Kilian Bron has just unveiled his latest big production in which the Private Sport Shop rider takes us to some of the most beautiful spots in Switzerland.
After Mexico and his "Colors of Mexico" videoKilian Bron is back on the old continent. For his "Switzerland Paradise" project, the Frenchman went to Switzerland to ride spots as diverse as a glacier, a waterfall or dreamy singles on the ridges of the Helvetian mountains. Kilian travels to Switzerland every season for short stays to explore the country's immense riding possibilities. In this case, however, he spent several days there for one of his famous videos, the result of which is shown below.
For this latest production made in partnership with Tissot, Kilian comments below on some of the most beautiful photos taken during the shoot. These shots were taken by photographers Matieu Ruffray (from Pagno Visual) and Tristan Shu, who were mentioned in our article on the best outdoor sports photographers.
"My passion for glaciers has been building since our adventures around Mont Blanc in 2015. I think back to a particular outing with my buddy Antoine Montegani. The same Antoine who guided me and then supported me in the scouting for our impressive trip to the Dolomites in Italy. I've been thinking about those moments ever since, and all the glaciers fascinate me. When I was riding in Zermatt for one of the stages of the Enduro World Cup, the glacier next to the start of the first special stage caught my eye. I have to admit I was more focused on riding there than on my race run...
Following on from the glacier, we were determined to find an ice cave worthy of the name. And as usual, it was no mean feat! Like ephemeral works of art, these ice tunnels melt and disappear. For a short period of the year, some are covered with snow on the ground.
The wind and other snow flows cover the rivers that normally flow inside. In a few words, I'm driving through an ice tunnel. But underneath, there's yet another cavity where the river flows... Having returned to the site two months later, it was nothing like it!
It reminds me of our trip to Chile three years ago now. We had approached a glacier in the direction of Volcan Pucon and found a natural arch. A few months later, watching a recent video of the same area, there was nothing left...
On the renowned Europatrail is the world's largest Himalayan footbridge. An immense 400-metre bridge, which schinte an ancient and dangerous crossing below. I scouted the site a few weeks before the shoot, to make sure that everything would work on the big day. It's sometimes tricky to take the guys with me to an unfamiliar area. Sometimes we have to walk around for several hours before filming a single spot...
And when it's a bad surprise, a whole day is lost. As the weather is capricious enough on the mountain peaks, it would be a waste of time to accumulate days like that, not to mention demotivating the whole team. This is also one of the reasons why these videos often take me a whole year to make. From the search for spots, concepts and partners, to the location scouting, the editing by the media team and the complete broadcast of the project, a lot of time goes by!
To let you in on a few shooting secrets, the scouting allowed me to fit an extra handlebar cut out of the backpack, at 740mm. In other words, I had 1.5cm extra margin on each side to ride faster and more serenely on this narrow footbridge, about 850mm wide. For all the other grips outside the bridge, all I had to do was replace my handlebars with the original ones, cut to 770mm.
The sequence of images in the video follows "the flow of water". I set off from the summit of Glacier 3000, before hurtling down glaciers, ice caves, alpine meadows and the country's various valleys. On my way is this dam, certainly artificial, but which becomes a playground like all the others. These buildings are part of the Swiss landscape, and rather than a simple crossing, I prefer to use them as a huge wall ride. In all our videos, I try never to draw variations or modify the terrain that's available to us. It's all about adaptation, even if it means making my track more technical and less fluid than it could have been with a few shovelfuls.
To tell the truth, I like to ride everything technical, finding flow in my own way. When we have no choice, it's easy to "cheat" for a few photos, where 2 meters is enough for me to ride. On the other hand, it's harder to do for video shoots, and makes no sense! To end this parenthesis, I could launch myself from the top of the dam, following its diagonal for about forty seconds. But I couldn't drop from the top, or imagine a continuous wall ride from top to bottom - that would be suicidal.
Following on from the dams, we follow the rivers or bisses, of which there are many in the Valais. A bisse is a long irrigation channel leading water down the mountainside to cultivated land. In most cases, a trail is added to this canal, connecting several of our downhill runs together. It's also the perfect kind of trail for an all-mountain or even Gravel outing.
On one of Crans Montana's slopes, one of these bisses runs beneath the waterfall. It bypasses the waterfall via a cavity, which naturally forms a lovely, upward bend. It's out of the question to miss this magnificent spot. And it's the perfect opportunity to try out some original shots with Pierre, at the controls of his FPV drone.
These Swiss Alpine trails gave me a hard time. The most difficult are marked in blue and white throughout the country. Occasionally, some of them can be ridden in their entirety on the way down. But don't even get me started on the way up... No matter how they're marked, almost all the mountain trails we ride downhill are impassable in the other direction!
As I mentioned in another column, I try as far as possible to locate all these places before filming. But time is often a constraint, as are the seasons. 2500m is the average altitude at which all the images you see were taken. This means that location scouting can best be done from early June onwards.
At the same time, I'm also training for my racing goals to the Mountain Of Hell or the Megavalanche. This is also the time when most events are organized and choices have to be made.
The peaks and ridges are the most visual places, and the ones you appreciate the most after hours of hard work. I'm often asked this question, but in 95% of cases, there's no chairlift, 4×4 or helicopter to take the team to the top of each spot. Most of the time, we climb on foot. When the spot is worth spending several hours on, even if it means a sunset + sunrise, we bring camping gear as well as bikes and video equipment.
It's all logistics before we get what we have in mind. In Switzerland, we've been lucky enough to benefit from some magnificent refuges, open in summer. As well as enjoying the mountains to the full, this means we don't have to worry about food and water. These refuges become our base camps and are always good places to meet people.
Drawn and smoothed over thousands of years by glaciers, these immense slabs are one of my favorite playgrounds! From a distance, nothing seems practicable on a bike... But after hours of wandering from rock to rock, we manage to find a long natural line with a breathtaking view of the Matterhorn."