I have known Paul Aston for a long time; he too was on a similar programme to my own aged 18 – getting up early to ride lift runs and staying out late to truly juice each and every day for its full worth. Paul’s ridden all around the world, mostly basing himself out of Morzine from where he raced in World Cup downhills, explored the mountains extensively and learnt the cowboy builder trade. He’s seen the way in which we ‘Dirt types’ approach our riding and has taken full advantage of the progression in technology to expand his mountainous journey into areas previously unexplored.

“I think it was 2003 when I first went to the French Alps. It was for a week’s holiday staying at the Boomerang Bar in Les Gets. I was on a Santa Cruz Super 8 and my friend had just started importing Chumba Wumba bikes so he was riding one of those; massive downhill bikes… and probably way less capable than the average modern–day ‘enduro’ bike. I don’t remember seeing anything except downhill bikes then really.

The draw for people heading out there at the time was chairlifts and obviously they had some publicity from the Les Gets World Cup – I don’t know how many had happened before I’d been there – but yeah we went there and mainly lapped–out Grass Track (the Chavannes main track) and Les Gets 2 mainline on Mont Chery. I think we rode one singletrack on Mont Chery. That was when you could do Les Gets 2 from the very top of the mountain.

I guess the popularity of the area came as a sort of snowball effect of being one of the first ‘resorts’ in Europe to offer lift access and to host races, which initially made it popular for downhillers and I guess it just grew from there. I guess the kind of people that would go (the younger downhill crowd) would be out quite often building fresh tracks. But yeah… what grew it initially? I guess it was the World Cup mainly.

Since then, well after leaving school anyway, I’ve lived probably most of my time in Morzine, I’ve spent about four years in total there. Then about two years in total in nearby Samoens and six months in Whistler, plus seven or eight months in Italy on the Riviera. I think I’ve been to most bike resorts in the Alps and mainland Europe in that time, most of the downhill resorts I’ve been to anyway.

My riding has changed more recently though, and I think that what the bike is capable of now has made a massive difference. For me the change came when I went to live in Canada and worked there as a guide: I went there initially because I wanted to ride the Bike Park and ride A–Line everyday, but I had to guide XC/trail riding as part of the job and I started to get more of an interest in getting out on the ‘little’ bike, pedalling up and ‘earning my descents’, that kind of thing. Then I realised how much fun you can have on less extreme trails and the fun you can have on a smaller bike, flowing down. I was always either riding the Bike Park on a DH bike or pedalling up during work hours. By the end of the season I had spent most of my personal riding time on the trail bike. The bike was a 150mm travel Scott Genius – pretty lightweight and fairly ‘XC’ angles, but yeah still quite a lot of travel really and you could get away with quite a lot on it.

I think it’s hard to say where resorts like Morzine will go because of the popularity of the whole sport growing. Maybe even if a big percentage of the market strays away from somewhere geared up for downhill bikes like Morzine and goes to more all–mountain/enduro friendly resorts, just because the sport’s growing they might still get a good market share. Say the sport doesn’t expand any more from today, then I think a downhill–only resort is going to be struggling against other riding spots. Obviously chairlifts are always going to be popular with any kind of rider really, any kind of rider who’s into it for the thrill seeking side as opposed to pure fitness. Regardless of what kind of riding you do, getting a chairlift to the top is always going to be a big help, even if you want to get the chair up and then still ride a singletrack or a natural path. Not many people are going to say no to a chairlift.

I think if Morzine was going to invest money they should be looking to build longer, 15–20 minute predominantly downhill trails. Trails don’t have to be steep to be technical or interesting. There’s a lack of that type of riding at the moment. I definitely wouldn’t recommend taking your 160mm travel bike there for the riding right now – there are definitely better places even just nearby in the Alps, as this last summer has proved.

However, I think one of the big draws of Morzine is there’s such a big crowd and it’s so well known that you can just turn up and you can always ride with people. There are shops set up for it and there’s always people on the trails; always a good atmosphere. But I think if you want to ride a 160mm bike there are a lot of places that have much better riding, although I guess not everyone’s going to want to go to a little town in the middle of nowhere to ride a few different trails.”>>