Elevation Vercors

Elevation Vercors is a mountain bikepacking ultra made on home ground. Four friends from the area, with backgrounds in trail running, triathlon and long-distance cycling, set it up through their non-profit Elevation Events to offer a multi-day adventure on the plateau they know best. It is self-supported and properly hard, but their stated aim is for riders to finish with stars in their eyes, not just tired legs.

From L'Albenc, among the walnut orchards of the Isère valley, the route climbs into the Vercors regional natural park and, as past riders describe it, criss-crosses the massif from north to south and east to west. The mid-route base is at Vassieux-en-Vercors, a high plateau village burned in July 1944 as a stronghold of the Vercors Resistance, and home today to a memorial and a national cemetery. The ground is wild and technical: the organisers suggest wide gravel tyres, and mountain bikes are just as welcome.

Riders remember the atmosphere as much as the climbing: a shared meal and briefing the night before, volunteers looking after people at the base day and night, and a family feel that sits comfortably alongside the racing at the front. The route is drawn up together with the managers of the park's natural areas, a sign of how rooted the event is in its territory.