{"id":9051,"date":"2026-04-02T16:48:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/?p=9051"},"modified":"2026-04-02T16:48:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T15:48:15","slug":"macavalanche-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/macavalanche-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Macavalanche 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2012 I did the New Year’s Day uphill (running) race<\/a> on Aonach Mor with John. A mere 14 years later I was back for a downhill-only race, albeit this time on a bike. The Macavalanche is based on a race in France called the Megavalanche, that one starting on a glacier and descending to the valley. The Scottish version starts on one of the Nevis Range ski pistes and drops down to the bottom gondola station. The format was a couple of seeding runs in the lower woods, followed by a ride on the gondola. This preceded a push up the hill (to just below the 800 metre contour) and then a mass start. Us e-bikes started fifteen minutes behind the normal bikes, giving us time to witness their absolute carnage and regret our decision to enter. It subsequently transpired that I have two characteristics which mean I’m not a good racer: (1)<\/strong> I hate people riding behind me, and enjoy it much more if I just let them pass, and (2)<\/strong> I stopped to gaze up the valley between Aonach M\u00f2r and C\u00e0rn M\u00f2r Dearg because it just looked lovely. These deficiencies aside, the race run was very enjoyable, and definitely something I’m glad I experienced; it’s certainly not something you get to do very often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Friday night – a little bit of snow.\r
\u00a9 Haydn Williams 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Plenty of weather blowing around.\r
\u00a9 Haydn Williams 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A lovely view whilst pedalling up to start seeding.\r
\u00a9 Haydn Williams 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Seeding run in the lower woods.\r
\u00a9 Charles A. Robertson 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Filthy weather whilst queueing for the gondola.
\u00a9 Haydn Williams 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The mass-ascent begins.\r
\u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Pushing up from the top gondola station.\r
\u00a9 Haydn Williams 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Queued up at the top while race organisers do some admin.\r
\u00a9 Haydn Williams 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The normal bikes starting their run.\r
\u00a9 Haydn Williams 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Aonach M\u00f2r to the left, and various flavours of C\u00e0rn Dearg to the right. Lovely.\r
\u00a9 Charles A. Roberston 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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On the descent.\r
\u00a9\u00a0Charles A. Roberston 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2012 I did the New Year’s Day uphill (running) race on Aonach Mor with John. A mere 14 years later I was back for a downhill-only race, albeit this time on a bike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9063,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1065,105,1472,434,1473,276],"class_list":["post-9051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-outdoors","tag-aonach-mor","tag-fort-william","tag-macavalanche","tag-mtb","tag-nevis-range","tag-riding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}