https://www.instagram.com/p/B_8N6CNCPvM/?igshid=1wezl13x7uhna
Skinny log ride.
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Log ride progress
Juliane said the other riders at the Berlin Downhill course were impressed I was doing all the features on a hardtail. Really, this double black course is right at the limit of what that bike can handle, at least with me on it.
But I’m okay with that. I’m not looking to do anything more crazy than I’m already riding. I just want to get back all the skills and confidence I had on bikes 20 years ago. And I want to perfect all the little things I’ve never had right too.
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I know exactly where that is in Prospect Park, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a legit place to ride.
Biking isn’t allowed in there, but I’m familiar with that trail. There are way better ones up in the Bronx.
The problem with it is there will be hikers and walkers. There are also a number of very similar trails that aren’t bike-safe at all or have impassible features. Lot of dead ends. It’s dangerous.
Oh no doubt it’s not legit, and I’d certainly want a guide like that to show me the safe/interesting lines. I just thought it was a fun video.
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Oh yeah, it’s rad. I’ve poked around in there on my non-mountain-bike to see what’s what. But I encountered so many traps and dead-ends (and some terrifying deadfalls) that I really wanted to get a footnote posted.
I’m eyeing a new MTB more and more as the quarantine goes on. I could get some footage of the similar but less maze-like trails I found up in the Bronx.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDjMqmQilGv/?igshid=16h0vjvgm6aa8
I have opinions on lift access mountain bike parks.
I’ve only ever ridden Park City in Utah. I love the hell out of it and I want to return once things calm down in terms of the global pandemic.
Opinions about Les Gets bike park: exclusionary macho bullshit.
First, I sought out the fun trails but didn’t find any. All the marked trails were machine built carbon copies of each other. Just endless berms. It was fun for two runs, but soon I was looking for some proper downhill trails.
I din’t find any. It turns out all the downhill and freeride lines on the mountain are “unofficial” and not on any of the trail maps, nor on Trailforks.
The only way to know where to ride on these unofficial trails is to be “in-the-know” or have a guide. As I didn’t know, and didn’t have a guide, there was no way I was just going to follow some random trail down through a forest.
I hate exclusionary gatekeeping bullshit like this.
Second, it’s a complete sausage fest, and seemingly in a “the game makes the community” way. All of the official trails seem designed for men on big downhill bikes. The way they are graded for difficulty seems to assume you’re a beefy guy on a beefy bike covered with beefy body armour.
I mean, I was on my hardtail bike and was overtaking loads of guys on proper downhill bikes, because the official trails don’t rely on skill to ride properly, just arm and body strength to hold on around the endless berms.
Opinions about the other bike parks in France:
Way nicer for different levels of riding. Properly signposted downhill and freeride trails that don’t rely on hidden or secret knowledge.
My main issue is that all the parks use the same terminology for rating the trails, but the ratings don’t relate to other parks. Green always means “the easiest trail in this park” but if the easiest trail is very hard? No way to know that until you ride it with your girlfriend who then has to bail out half way though, even though she was riding the blue trails elsewhere without any problems.
Overall we had a good time in France, but I’m not sure I need to do lift access bike parks again any time soon. I prefer finding interesting rides outside the parks, and my best ride of the entire trip was an obviously rarely ridden trail that needed a 300m climb to reach the start, and that means all the skill-free berm riders on DH bikes are missing.
Full disclosure, I’ve only ever biked downhill with lifts at fancy parks like Park City, where there is a wide variety of well-marked trails of all kinds.
I hate unofficial trails at bike parks. I hate them just the same at ski bowls, for the same reasons you expressed. If I explore one on my own, it’s more likely than not just a deer trail that’s going to dead-end and/or kill me. It ends up being such a slow and careful run that it’s boring, with the added bonus of a likely hike at the end.
The best parks I’ve ridden will grade a trail at its minimum level, but have alternate tracks for more advanced features. There was usually a fork ahead of each difficult feature and always an easier way down. The only trails without bypasses were the double blacks.
I think mountain biking is a heavily male-dominated space for a lot of reasons. Not that I’m qualified to really speak to it, but I’ve never encountered non-male-presenting riders on difficult downhills in my entire life. Not once.
I learned MTB on my own. I never had a lesson or any instruction until I was an adult. But I happened to live near a bunch of trails with features and I happened to get a hardtail as my first real bike. So I went into the woods and learned it all on my own, with a number of injuries along the way.
I have no idea what the instruction pipeline looks like for MTB compared to, say, skiing. But I have a strong suspicion most mountain bikers have never received any formal training or instruction.
But you are spot on regarding why I also hate unofficial tracks and trails.
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I… just realized that the only video I’ve ever seen of myself mountain biking is a clip from the person behind me in Park City when I mis-timed a log hop and had to bail hard off the trail. It looked like a catapult just launched me off my bike.
I wonder if I can get the clip from the guy who captured it. He was the media manager for the event. I only saw the clip in the “closing video”.
I think this is a big part of why the bike parks are the way they are. You’re probably right that nobody has formal training for mountain biking.
I actually think it’s less to do with the formal training and more to do with specific mountain bike training.
Nobody going to a big ski resort for the first time thinks “hey, I can do this both quickly and safely on my first time on skis”.
But because people can already ride a bike, there is no barrier to entry! They think “I can ride already, now I’m going to do it downhill and quickly”.
And it’s true. Most people can already ride a bike. They skip all the steps you have to take with ski-ing.
And so you get Les Gets which is designed for low-skill riders to roll around berms because if they had to lean their bikes over round a corner they would probably fall off. And if they had to brake before rolling over a rock or use good technique to keep their back wheel gripping over roots? They would either hurt themselves or have to go so slowly they’d have no fun.
So it’s endless berms you just aim at and hold on, and rollable jumps that you just aim at and hold on.
To make it more thrilling or exciting, the berms just get bigger and steeper. The skill needed is reduced and the strength needed is increased.
The unmarked trails are what takes the real skill to ride, but they use the “hidden knowledge” gateway to stop unskilled riders attempting them, rather than something more equitable.
My last trip, someone broke their arm. They signed the waiver saying they were an experienced mountain biker. They said repeatedly they had been mountain biking many times. They 100% lied, got up the mountain, and immediately broke their arm despite people telling them to stop and walk down after seeing how they handled their first few turns.
Low-tier ski resorts always seem this way too. A series of steeper and steeper simple runs wide enough to hope people who can’t actually ski don’t hit anything…
I’ve known (and still know) a lot of people who say they are good skiers. But then I see them ski. They can go fast in a straight line as long as nothing is in their way. They’ve “skied black diamonds” because they were at a resort where the black diamonds were just steeper versions of the same straight blue square trails.
Looking at that preview image, I think the part I want to see starts at 0:00, gimmie that wild shit.