St Marcellin Circuit

This circuit was real adventure mountain biking, if you don’t like having to carry your bike then this is not the circuit for you. It starts here at the Chateau and heads up into the Val d’Escreins up past the marble quarry. The initial climb is on 4×4 track and then it changes to singletrack and there is a section that is about 2k long where the height gain is about 300m which is just about too steep to ride (as a general guide I find that 100m per klick is the limit of ride-ability) and we ended up carrying our bikes up a lot of this section.

The trail then flattens off and the ride up through the Escreins Valley is just spectacular. This hidden valley has amazing rock formations on either side, and the ride takes you right through them and over them on the way back out. There are steep canyons to cross that drop hundreds of meters to the valley floor below that generally require the bike on the shoulder again.

The descent down to St Marcellin is awesome, 4k of technical singletrack drops you 400m down into the neighbouring valley. All of it is ride-able, at the top it is generally loose rock with spectacular drops off to the side then lower down it gets more grassy and the exposure drops off enough to really let the brakes off and rip.

From St Marcellin there is a bit of a climb (400m) up 4×4 tracks to the edge of the forest by Risoul. From here it was 10km and 1000m of descent to get back to the Chateau. We had planned to head further round and try the extended descent from Risoul but by this point we couldn’t face another 200m of climbing to get there.

Unfortunately the first 400m of descent on the route was all on 4×4 track but it was at least steep and gnarly 4×4. The rest of the descent we already knew from the Serre Gunthier circuit and it is just fantastic. Fast airy singletrack in the forest with big drops off to the side. You somehow try to console yourself with the idea that if you do go over the edge the trees will stop you.