Mega Avalanche & Mountain of Hell race recap

July 28th, 2009

I am still trying to recover from the last two weekends of racing. Sven and I went to the Mega Avalanche in Alpe de Huez, and then across the valley to the smaller, but crazier Mountain of Hell in Les 2 Alpes, the following weekend. Both races start on glaciers way the hell up at crazy altitudes where it hurts to breathe, and both of them have mass starts with loads of riders hurtling themselves down massive amounts of elevation.

At the Mega, they have the women start separate to the men, because there are so many people – about 3000 entries of which 80 of them were women. The track was 32km long and it took me 1h15min to finish – ending up in 7th place overall with Anne Caroline Chausson taking the win. I was super happy with this result, as the competition was tough with loads of big name pro’s out there trying to get on the box, and I beat quite a few of them!

As if doing one of these races a year isn’t enough, we drove across the valley to Les 2 Alpes to race another one – The Mountain of Hell. This race was way smaller than the Mega, but it really lived up to it’s name. Sven had to cover the race for Dirt, so we had no choice, but to throw ourselves down yet another glacier at warping speeds with hundreds of people flailing around you.

Our qualifying race was cancelled due to a large amount of snow, which meant that there would be no seeding for Sunday’s big race down the glacier. They lined up the women in row 15 – which is far back from the front line and any hopes of getting down the glacier in a straight line with no people around was thrown out the window. Because this event is so much smaller than the Mega, the women have to start with the 500 men, and it is pretty much just survival to get to the bottom of the mountain. People were crashing and sliding everywhere, elbows were flying, T-bones were had, Frenchies were swearing, it was chaotic and you just had to try and stay with your bike and get to the bottom. Another “entertaining” detail about this event, was that you couldn’t practice riding down the glacier until race day, and you couldn’t ride the last 5km of the trail until race day – they were only the hardest, most technical two sections of the entire track! Nothing like racing down a sheer cliff – blind and on a snowy track with 500 other people!

I ended up finishing in 3rd place, after getting held up by so many guys on sections where passing was impossible. I managed to get by about 350 guys to end up 179th overall. Not too bad for starting in the 15th row!

I still can’t quite comprehend the craziness of the last two weekends. The abuse on our bikes and bodies. The altitude. The mountains & trails that never end. Two feet of snow in July? The amount of people out there loving life and just riding their bikes because they love to ride their bikes. It was amazing, and after swearing that I’ll never do 2 of these events back to back again, I think I’ll be back for more next year.