Two days of extreme biking

On June 11 and 12 I went to the Winterberg Bikepark. The previous weekend (June 4 & 5) this was the site of the European DirtMasters competition. I had a great time and aside from some scratches and blisters didn't get hurt.

First, a clarification about the type of riding the park is designed for. Note the chair-lift at the right in the picture below. This is how one gets up to the top of the mountain - one does not ride up because it is both too steep and the bicycle is way too heavy and inefficient for anything more than a few hundred meters on level ground. Conceptually this is no different from skiing: while one can cover long distances on cross-country skis, you would never try to go further than the parking lot while wearing downhill skis. So although I have done lots of cross-country mountain biking and a bit of enduro motorcycling, I was pretty much a novice at this sort of downhill mountain-biking. The first few hours I tried to take it easy and get familiar with the bike and the tracks.

My (rented) Nicolai at the top of the mountain.

I hope this gives a sense of the vertigo that comes with some of these trails. There's about a 5-foot gap until one lands on the down-slope. Got to build up enough speed and hang on:

View of a jump in the "Truvative Slopestyle" track

The same jump seen from the side. Wheeee!

Here I am in the protective gear. It came in handy on a few occasions. The wooden platform behind me is part of the trail: it ends abruptly and one must maintain enough speed while riding off the end so as to land (mostly) on the real wheel. It's actually much safer to go fast than to go too slow.

Me in protective gear. Bobsled track in background.

By the second day I was much more comfortable doing jumps and drops. Going fast is fun, but I particularly like the technical challenge of the wooden "features". Here is a spiral feature that requires one to control both speed and balance while turning.

And the "Continental" track had a fun feature that wound between the trees:

It's only a couple of feet off the ground and it is not very steep, so you really can't hurt yourself (do mind the trees though). I found it to be lots of fun and tricky to not fall off the narrow logs.

There were see-saws in which one rides up an inclined wooden plank that is on a pivot (just like the playground variety). At a certain point you've got enough weight past the pivot-point and the plank see-saws down. Then, if you have not lost your balance and are still on the plank, you can roll forward off the see-saw and continue along the wooden board-walk. I did that a few times and only fell off once.

In case you didn't know, B.C. is the Mecca of this style of mountain-biking. One of the trails at Winterberg is even named "North Shore" in reference to the north shore of Vancouver, where there are some very extreme trails (see below). Every time I rode the chair lift and the other passenger found out I am from Canada, they each exclaimed in wonder about how great Whistler must be. Perhaps one day I'll get to ride there.

NOT ME! Vancouver's North Shore

Thanks for your interest in reading my blog. Now it's back to the office where I do much less extreme stuff.