Col de Furfande

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This trail starts out with a long hard climb from Arvieux at 1500m to Col de Furfande at 2500m. It is pretty constant gradient and was a fairly arduous 2h30 slog. The forestry trail that we climbed up is open to Vehicles though up to 2155m so you could cut quite a bit off the climb. Col de Furfande has spectacular views, north up to the Col d’Izoard and to the south and east most of the Queyras can be seen. From the col there is great smooth fast single track down to the Granges de Furfande which are a large number of alpine huts dotted about the meadows at 2300m. Once these would all have been shepherds huts but most have now been renovated and are used by walkers. The area is stunningly beautiful and just like something out of The Sound of Music. From here there is some straightforward singletrack that ups and downs a bit before a really steep 100m climb up to the 2280m Col Garnier. This leads to nearly 800m of great smooth singletrack descent with the some exposure to start with and then into the trees and down towards the Torrent de la Valette. There is another sneaky 100m of climbing again from this point up to the ridge of les Chalanches at which point we were about 600m almost directly above the car we left at Maison du Roi. After a short section of descent on 4×4 the trail heads back into the woods and drops down some fairly steep singletrack above the Gorges du Guil and the Barrage at Maison du Roi before a dodgy turn that has now been shored up with some wooden barriers. All in all a fantastic ride with great scenery and an unbelievable amount of flowing single track.

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