Personally, I think this is a little over-hyped. Indeed, for the Nid d'Aiguille you can quite happily, and legally, take a chair lift up to the same spot that the train goes up to, then it's just a 30 min walk. It's also quite legal to take bikes up on the Bellevue train, just on the first two in the morning and the last one at night. Apart from that trail, this article is also quite vague about what else they did.
Most people are riding to death the Brevent trails. If Chamonix wants to officially sanction that outside the July/August times then fair enough. In other Chamonix areas I personally do not see that much tyre traffic and destruction, particularly on trails where you're average rider needs to walk more than 10 mins away from a lift.
Through my eyes, and with the people I am with, I only see them respecting the trail, environment and other people. The G.S. video is an extreme shredding case, I must admit, but when you look around the Les Arcs, Tignes and Chamonix areas you also see a hell of a lot of construction work by the ski companies, such as, building of vehicular tracks, mountain huts, tunnels, railways, ski runs, etc together with old materials left lying around to rot. All these are, in my opinion, a complete mess and usually over shadowed by a long way any marks by a tyre I leave in the mountains.
hier noch ein anderes Vid zum Ärgern (war hier schon mal gepostet, past aber grad):
http://www.pinkbike.com/news/Poaching-Chamonix-A-smugglers-Treasure-Trove-2012.html
die erklären stolz wie sie bei Chamonix die Bikes in die Zahnradbahn geschmuggelt haben und dann runtergeschreddert sind
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