Rubicon Ready

Pressure from environmental groups led to the cancellation of the Croisiere Blanche. Green activists argued that the hundreds of 4x4 vehicles taking part in the event were damaging the environment with their exhaust pollution and by ripping up mountain tracks with their chunky off-road tyres. This hysteria is groundless – all vehicles are checked by the organisers to ensure that their exhaust emissions are within legal limits; these cars are in the area for four days of the year, hence their total exhaust pollution fades into insignificance compared with that from the thousands of cars, 4x4s, coaches and lorries that circulate in the area every day of the year. As for damaging the ground with their chunky tyres, the whole reason the Croisiere Blanche has been allowed to operate for over 30 years is that the 4x4s involved are driving on snow and ice, not the actual surface of the ground. How the environmental lobby can square their vilification of a brief visit by a party of 4x4s with the wholesale destruction of the countryside being perpetrated in the valley below all year round by massive quarries ripping mountains of gravel from the riverbeds to be used to widen the roads leading to the ski resorts – work that will involve tearing out great swathes of trees, undergrowth, rocks and earth over hundreds of miles – is beyond understanding. Last year, unfortunately for the organising group, the Grands Randonneurs Motorises (GRM), there wasn’t much snow and the protesters were able to get photographs of cars driving on mud rather than snow. In reality any damage caused to the rock-based tracks was minimal, but the evidence was obviously enough to swing the opinion of the justice official charged with authorising the event; a sad victory of green hysteria over common sense. Have we seen the end of the Croisiere Blanche? So powerful is the green lobby nowadays that it seems unlikely that permission will ever again be granted to hold the event. Chief organiser Jean-Louis Milleli, however, says the only reason the Croisiere needed special permissio is because of the large number of vehicles involved; he apparently could run an event without that permission as long as there were fewer than, say, 200 vehicles – the reason why other key GRM events, the Mille Rivieres, Trophee Cevenol and Corsican-based Alta Roca are not affected by the ban and will go ahead as planned later this year. Hence there could be a Croisiere Blanche next year, and if it’s limited to a smaller number of vehicles it might even be a better event, taking on an air of exclusivity; our fear, though, is that the environmentalists, having won this round, have established a precedent that will at least prevent the GRM from using the more interesting, more demanding trails that made the Croisiere such an appealing event. The Coisiere may happen again, but it’s unlikely to recapture the atmosphere of the golden age long gone when the event included that superb night section and on-the-side activities – who could forget sledging down a mountainside two-up in an inflatable rubber canoe, or being swung across a raging torrent in a basket suspended from a Toyota’s winch rope? Milleli will continue the fight to rescue the event; we fear the worst, but being optimists we will continue to hope that this year’s event won’t turn out to be the last Croisiere. Quarry ripping the guts out of the Drac - less damaging than a few 4x4s riding on snow-covered tracks?