What the hell is going on with Le Pleney? There are a lot of rumours, misinformation and click bait articles going around claiming that Le Pleney is dead. Whilst there are significant changes and a lot of moving parts, this is not the case. Lets talk through this below.
A brief History of Le Pleney Singles
Le Pleney Steeps, Pleney Bangers, Pleney Singles, Pleney Off Piste, Pirate Trails, Unofficial trails, there's a lot of names for these mythical trails on one of mountain bikings iconic hills, Le Pleney.
Le Pleney was one of Europe’s first lift-accessed mountain bike trails, going all the way back to the late 1990s. Built by Morzine legend Roger Mandin for an Avalanche Cup race, the now-famous “Pleney Black” trail remains remarkably similar to the original line to this day. It quickly attracted riders from all of the World and is a huge factor in putting Morzine on the map and making it one of the most popular Mountain bike holiday destinations in the World.
In the early 2000's locals who had been riding Le Pleney for years started looking further into the Woods and quickly realised that they were prime for trail building with perfectly spaced tree's, huge amounts of loam and a super steep gradient. This opened peoples eyes up to a whole new type of riding and a handful of trails were built (key word) by locals and seasonaires, these trails were spread across the hillside and with only a few hundred riders over a summer his had little impact to the landowners, lift company or enviromentally. This is how classic Pleney Singles trails such as Club Tropicana, Up Ya Bum, Pedro’s, ATM, Kovariks, Step Up/down, etc were all established and these trails are still standing the test of time today. These trails grew in popularity with more and more professional riders and holiday makers hearing of the mythical Pleney Steeps and flocking to ride them. A handful of new trails would pop up each year, old ones would get revamped and the number of riders both visiting Morzine and riding Pleney Singles steadily increased.
It's important to note that none of these trails were ever "official", "legal" or acknowledged by the lift company or the town. The odd trail would rile up a land owner the wrong way and get shut down but mostly these trails were well built, in smart areas close to the main official mountain bike trails and started and finished in sensible zones on Le Pleney lift. These weren't causing significant issues for the lift companies, town hall or land owners so they were either tolerated or ignorned.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Then along came the Covid Pandemic. Mountain biking saw a huge boom in general with everyone having the free time to realise how bloody great riding your bike is. Once travel opened up Morzine saw a huge increase in visitors, which is a great thing. A lot of riders also got a taste for trail building whilst in lockdown and all of a sudden every man and his dog wanted to "build a Pleney Single" even if they were just visiting and here's where the problems began to start.
Pre-2022 Pleney Singles were a well thought out group trails that locals/seasonairres had built over many years, these were built to last the test of time, were well thought out, with turns, drainage, not crossing official trails and starting/finishing near Le Pleney lift. From 2022 onwards "trails" started getting put in absolutely everywhere as people desperately tried to find some new reale state in the woods to quickly skid in their own 'track'. Most of these "tracks" never even saw a shovel or a pick and were just skid straight lines down the fall line of the hill, often cutting through existing trails, no thought went into where they finished and the whole process was completely unsustainable. People would skid these in, session for a couple of days whilst they were loamy so they could get their instagram clips of doing flicks in a straight line and by then the loam would be gone and the trail already torched. These trails then became drains that would funnel water straight down the hill causing huge amounts of erosion and spewing muddy water down at the base of the hill.
Pair this with the huge increase in riders and the meteoric rise of peoples despiration for views on the internet these unsustainable "trails" were getting pushed further and further into new previously unspoilt forest looking for fresh loam and further away from Le Pleney lift/trails. Lots of these trails finished very abruptly onto the main road between Morzine and Les Gets, with riders flying out onto a verybusy road, resulting in serious injuries, near misses and a reported fatality.
These so called "trails" were so quick and easy to skid in that hundreds of them popped up in such a short space of time. The constant stream of riders flying out onto a busy main road, the erosion and destruction of the forest, the crossing of established trails and the increased amount of injuries that were happenng in an impossible area for emergency services to access, made this become a huge problem for the lift company, the town hall, land owners and even local riders. Something had to give.
Why were these trails built?
There is obviously a demand for steep, technical natural riding by a lot of riders, a demand that was not being met by the minimal amount of official trail development on Le Pleney. This pushed those original trail builders to create it themselves in the woods in the early 2000's.
The difference between these original trails and the "loam rush" of 2022 onwards is huge. The post covid downfall can mostly be put down to 2 factors, the huge increase in biking numbers (globablly and in Morzine) and the effects of social media. Everybody seems obsessed with getting clips these days, be it Pro's leaking fresh trails they've found straight onto their Youtubes or groms wanting to get 100 views on their tiktoks.
This had a huge effect on snowballing how many people were riding Le Pleney steeps and peoples desire to skid in a new loamer. These trails were straightline down the hill and Pleneys epic loam makes them incredibly easy to ride fast, flick up loam and get more views, but these types of trails just dont last.
Gone are the days of someone putting up clips of them riding something technical and carrying speed. An even crazier idea, imagine riding your bike purely for the fun of it and not having 3 different lenses on you at once.
Big Changes for Morzine on the cards.
