FLOW TRAIL
If you can’t ride it, paddle it – with your bike strapped to your packraft, of course. Dan Milner takes a trip down France’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon in search of ‘bikeraftventure’
MTB adventurer and photographer Dan Milner sets out on a packrafting mission through Les Gorges du Tarn, France’s own Grand Canyon, to see if the riverside singletrack is as exciting as the rapids
"You say it’s impossible, but you haven’t tried,” laughs Jérôme at Fred’s reluctance to launch his packraft down a staircase of waterfalls. The two Julbo-Mavic riders turn to me for an opinion plucked from my own whitewater kayaking experience. “You’ll be lucky to make it past the second drop,” I say in a fatherly tone, concerned that the word ‘impossible’ might not figure in an enduro world champion’s vocabulary.
We look again at the churning water and opt to play it safe, hauling our bike-laden rafts up the muddy riverbank and around the obstacle. It’s one of only four portages we make during our 50km river descent – not bad considering the high water level and that we’re all packraft virgins. We paddle on, our rafts bobbing through rapid after rapid, waves sluicing over the bikes strapped to their bows. “It’s the cleanest my bike’s ever been!” I shout as I punch through curling standing waves and steer around enormous boulders.
beers, bikes and boats
It’s easy to think of packrafting as the domain of the extreme explorer, warding off grizzly bear attacks as they navigate the uncharted rapids of the Yukon. But the idea of combining bikes and inflatable boats can bring a true sense of adventure to even the most local of destinations – a valuable quality in a time of pandemic-restricted travel. So when I heard tell of amazing singletrack around Les Gorges du Tarn – France’s spectacular answer to the Grand Canyon, classed as a UNESCO world heritage site – I instantly pictured a long weekend spent lazily floating down the river with bikes onboard and beers in hand, beaching at campsites to ride trails. It was an easy sell to fellow mountain bikers Fred Horny and Jérôme Clementz.
Like all the best adventure plans, ours was simple – but adventure is also a place of unknowns. When we launch our ‘bikeraftventure’ from our campsite at Blajoux, we do so in early May in the wake of a huge storm and into the boiling brown waters of a river running at four times its typical summer flow. As we slip into the fast current, I realise that our induction into packrafting will have a steep learning curve.
Swirling waters carry us beneath the medieval village of Castelbouc and past hillsides swathed in the limegreen rush of spring. For two hours we leapfrog down lumpy rapids, amazed by the stability of our loaded rafts. By the time we reach Sainte-Enimie, 11km downstream, pockets of sunshine are piercing a turbulent sky and plating the river with silver. The quaint village’s claim to be the most beautiful in France is possibly justified, but it appears to have sentenced its streets to being thronged by cohorts of sandalled tourists, who peer over the parapets of the town’s arched bridge, intrigued by the sight of bike-loaded inflatables passing below. Two hours later it’s us who are looking down on those same tourists, having beached our rafts, reassembled our bikes and climbed 500 vertical metres up the GR60 long-distance trail to Boisset, a small huddle of stone buildings perched high on the canyon rim. Far below us, the Tarn’s rapids are muted by distance.
mental descent
We’re following a ‘favourite descent’ tip-off from one of Jérôme’s local Instagram followers, but the trail seems to just launch off the side of the cliff. As we drop in, two griffon vultures soar up out of the canyon. It’s as if they know what lies in wait for us, as we immediately roll into a tangle of steep, loose switchbacks. Fred and Jérôme hop trials moves around them while I unceremoniously dismount. Just as I start to question the sadistic intentions of Jérôme’s social media groupies, we find ourselves on a ribbon of perfect singletrack that cuts its way back and forth across a vast, natural amphitheatre. Our pace picks up, tyres spitting shattered geology as a dozen corners make short work of the vertical that took over an hour to climb. Back at camp we pop open a beer, survey the map and make plans for the following day. Of course, even the most detailed plans never include the unexpected.
“It’s weird, I usually worry about the weight of everything,” says Fred as we load our rafts the next morning – an exercise that is in itself an art. Fred’s usual bike adventures involve carrying everything on his back across wild mountains – the sort of high-altitude escapades in which every gram counts. But floating on water means weight is less of an issue. At least, that’s the theory; I soon begin cursing the heft of our surplus gear as a headwind funnels up the gorge to slow our pace, despite the current racing beneath us. I slog on, distracted by the surrounding geology – a thousand rock phalluses stand like an army of sentries guarding every bend in the river. We pass waterfalls and boiling eddies, and play tag with grey herons that take flight to climb