Champery 4X, Switzerland. Build day: 1 and a half.

Das machine ist tombe en panne por favour.

I arrived in Geneva in pouring rain on Monday night. Got the train over to Aigle where Marrielle Saner picked me up. We went straight up to the hill to take a look at the site for the 4X. It’s under the chairlift line, between the trees so it’s pretty narrow and steep. A couple of hundred metres down, it comes to a stream and then a car park, both of which we’ll cross. There’s then a road going down from the car park, which we’ll use for the final 2 straights. I’d guess it’ll make up a 400m track with some steep DH stuff at the top, then some “BMX” type stuff, then some more MTB, then some more “BMX”.

I got up ready to start work at 7am on Tuesday morning. Really cold and there was even snow during the night! We then had heavy, heavy rain all day. The freak weather we’ve had in Europe for the last 2 months had got me into a false sense of security and I stupidly hadn’t brought all my Mountain Hardwear wet weather gear. What a dumbass! A quick trip to the local outdoor shop to get some more waterproofs sorted the problem; as soon as I got back the rain cleared up!

I’m working with a cool guy called Ben Walker. He’s really into building and does a lot of work with the Kranked film guys. He also does some R and D work for Scott. . I hear he’s a badass snowboarder too, so I’m going to try and get some tips.

Anyway, progress hasn’t been so good, firstly due to the rain and now due to a problem with our 18 tonne digger. Mid afternoon it just stopped working and they couldn’t work out why. This morning it started but konked out again within 2 minutes. We’ve got a replacement machine coming this afternoon. We’ve already lost nearly a day and I just found out tomorrow is a conge (public holiday) so no work.
Pressure is ON!

No work tomorrow or Sunday will mean I get a day of snowboarding or riding in. I heard they’ve just had 2m of fresh pow over at Zermatt! Woohoo!!!

Here’s a picture of a crazy helicopter with 2 interlocking rotors. Since it’s off season and there’s nobody around, the helicopter had nobody on the ground checking if the landing was clear. Ben drove into the carpark after lunch and this helicopter nearly landed on him!

Frederic in the replacement digger (and that helicopter again)