All Mountain Road Trip - The home video

We shot some footage as well, this has materialized into a small mash-up. Check it out:

Somewhat simple edit. With sound. HD-option available. 2m 23s

All Mountain Road Trip - Day 3/3

Third day went to Thale and its deep canyons. There are no actual classic mtb trails here, there are however some really nice hiking trails, and a single lift assisted DH line, more on that later. 

We decided to start of with a 20km long hiking trail, full of rocks, a few technical chokepoints, and a flow that's surprisingly good. A true gem.

High canyon walls hide the mtb line *ahem* I meant the hiking line..

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Go up and down, bring a dropper post, a tubeless setup, and enjoy.

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Drea inspecting a chokepoint, looks easy eh? You'd be surprised.

Pointy rocks everywhere! This one took a bite of Drea's blue frame. Don't mention his front ring....

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A real old-school joy to hit stairs again : )

Our wildcard this day was a visit to a acknowledged ISX DH line in Thale. We where really surprised by how polished and fun this line was. No its not Whistler quality, but it was pretty damn good. Fast, jumps, drops in various sizes, and a flow that's usually not seen i the Harz area. A shame that we dont have any footage of this line. So I present this google-image instead;

So that concludes our trip. Sun, beers, technical stuff and two bikeparks, what more would you want? Good times.

All Mountain Road Trip - Day 2/3

Second day went to the newest bikepark in the Harz mountains; MSB X-Trail. So new in fact, that it wasn't completely finished, and some of the lines where barely bedded in yet. 

6 lines are available; 2 very easy trail-ish lines, 1 easy, 3 medium/hard lines - depends on your speed. Overall an easy park to ride, with most lines not lasting longer than 3-4 minutes. 3 of the harder lines are a bit more DH oriented, with loose steep stuff. The 3 other are more flow/fun minded. One of the lines is north-shore oriented, and although I normally shy away from northshore lines, I have to admit that this one worked ok. Its possible to combine some of the lines, this definitely made the park a bit more interesting.

A new park, with new lines, also opens up for a critical thing; design flaws, and this park did not evade that aspect. 3 of the lines had a very awkward start, where pedaling was a must, but 10% into the lines the trails picked up the speed due to mr. gravity.

Some stuff made sense, like the very cool wallride, or some of the mega berms. Some stuff made less sense; are jumps to flat fun in 2014? 

Drea on one of the many build features in the park. This is actually a table, we had a hard time hitting it correctly, and even if you did, you had to snipe a small wooden bridge afterwards. Bad design choice imo. But even despite that flaws, some of this stuff was perversely fun to hit.

Some of the drops where tiny(1,5meter-ish) and where very easy to hit, this gave room to play around.

Some of the bigger drops where in to 2m-2.5m range, with a very good transition. They look small, but are surprisingly deceptive. ANYWAY. Drea tried to hit one of these drops full speed, and had a massive 3,5m drop TO FLAT. He rode it out - a bit shaken..
And yes, he did use all travel ; )

Allways a joy to see a local ripper in action. You could easily get away with a trailbike here, and perhaps even be faster compared to a full dh rig, some 20-30% where on full dh bikes. 

A good day in a bikepark always ends with a beer (or a beer in-between, as seen here). We had a good day here, but if you are into a true challenge, then this isn't the place for you. Ill probably re-visit this place again sometime in the far future, for a single day of riding, to see if some of the minor problems has been ironed out. Until next time..

Day 3 was all about the natural trails....but we ended up in the lift again, and rode a really cool DH line, more about that on "Day 3".

All Mountain Road Trip - Day 1/3

Drea and I went on a 3 day roadtrip to the German mountain area Harz. It ended up with some pretty heavy technical stuff, 2 different bikeparks and a whole lot of punctures. 

So what we wanted on day 1, was to ride technical stuff. A bit of up, and a bit of down. We decided to hit a local DH spot as well. We started out on a classic line; Magdeburgerweg (you guys should youtube that), its a line riddled with rocks, and has some serious technical chokepoints. After that we did some climbing, before hitting the Butterstieg DH line. Anyway, let me just show some pics and the setups;

We needed a setup that could go up, but at the same time be fun in a bikepark, this is what we brought for our trip;

Drea brought his new bike. A 13,1kg (28.8 pound) Banshee Spitfire 2. A 140mm 650b bike, that's slack and low, the setup is tubeless and kept aggressive with a short 50mm stem. It has the new Pike fork, the Fox Float X rear shock, ENVE hoops, a XX1 drivetrain, a Reverb dropperpost,  pretty much as tricked out as a setup can be..

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..and that makes my bike look a bit dated in comparison. This is my standard setup except the Schwalbe Muddy Mary DH tires in the front - a wise choice as I found out, but man did I wish I had installed a 50mm stem, and a tubeless setup. 14ish kilos (31+ pounds)
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Drea hitting the Butterstieg DH line. Its a relatively unknown line for outsiders, primarily used by locals. This has kept the track from being worn out by "Joey". Expect big sharp rocks, and layers of big roots. An awesome line. A tubeless setup is recommended....

Technical climbing is something I really enjoy to do. I love a good challenge, and that's exactly what we got on top of this particular mountain. This is not a mtb trail, this is a hiking trail. Big difference.

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I sure was doing alot of this tho'. I think I had 4-5 punctures this day. Here I've actually punctured my front AND back, all on Butterstieg DH. Wasted trailtime *facepalm*.

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Day 2 went to a brand new bikepark in Harz. Would it be crap, or is this a park that has learned something from the rest? Find out on my "Day-2" coverage.

The Forrest Rocket

I have been referring to my DH bike more than once here on my blog. but never actually posted a full picture, showing the entire bike. Well here it is in its current setup:

Its a YT Tues 2.0 LTD. 200mm in the front, 208mm in the rear. 63,5deg HA, a low standover, adjustable chainstay length, and a ultra low leverage ration due to a 267mm x 89mm shock. 

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Up front is the BOS Idylle RaRe AIR. An amazing 200mm fork, that sits deep in its travel, its really something else once you take it out to the woods, weighting just 2680g btw. The wheelset is a E-Thirteen LG1+, with a scandium rim, and a carbon hub shell to reduce weight.

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Out back is the new Cane Creek Double Barrel Air CS. I prefer an airshock as playfullness is more important to me than pure DH performance of a coil shock.

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Gears are SRAM X0, and a E Thirteen LG1-Race crank and a LG1 chainguide.

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Easton Havoc 35 Carbon Bar. 780mm, coupled with a Easton Havoc Bolt-On 35 stem adjustable from 45mm to 50mm. X0 trail brakes to wrap up the bike.

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Total weight is 15.69kg (34.52 lbs). That's with full DH tires; Schwalbe Muddy Mary 2.3" up front, and Continental Baron 2.3" out back.

So there you have it.

Treegap session

Initially just a gravity session, but when we came around the infamous treegap, we just couldn't move on from there.

Christian had a go for it for the first time, making him the forth person to hit it.

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And a short vid:
42sec. Simple edit. With sound. 210fps/120fps.