With the mountain biking season approaching as we move closer to spring, I found myself looking for a nice spot to ride for a few days in mid-March. As at this time of the year bike parks in Switzerland and the surrounding area are still closed, you have to look further than to the Alpes to find a riding area with a chairlift or shuttles. I learned about Evo Bikepark in southern France a while ago on YouTube and I figured this would be the perfect place to go.
So I got my Enduro bike out of the shed after not having ridden it for several months. I loaded it into the van along with some essential stuff that I would need for a few days of mountain biking and staying in the van. Leaving on a Saturday afternoon, I did not drive all the way to Evo Bikepark which is located in Digne-les-Bains (near Sisteron). Instead, I stopped in Grenoble with about two hours left to drive the next morning.
After sleeping in the van in an industrial area somewhere in Grenoble I completed the remainder of the drive the next day and arrived at the bike park around lunchtime. With the parking lot being nearly full and most of the spaces being located in wet grass, my first parking attempt was unsuccessful and I got stuck immediately. Luckily, as soon as I got my tow rope out a friendly fellow biker showed up with a Toyota SUV and dragged me out. I decided to park in a gravel lot on the other side of the street, which I should have from the beginning on…
After getting changed into my biking gear, it was time to board one of the shuttles that pick up bikers at the end of the trails down in the valley. Some of the shuttles are old 4×4 (ex-military?) trucks with benches on the back for carrying riders, and towing trailers for the bikes. The drivers were doing a great job navigating the steep and challenging access road leading to the trailheads. With one shuttle run taking about 10 minutes, adding the time for descending the trail and waiting at the bottom for the shuttles to arrive, I was able to get quite a bunch of runs in the first afternoon. Initially, I rode the same blue trail a few times, getting used to bike park riding again. For my riding level, even the blue trails contain jumps that I found hard to clear, but with every run, I got to know the trail better. Eventually, I would attempt a red trail too.
While having fun on the trails, I ran into a couple that happened to live in Winterthur (which is essentially my hometown). Chatting to Alessio and Jana for a while, I admire their free-riding skills that probably took years if not decades to master.
I returned to the town of Digne-les-Bains for the night, buying myself a pizza (that I got at a vending machine that bakes the pizza after you order it… I’ve never seen something like that before and thought I had to try it) and sleeping in the van in a supermarket parking lot.
The next morning, I drove to the parking of the bike park again, excited to hit the trails again in the sunny weather. I met Brandon and Graham, two friends who are originally from the US and UK, respectively, but now both live in Switzerland. They told me that they became friends through their shared passion for bike-packing on steel-frame mountain bikes years ago and now go on bike trips as much as they can. Brandon and I discussed the particularities of his YT Jeffsy, the same bike that I rode the last few years before getting a different model of the same brand. Brandon and Graham showed me their favorite trail in the bike park, the “Slate Line” that I hadn’t ridden the day before. It is rated as a red trail that is proper Enduro terrain, with some technical bits. The highlight arguably is a quite bumpy section on a crest, with a great view of the valley below.
We had a lot of fun riding that trail and some of the other trails (mostly the more Enduro-style ones) a bunch of times. Unfortunately, Graham had issues with a leaking rear brake that did not allow him to get the most out of his bike. I watched him perform an incredible save on the aforementioned section on the crest. We finished the day with drinks at the bar located at the bottom of the trails.
As fun as an experience it had been, I packed up my stuff and hit the road again, spending one more night at a freeway rest stop, before returning to work in the afternoon. I definitively want to visit Evo Bikepark sometime again.