road led us most of the way back, parallel to, but away from, the worst of the road noise.
As we went, my quads were starting to cramp. I always think that cardio at the start of bike season is never the problem; it’s getting that leg conditioning back. The bike just uses different bits and those bits were complaining.
We bunched up again and our guide pointed out the exit of another trail. I’d already had an internal conversation with myself and decided I’d had a fun few hours but would probably call it a day.
“I might be done and sit the next one out.” I said.
Our leader knew better.
“It’s a much shorter loop than the next one, not much pedalling, more downhill and only a short pedal back at the bottom… It’s 15 minutes anyway until the next cable car, so we can have a rest and see how we feel.”
These points all sounded very reasonable and I could sense that he knew the next one would be worth it.
The 15-minute break, an ice-cold fizzy pop from the vending machine and a sit in the shade did the trick. “Let’s go!”
We bought more tickets, re-boarded, sailed up, cooed at the view again, then dropped straight into a trail this time. No uphill pedalling necessary. The bottom of my quads rejoiced.
Black time! It got lairy straight away. My suspicion about cranking up the tempo throughout the day had been spot on and I appreciated being easily persuaded into the crescendo’d finale.
Speaking of finale, the riding is indeed very reminiscent of Finalé (Ligure). My mate had said that on the way there and he was right… Anyway.
‘La DH’ was immediately more of a DH track, faster, rowdier, bigger, drops, bigger gaps,, bigger rocks, bigger grins and faster, louder, more excited chatter. We pulled up at a sizeable gap jump and the young-uns pushed back up and sent it while we videoed and chunnered about the old days… “We had to do that on BMXs when we were their age.”
We’ll have that next time though.
We eventually popped out at the same junction in Monnetier buzzing and I thought, “Hang on a minute… You’ve gone and done me here bruv… Do we have to pedal out again?”
We didn’t, as it turns out. Well, we did a little bit but not as much as last time.
We dissected the village through its centre this time and joined the black La DH 2 on the other side of town. Number two had less jumps and was less sculpted but was plenty more fun.
At one point, the main man dismounted and started pushing down a flight of steep polished stone steps where all the remaining moisture on the outcrop seemed to have congregated. These steps traversed the face of a vertical outcrop and the added moisture was glazing them like ice. They are rideable apparently but none of us fancied it today.
A final steep section of track cut across loose, golf-ball-sized scree. It was interspersed with protrusions of bedrock roll-offs, and the combination added some final punctuations of spicy flavour to the day’s riding. Before we knew it, we were back on the track to the lift.
We arrived back at the cable car parking just as one of the cars returned from its journey to the top. I was definitely done now. Everyone was, and my mate was now running late for a big family catch-up back in Morzine.
We packed all our kit away, loaded the bikes thanked our unofficial guide again, swapped numbers, and set off for home.
We merged back onto the A40, glancing up at the slab of rock, no longer just something we’d pass and wonder about, but somewhere we’d got to know.
The pull to go back will be stronger every time.
