A few of our members took part in the annual GrishaTrail RIDE contest in Graubunden last weekend. This is the 5th year a team from SAA has taken part in the event. This year it was a totally new group who took part and it seems they took the same opinions away from it as the rest of us who took part in the previous editions of the event. Anyone who is thinking about taking part next year then go for it… Now over to Andrew to let us know how this year went.
Four SAA riders, two teams of two, took part in the 7th annual Grischa Trail Ride in Graubünden last weekend. The event is an Enduro style mountain bike race, with a twist; instead of racing for time, you compete for points. None of us had taken part in the competition before, so we didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect other than what we had picked up in passing from past competitors. The basic idea is this: each of the three days you ride as a team between two places, by whichever route you like within a given time limit. The time limit varies from day to day but is usually around six hours. The evening before each stage you’re given a map with around 150-200km of trails marked. Each trail section is worth a certain number of points determined according to its length and difficulty. Each team then decides on a route it thinks it can manage within the time limit, and one which will score as many points as possible. Exceeding the time limit results in big points deductions. The team with the most points after three days wins.
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| Team SAA at the Grisha Trail RIDE |
This year’s route went from Lenzerheide to Filisur (with a train transfer to Davos) on day 1, Davos to Arosa on day 2, and Arosa back to Lenzerheide on day 3.
We arrived in Lenzerheide on Thursday evening for the first briefing. This involved an explanation of the rules, and collecting our maps and numbers. The rules are not rocket science, so we mostly understood everything with our basic German. The organisers, Rolli and Baba, are very friendly and were more than happy to explain anything in English that we’d missed. Once the briefing was over there was only really time for the obligatory bike faff and for planning the next day’s route over food and a beer before bed time.
Day 1
There’d been heavy rain and a big thunderstorm overnight. By morning the sky had started to clear, however, and we began to feel optimistic about the day’s riding ahead of us. We made our way to the start zone at the Rothorn cable-car, and set off within our allocated start time window. Just before leaving we were handed a ‘SportMint’ with a number written onto the wrapper. This was the number of a bonus trail that was now worth double points. The bonus trail wasn’t on our original route plan, so in the cable-car we made a quick revision so that we could bag the additional points.
From the top of Rothorn we rode the first part of the Lenzerheide Bike Attack route. This is fast, steep, loose and rocky. It was earlier in the morning than I’m usually used to riding, but that section certainly woke me up. From mid-station we took another singletrack down towards Parpan, and then the road to Churwalden. After taking the agonisingly slow Churwalden chair-lift, we headed for the bonus trail, which climbed up above Cresta Sartons. As we climbed it occurred to us what great singletrack it would have been to ride….down! Then it dawned on us that we were riding the trail the wrong way and therefore making things much more difficult for ourselves. In the haste to change our route, we hadn’t checked the direction of the trail carefully enough. You score the same points regardless of which way you ride a trail. However, the number of points usually assumes the difficulty of riding it the easiest (or most logical) way. 200m of climbing later, we connected with a dull fire road descent that we should have ridden up.
We then took a fun section of trail that I know well from Spoina back down to Lenzerheide. Unfortunately somewhere along the way Giacomo had smacked his rear derailleur on a rock and snapped the cable. Luckily though we only had to get back to the Rothorn lift where there was a bike shop. The mechanics were great, had Giac’s bike on a stand and the cable replaced in minutes. We still had time for a quick points gathering run of the freeride trail from Rothorn midstation, before heading back up to the top for the final descent and ride over to Filisur.
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| Bike Transport from Filisur to Davos |
We descended a nice techy trail down the south ridge of Rothorn and linked up with the main road to Filisur where the midway checkpoint was. At this point we felt we were making good time for the finish, so we took in an indirect route (naturally worth more points), which wound around the back of a hill called Bual before linking up with a nice singletrack to Tiefencastel. From Tiefencastel to Filisur there was a bit of undulating singletrack. But mostly it’s a relentless slog along double track tending gradually uphill. This slog was slower going than we had anticipated and than we remembered from doing it in the past, and it soon became clear that we weren’t going to make it within the time limit. At this point Giac and I split from the other SAA team to attempt to limit the loss. We powered up the track and got to Filisur six minutes late, and Matt and Duncan 12 minutes later. We ended the day in 20th and 22nd places respectively.
Day 2
Day 2 was fraught with mechanical problems, crashes and navigational “issues”, but also some fantastic and memorable singletrack. More rain over night and fog meant that the first trail of the day, from Weissfluhjoch to Klosters via Schifer, was slippery and visibility was poor. Duncan took a fall on the way to Schifer resulting in a twisted handlebar and a broken gear shifter. We made it down to Klosters but replacing the shifter was going to take the bike shop at least half an hour. Giac and I decided to press ahead to get an additional trail in, and hopefully rejoin with Matt and Duncan for the ride to Arosa.
