Mountain Biking in Chamonix

The Riding in Chamonix

Beginner

Start on the valley floor, not the lifts. The flat Arve river path runs the length of the valley from Les Houches through Chamonix, Les Praz and Les Tines up to Argentière and Le Tour, a near-level green ribbon along the water that’s the most forgiving riding in the area and ideal for families finding their feet. The signed valley link (MTB trail G, Chamonix to Argentière on the Arve’s right bank) climbs barely 70m over its length and stays open from May to October, so you can roll point-to-point without ever touching a steep gradient. Around Chamonix itself, the Bois du Bouchet woods give you flat, traffic-free riverside loops through the pines — the best place to get children rolling and to drill basics before anything points downhill.

When you’re ready for a first taste of lift-served descending, go to Le Tour. The Charamillon play area at the top of the gondola is a learner zone of berms, skinnies, a small stair-step and rolling obstacles built to get you used to a bike doing things under you, and from there the Marmottes blue (around 2km dropping 320m from 1,850m) is the gentlest graded descent in the valley — wide, flowing and free of nasty surprises. Lap Marmottes off the Charamillon gondola until the speed feels normal, and if there’s a group on mixed bikes the play area doubles as a meeting point between runs. Once Marmottes is comfortable, you’ve earned a look at the reds. Skip Brévent, Flégère and the Petit Balcon entirely at this stage; those are steep, rooty and unforgiving, and they’ll knock the confidence out of a beginner fast.

Intermediate

This is where Chamonix gets good, and where you’ll spend most of a riding week. At Le Tour, step up from Marmottes onto the Cerfs red (1.6km / 248m) off the Charamillon gondola, and the Chevreuils blue (2.4km / 319m) served by the Autannes chairlift higher up — a longer, faster descent that opens out the top of the Balme bowl. The headline intermediate-to-advanced line here is La Louve, a red-graded enduro descent off the Vallorcine gondola running just over 4km and dropping 678m through changing mountain terrain. It’s the trail that shows you what Chamonix enduro actually means: real distance, real vertical, varied surface, and a proper sense of riding off a mountain rather than down a manicured run.

Over at Les Houches, the Prarion gondola serves the valley’s most progression-friendly descent. Respect (the Alpages Respect blue, 4km dropping 640m from 1,870m to 1,230m) is the run to build on — long enough to find a rhythm, graded blue but with enough length and gradient to feel like an achievement. When that’s comfortable, the Bouquetins red off the same lift steps up the technicality on similar vertical.

For the pedal-up rider, the Petit Balcon Sud is the valley’s classic singletrack: a south-facing traverse running roughly 19km between Argentière and Chamonix, mixing rocky steep sections with fast, flowing forest bench-cut. It’s the trail every local rates, it needs legs because there’s no lift, and it punishes you hard if you ride it in the wrong direction. Pair it with the more sustained Petit Balcon Nord (the official Chamonix-to-Argentière line, 11.6km gaining 420m) for a half-day loop of natural singletrack that no bike park can replicate. This is the Chamonix that keeps experienced riders coming back.

Advanced

The serious lift-served descents live on the two cable cars above town, and on the Vallorcine side of Le Tour. E2, the Planpraz enduro off the Brévent gondola, is the marquee line: 8km dropping a full vertical kilometre (990m, from 2,000m down to roughly 1,010m), starting steep and rocky with tight switchbacks before threading down through Charlanon and the forest into Chamonix. It’s a genuinely demanding natural descent with drops, roots, exposure and sharp turns, shared with hikers, and it’s experts-only. Note the access rule, because it’s easy to get wrong: in July and August the Planpraz gondola only carries bikes from 3pm, maximum three per cabin, and the Brévent cable car above it doesn’t take bikes at all.

La Flégère gives you a long man-made and natural descent from the top station (around 1,800m) back down to Les Praz, a sustained drop graded red largely for its length and technicality — narrow singletrack, small rocks, tight switchbacks, and the better part of a vertical kilometre to the valley. Bikes ride the Flégère cable car up; the Index chairlift above it is your ceiling, and the whole north side beyond sits inside the protected Aiguilles Rouges reserve where riding is banned. Check current bike-carriage at the lift before you commit, and plan Flégère as a single committed lap, not a shuttle.

The two enduro descents off the Vallorcine gondola are the valley’s biggest hits. La Louve (above) is the red; Grande Ourse is the black — 3.7km dropping 654m of steep, raw, technical mountain that earns its grade and rewards a full-face and pads. At Les Houches, the Chamois black off the Prarion gondola tops out the difficulty on that hill, and a local favourite drops from the Prarion summit all the way down to Saint-Gervais and Le Fayet for over 1,000m of continuous descent. Treat all of these as ride-them-when-you’re-ready lines. They’re natural, they’re committing, and unlike a bike park there’s no soft run-out if you over-cook the entry.

eMTB

Chamonix is made for an e-MTB, and not as a gimmick. The defining problem here is that the best singletrack is pedal-access, and the climbs are long and steep — exactly the geography a motor flattens. An e-bike turns the Petit Balcon Nord and Sud from a fitness day into a playground: you spin up the climbs you’d otherwise grind and spend your battery on the descending and traversing that make these trails special. The official Chamonix e-bike routes map the Petit Balcon Nord line (e-bike trail I, 11.6km / +420m) and the flat Arve valley link (e-bike trail G, +70m) directly, so you can ride waymarked e-routes without guessing.

The motor also rewrites the lift problem. Instead of working out which cable car takes bikes on which schedule, you self-shuttle between sectors under your own power and reach quiet trails the lift crowd never sees. Town hire shops stock current e-MTBs — Sanglard Sports runs Flyer, Zero G is an accredited Bosch and Yamaha service centre with Specialized Turbo Levos, and Legend’Chx carries a broad e-fleet — so there’s no need to ship your own. If you only do one thing differently in Chamonix versus a bike-park week, make it this: rent the e-bike and ride the natural singletrack the valley is actually famous for.