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Banned! With barely hours to go before the Croisiere Blanche was due to kick off for the 32nd time the organisers were told that permission to hold the event had been refused on environmental grounds. Pete and I weren’t surprised; green protesters were thick on the ground at last year’s event and we felt then that it would only be a matter of time before the Croisiere would be axed.
Billy Westley's Jeep...(above) but what's this? There's a Discovery beneath it! Our CJ3A wasn't the only veteran on the snow this year...a CJ3B Croisiere regular The solution was to fake it. The event was cancelled, so there were no Croisiere Blanche stickers on the vehicles, the words “Croisiere Blanche” were scissored off the tops of all documents relating to the event, and entrants were invited to form small groups of vehicles instead and join some local guides who would lead them around some of the more remote public highways in the area. These would be roads for which no permission would be needed for any ordinary member of the public to drive – thereby simulating something of what the Croisiere might have been. It was perhaps coincidence that the “local guides” just happened to be guys who would have been acting as marshals if the Croisiere had gone ahead, and that many of the roads they’d be using would have been on the Croisiere’s itinerary anyway… All the same, it sounded like a very soft option for an event that usually has more than enough daunting obstacles to test a driver’s skill and nerve. The prologue, for instance, missed out some of its key tricky sections, though it did retain the brief stop where entrants were offered a glass of warmed red wine provided by the local tourist authority. I was lucky enough to have 4x4 Magazine’s Wrangler, giving it a shakedown after some modifications by Steve Fagioli – it’s has a little lift to run bigger wheels and tyres and there’s a Warn 9.5ti winch on the front bumper. Pete would have been really annoyed if we didn’t get to do some snow driving – he’d hauled his Willys CJ3A all the way across France on an A-frame, and wasn’t in a mood to haul it back again without having some snowbashing fun with it. We weren’t that sure that the alternative being offered by the GRM would provide that fun. Public roads only?  On day one we chose to take the route starting from the ski station at Ancelle, a circuit that usually leads southwards over the Col de Moissiere to include some daunting switchback climbs and a superb high-level trail around the peak of Chategre; in fact we headed north around the village and ploughed through what appeared to be no more than a few urban back doubles and some farm tracks. It wasn’t all bad – the fact that there was lots of snow this year meant there was lots of shovelling to free cars that had got themselves buried to their floorpans in the white stuff, and there many opportunities for us to put snatch ropes and winch to good use. It got better. On the second we climbed towards the ski station of Chaillol, turning off along a knife-edge ridge with steep drops away on either side. This was a trail often used on the Croisiere, and so were the others that followed, so to all intents and purposes we were doing exactly what we’d come for. At one point the trail wound sharply upwards, where the temperature also dropped to a level that froze the surface to solid ice. Over a narrow saddle, and the track dropped steeply downwards into a narrow gulley. I edged the Wrangler gently over the top, first gear, low range and daring not to touch the brake pedal. Suddenly, from behind, came shouts of “Bob! Bob! Go! Go!” A glance in the mirror revealed photographer Pete Robain in his Willys CJ3, accompanied by co-driver Gordon MacBeath, slithering down the icy track towards the Wrangler – obviously the narrow bar-grip tyres on the Willys just didn’t have the ice-gripping efficiency of the Wrangler’s 265 70x17 Cooper Discoverer SSTs. No time for caution, I floored the throttle and hurled the Wrangler out of the Willys’ way. The day’s drive ended with the famous gulley-like drop so steep that on one occasion a Panda 4x4 easing its way over the brink simply flipped head-over-heels and slid all the way to the bottom on its roof. Armed with the serious engine braking of the 2.8-litre turbodiesel, the Wrangler edged down the slope under perfect control, though I did keep a close eye on the rear view mirror as well in case the CJ3 repeated its sledging act behind me…Our little duo of Jeeps attracted much attention, spanning as they did the whole age of civilian Jeep production, but we were surprised to see how many Jeeps turned up to play in the snow, including several new Wranglers. The event was once ruled by old Toyotas, Nissans and Land Rovers, but this time round there were dozens of Jeeps, some of them highly modified, in particular the big red Spanish Wranglers with huge suspension lifts, power-tweaked engines and 20-speed gearboxes. There were also a few totally unmodified Jeeps joining in the fun. A group of eight Israelis flew in from Haifa, hired a couple of Grand Cherokees at Geneva airport and proceeded to do the event in them. It’s a tribute to the luxurious Jeep estates that they coped superbly with the conditions, even taking into account the fact that the Israeli drivers obviously didn’t have much snow-driving experience… Day three saw us setting off from the village of Orcieres-Merlette itself, on trails winding through deep snow and taking in the little village of Prapic before heading back to the famous suspension bridge – only the bridge had gone, to be replaced by a simple log-and-plank structure. The short section after the crossing leads to one of the most daunting climbs on the Croisiere, the long bumpy haul up to the top of the Girardet. Disappointment; we were led away from the climb. We assumed that it was one track that wasn’t a public highway so couldn’t be driven. We were wrong. The guides had simply decided to take us down the track instead of up it, so they led us up past the village of Les Audiberts and into the forest at the top of the trail. Getting down proved as troublesome for some as driving up would have been for most. There was one sequence of holes, filled with soft snow, that trapped eight cars in a row, including the two Grand Cherokees. Fortunately the Spaniards in their superequipped red Wranglers had gone on ahead, and were able to drive back and haul the planted vehicles out of trouble. As we approached the trouble spot we were hailed by a frantic Frenchman who’d been crewing on the Land Rover ahead of us. He explained: “This is terribly difficult. A big hole filled with soft snow, no one can get a grip, then there’s a long stretch of softer snow, the only way through is to accelerate hard!” “Okay,” we said. When the Land Rover had been pulled to a firmer surface Gordon eased the Wrangler into first low and let it roll on tickover, settling the soft snow under its broad tyres and clearing the section with ease. “What was the problem?” he asked the astonished Frenchmen. More astonishing than that – Pete’s CJ3 simply trickled through the section as well.    The Croisiere didn’t happen, but the party afterwards went ahead anyway; the impression we got from fellow off-roaders is that most were happy enough with the snow driving they were able to do. Apart from the “Extreme Group”, that is, teams that camp out in the snow and get up early to help clear the routes for lazier entrants. With the event effectively cancelled there was nothing for them to do apart from drive around like everyone else, so we did hear a few mutterings about wanting to demand their money back. We on the other hand, did almost as much driving as ever on a Croisiere, and even though we missed out some of the tougher sections we didn’t go away disappointed. Hopefully we won’t be disappointed next year, either… |
