Sparring cows, mythical creatures and handmade trails: welcome to the soulful side of Verbier

Local lore holds that the Queen Cow isn’t just the toughest animal in the field. She’s supposed to sense the weather coming, know where the danger is before anyone else does, and stand as a kind of protective matriarch over the whole pasture. Leave a herd without a strong queen, the story goes, and the mountain demons and wolves move in. We’re told in hushed tones by Francine that there’s a literal lone wolf who still turns up every now and then, gunning for the weaker calves. Not much of a gap between fact and fiction up here in the thinning air.

For lunch we alight at the perched Buvette de Pindin (“C’est vraiment le Spot”, says Francine admiringly and with no need for Google Translate) for a raclette richly supported by home-pickled wild garlic buds, cornichons and crusty, fresh bread. Father Marc is about and so there’s a small glass of homemade génépi to finish off too. Mustn’t grumble.

Marc, you notice incidentally, is missing an index finger. What happened there then Marc? We expect some sort of dairy machinery accident. But no, a farm rabbit bit it clean off when he got his hand too close to the babies. Yowsers.

Underneath the looming glacier, there’s still snow sitting up at 2,300 metres, streaked red with weird algae, bloodshot-looking against the white. After a day of curses and queen cows, it’s hard not to read something into it.

We also get a proper taste of the ‘danger’ part of the valley myths that same afternoon. The morning is glorious – properly warm, big skies – but by four o’clock we’re sheltering from a violent deluge, lightning veins the sky and thunder cracks around the peaks. The cows don’t so much as flinch. They know exactly what to do when sky electricity comes through; we’re the ones caught out, ducking into Francine’s refuge for a reassuring hit of stove-top coffee.

First up, the numbers alone are worth a mention: 220 kilometres of mountain-bike routes around the valley, including around 75 kilometres of pure singletrack, plus 19 kilometres of downhill trails spread across nine runs. Five of those stay open from early June right through to late October, with the highest starting at 2,500 metres. But numbers are the least interesting thing about Verbier Bike Park, and the man running it would probably be the first to tell you that.

Fabrice Tirefort or ‘Trifon’, to absolutely everyone it seems – used to race downhill at World Cup level. Now he’s in charge of every trail in the park, and it shows in the way he talks about them: as things that need love and attention.

Ask Trifon what motivates him and the answer isn’t really about downhill racing, technical trails or chasing the next adrenaline hit. It’s the sheer variety of what mountain biking can offer, and, more importantly, the people it can bring into the landscape.

He talks about the pleasure of seeing everyone from young beginners to elite riders sharing the same mountain, and about building a network that gives different disciplines and abilities room to flourish. There’s an obvious satisfaction in creating something that people genuinely enjoy.

There’s a responsibility attached to that, too. Every new project has to negotiate permits, the natural environment and the needs of other mountain users. Their ambition isn’t simply to build more trails, but to create a coherent network that works with the mountain rather than against it.

The growing network now offers everything from flow trails and wilderness routes to proper bike-park tracks. The area is vast and surprisingly varied, with the lifts stitching the different riding together. There’s Tsopu, the blue flow trail, wide and machine-built, gentle rollers that beginners can ride straight and faster riders can double up if they fancy it. There’s Wouaiy, red and properly technical, rock gardens and root sections that change depending on the line you pick, the dirt still holding its grip from overnight rain. There’s the black run – they call it Woooohhh, (no explanation necessary is there) – starting with a ten-foot drop into a run dressed with wooden North Shore features, skulls and skeletons scattered along the way for good measure.

And then there’s Race Track. Old-school downhill, straight out of the start gate into a boulder field with lines running in every direction, tightening up through roots and gaps the further down you go, saving the fastest section for the very end, right where the crowds gather to watch.

What stays with you, though, isn’t any single trail – it’s the way Trifon – and Sam, who is one of the nine trail shapers here – talks about how they’re built. The red, the black, Race Track: all handmade, all maintained by hand, by a dig team that can be out there with tools the same afternoon something needs fixing even in high season.

There’s a longer more tension-filled story underneath all this too – about the Swiss preferring their winter sports and their football, and about how much of an uphill argument it’s still been, getting people to take MTB half as seriously as the season everyone already knows Verbier for. Trifon and his team are being rewarded by their patience and tenacity. They’ve quietly kept the faith and now it’s paying off.

Verbier will always partly be that version everyone already knows – ‘Verbs’ – where royalty, Hollywood,and popstars frolic, all World Ski Awards and glossy branding. Fair enough, it’s earned that reputation the hard way, on genuinely excellent skiing. But spend three days off-piste in the summer months and you meet the valley’s alter-ego personified by Francine and David taking on seven centuries of grazing rights one season at a time, Sam who came for a stopover and never really left, Trifon and his dig team out there seven days a week with tools in hand, relentlessly rebuilding whatever the mountain’s shifted since they last looked.

Trifon remembers a time when perhaps twenty people mountain biked in Verbier and the lifts only ran for a few weeks in July and August. Now the growth of mountain biking is helping create a year-round ecosystem, bringing more people into the valley and supporting the restaurants, hotels and businesses that rely on them. Winter may still be massive, but summer is increasingly becoming part of Verbier’s identity too.

Nobody’s naming a chairlift after any of these guys. But they’d probably tell you they don’t especially want one either. Maybe that’s the real lesson in the Queen Cow myth, when you think about it properly – every pasture needs somebody keeping the wolves off, sensing the weather before it turns, holding the whole thing together while everyone else enjoys the thrill.