From the top of the Gotschnagrat lift we took a sweet technical trail down towards Davos Wolfgang. I lost the front wheel on a particularly steep and rocky section and smacked my knee and shin on a rock. Nothing serious though and the 661 took most of the impact; we pressed on. Back in Davos, while the other two caught up we had time to ride the bonus trail of the day; a traverse from the Parsennbahn middle station and then down a great singletrack towards Davosersee. On one of the most straightforward sections of trail all day, inexplicably a rock bounced up between my rear derailleur and back wheel and smashed the mech cage, severing the cable in the process. Disaster! Matt had a spare rear derailleur in his bag but was a long way off, and none of us had thought to carry a spare cable. Luckily it was mostly downhill back to Davos, but there was no way I’d make it over to Arosa without a functioning derailleur. The first bike shop we got to was closed for it’s lunch break. The only others I knew in Davos were right on the other side of town. I had no option but to peg it through Davos on my new single-speed and luckily I found a shop that was open and properly equipped. The bike mechanic was more concerned with serving a bloke who wanted to rent a bike, and who in turn was most concerned about how the padlock worked. While they calmly took their time, I could only stand there covered in mud getting increasingly frustrated. Eventually it was my turn. As luck had it, I could get away with bending the twisted mech cage roughly back into place and only having the cable replaced.
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| Running Repairs |
By the time I got back to the Parsennbahn and Giac, we were well behind schedule. Dunx and Matt were already on their way to Arosa about 30 minutes ahead of us. Optimistically, we still thought that if we made good progress over the top of the mountains to the Arosa valley we would still have enough time to do an additional high point scoring trail up through the Usser Wald below Arosa. We were on a mission. From Weissfluhjoch we flew down to Strelapass and up to Latschüelfurgga. It had started to rain by now and the sky was darkening. And this is when the next cock up happened. We were so focussed on making up for lost time that we didn’t check the map as carefully as we should have. Instead of descending from the ridge towards Tritt as we should have done, we kept on going toward Chörbschhornhütte. We mistook the southern ridge of Chörbschhorn for the East-West main ridge, so when we dropped down to the right of the ridge, instead of entering a valley towards Arosa, we were heading back towards Davos! Had we not eventually come across a walkers’ sign we might well have ended up in Frauenkirch. We were now way off track. We had to carry our bikes up the steep path to Schroifurgga and a lot of the way down an unrideable valley, but in the right direction for Arosa. We eventually rejoined the trail we should have been on at Tieja, but with a lot more time lost.
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| Davoser Panoramaweg (Picture from a previous Grisha) |
From Tieja the trail through the forest towards Arosa was fantastically rooty and technical. In the wet it was treacherous. I’m still not sure how we managed to descend that so quickly and without incident. The final section was a 200m road climb up to the finish point at the Arosa Skischule. We pounded the pedals on the climb, and somehow managed to finish “only” 11 minutes over the time limit. Matt and Dunx were there to greet us and had arrived on time and without incident.
Day 3
Over night, lightning had struck the Hörnlihütte gondola, which we had planned to take first thing. Whilst waiting far back in the queue for it to reopen following repair, we decided to switch to plan B; take the long route to Chur via Prätschalp. We pegged it through town for the Weisshorn lift to Mittler Hütte, but missed it by seconds. More time lost. Matt and Duncan had decided to take a different route back to Lenzerheide, and while we were waiting for the Weisshorn lift, were most certainly already on their way. Finally on the trail again, Giac and I pushed hard and made it to Tschiertschen in no time. The final section along the road to Chur was flat but there was a strong head wind. We continued pushing along the road taking turns on the front “team time trial” style, and this time were in luck with the Brambrüesch lift, which we caught just in time.
From the top of Brambrüesch we knew the next singletrack to Malix well, so despite rain we sped down it without delay (even collecting a Strava KoM on the way!). We took the snail-paced Churwalden chairlift once again, which we froze on because it was now cold and wet. Another good rooty (and now wet) singletrack down to Lenzerheide passed off without incident, and we got to the Rothorn cable-car with enough time to go back up and collect the bonus points for the SportMint trail.
Another slight navigational glitch delayed us a little and once again we exceeded the time limit; this time by 6 minutes. However, overall this was our best day yet. We finished 13th on the day, which saw us move up to 18th out of 33 in the overall rankings.
Overall this was a challenging and fun event, which we’re all keen to do again next year. Experience definitely counts for a lot, and it really pays to ride in that area as much as possible beforehand. It was quite clear that the best teams hardly had to consult the maps, because they knew most of the trails in advance. I’ll also be carrying a spare mech cable next year!