In 2025 "DLMorzine" was created to take over management of Morzine's mountain areas, this a partnership between Le Pleney lift company and SERMA (Avoriaz Lift Network). DLMorzine have announced that they will spend 115 Million Euros on Morzine over the next 25 years with one of their major goals to make Morzine "no longer dependant on skiing'. This is without doubt great news for Morzine as a town and especially for bikers and summer fanatics in Morzine, who can expect to see a significant investment into the Summer, longer seasons into Spring/Autumn and a lot more trails and lifts for biking.
Here are a few of the projects already in the pipeline:
– New trails and new lifts in the Morzine bike park. Charniaz Express chairlift will open for the first time this summer, giving access to new trails being built in this area, and easier access into Les Gets bike park. Other developments, such as a Skills Bike Park at the top of Le Pleney and more trials will be added to Pleney and plenty more in future years.
– The Nyon Express – A brand new telecabine connecting the centre of Morzine with the Nyon Plateau. Hopefully leading to more developments on Nyon in the future. This lift is planned to be open for the Winter 28/29 season. Its unsure if this will be open to bikes or not.
– Two off the Worlds largest valley crossing zip lines (similar to the Fantasticable in Chatel) are also planned, crossing from the Nyon plateau to Le Pleney. The first is aiming to be open by 2027 and the second in 2031.
– A downhill mountain cart experience in Morzine.
– A mono-rail luge on Pleney, similar to the four-seasons Coaster in Les Gets.
Whats New for 2025?
To counter the mass amounts of unofficial trails and keep mountain biking open for future investment from the town there have been changes to Pleney and a new campagin launched around Morzine.
Pleney has introduced "no free-ride zones" which you can see in the map above. These mostly cover all of the trails that finish on the road between Morzine and Les Gets and the trails towards the Attray side of Morzine. It is worth noting that this does not cover the main Le Pleney hill/trail areas (more on this later). The control of riding in these zones has been handed over to the Gendarme (local Police) who have already been spotted patrolling the road between Morzine & Les Gets, from our understanding they have the power to issue fines and confiscate your passes.
The Morzine Town Hall, DL Morzine & Pleney lift office have also launched a campaign called "No Respect, No future for Bikes". You'll see a lot of signs around Morzine this summer about this, most of the key points are.
- No riding in the "No free-ride Zones" on Le Pleney or the bottom of Super Morzine.
- Walking your bike over the Super Morzine Bridge.
- Walking your bike through the centre of town.
- Generally showing respect to other people when on your bike (Hikers, Traffic, Pedestrians).
Despite rather threatening/misleading title of the campaign, the fundamentals of it are pretty on-point. Morzine needs to be shown respect from its visiting bikers if we want to see it grow, develop and see significant investment to turn it into an even bigger, better resort.
The Super Morzine bridge is a prime example, there has been sign asking people to walk their bikes here for years. It is a 150m long bridge, very busy with pedestrians and families. Its too tight for bikes to ride over and the bridge swings significantly when people ride over it. Its a relatively simple bit of courtesy for riders to walk over the bridge and takes maybe 30 seconds more but every single day in summer, people ride over the bridge bashing people with their handle bars. Same with people weaving in and out of traffic along the roads of Morzine. "Its not a big deal" is fair enough if it was one person doing this but when this happens every day to people that live here it combines to give bikers a bad name around town and with the people that make the big decisions. Bikers need to show respect of these new rules for the long-term benefit and growth of biking in Morzine.
Are we still allowed to ride Pleney Singles?
We were never 'allowed' to ride Pleney Singles, but Essentially things have been restricted back to Pre-Covid levels. A lot of the dangerous, poorly built, fall line skid tracks, particularly those ending on the Les Gets Road have been shut down and will be patrolled, if you get caught riding them you can face a hefty fine and lose your lift passes.
The good news is the part of the hill under Le Pleney lift and where Le Pleney official trails are is not a "no free-ride zone". Meaning a lot of the classic OG Pleney singles that made Pleney what it is today such as "Swissies, Club Tropicana, Potatoe, Kovaricks, Piss Lizzard, Worrals, Up ya Bum, French Cup, Benoits etc" are still prime for riding and hopefully on their way to becoming official trails that get regular maintenance. These have always been the best trails on the hill and we're very lucky to have these still available to ride, whilst it is very important to note that this is a grey area as you are still not "allowed" to ride these trails as they are not and never were official.
What Next?
One thing we cannot state enough is that the free-for-all skid a straight line down the hill riding needs to stop or this will get the whole hill shut down completely. Show some respect to the environment, land owners and the trail builders, and we're hopefully moving towards establishing a sustainable model of the existing Pleney singles to become official and Morzine to invest into its summer trail development.
Its also a long time coming that people learn to ride corners again rather than straightlining down the hill and blowing up a turn "for the gram".
There are still a lot of moving parts and meetings between the powers that be around this. We've had some great communications with the Director of Le Pleney and there is a lot of momentum throughout people in town to find a solution to this problem. We'll keep you updated where we can.
In the meantime, enjoy riding your bike and show some respect to the places and people that you share it with.
Russ,
Owner of Bike Morzine
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