Cannock, Stile Cop, bike requirement

Roostoids

Hi, a few friends and I are going for an extended weekend at Cannock in a few weeks, and are gonna ride the obvious stuff, but I'm not certain we have the bike requirements for Stile Cops downhill sectors.

I ride a 120mm travel Spesh Camber. My mates ride a Spesh Stumpy 120mm and a Cube 100mm hardtail. Are these bikes gonna be able to handle those trails?

I've watched a few youtbe clips, the red route looks do-able on smaller travel bikes but the camera lies on videos, what are peoples thoughts on this.


(disclaimer; whatever the bikes are capable of, you can be sure we aren't, but we are cheaper to fix than the bikes)

sanchez89

all the xc trails are doable on a rigid so you will all be fine.

as for the DH at stile cop, you should have a walk down the trails before you hit them at speed. the red is easy and fine on a hardtail, ridge run is also good for beginners, stuff like little bringe will be pretty slippy due to the rain cuz of all the roots, but again after a few slow runs down you should be ok. easier on the full bouncers though.

my current fave trail, wonderland, is a bit more steep & technical at the top but the bottom section is great, my mate does all on his 100mm full susser.

have a look, and more importantly have fun.

.blitz

No special requirements there are people there on everything from Santa Cruz V10s to bmxs

My own experience riding it on a 140mm trail bike is that parts wear out/break very frequently and if you are going to be riding down the hill regularly a real DH/FR bike will be a lot more robust and at the same time a helluva lot more fun

Roostoids

Great stuff, we don't have much like that in the SouthEast, so will be a learning curve, but looking forward to it, thanks for the quick replies

miss notax

Hmm, this is interesting as I have considered a trip to Stile Cop.

How does the DH trail compare to say Cwmcarn DH? Trying to acertain if it's rideable by mere mortals (ie me ) or one leave for those people more competent!

.blitz

The Red route is a fine introduction to Stile Cop it's like an average MTB red route (whatever that might be) except it's steeper and more sustained. There is nothing to catch you out or bite you in the censored but a word of caution people quickly become familiar with it, hit it very hard and get carried away (on a stretcher).

Fortunately the ambulance crews get there very quickly and they are a friendly lot they seem used to dealing with broken collarbones, ruptured spleens and bust ribs etc

There are 10 or 11 runs that are graded in terms of difficulty some tidy rock drops a 20ft double a 15 ft gap and a fair bit of woodwork if you like that sort of thing.

It's a minute or two from top to bottom or nearer three mins for a fossil like me. The push up is a sociable 15 mins.

Enjoy

miss notax

Thanks

Fortunately I am the worlds slowest rider on downhill trails - hopefully avoiding the speedy ambulance crews

.blitz

miss notax wrote:

Fortunately I am the worlds slowest rider on downhill trails

With all due respect I would dispute that

DodgeT

.blitz wrote:

The Red route is a fine introduction to Stile Cop it's like an average MTB red route (whatever that might be) except it's steeper and more sustained.

Heard this a few times now and all i'll say is, some of the drops seem (even if they're not) quite big. Now, they may be only about 2ft, but a 2ft square edge drop is not common on the trail centres (red routes) i've ridden - cannock, llandegla, gisburn, penmachno etc.

Yes there are chicken runs round them, but i'd hate to think a beginner would go there thinking there's nothing that I haven't ridden at llandegla etc and go pootling off over the bars doing some damage to themselves.

If its your first time, have a look at things first. What do most trail centre signs say, "look before you leap".

.blitz

DodgeT wrote:

Heard this a few times now and all i'll say is, some of the drops seem (even if they're not) quite big. Now, they may be only about 2ft, but a 2ft square edge drop is not common on the trail centres (red routes) i've ridden - cannock, llandegla, gisburn, penmachno etc.

Probably a fair comment I was thinking more in terms of the red route not being as gnar-tech-DH as some people might think. The surface is good, each obstacle can be tackled on its own and there's a section about half way down which is pretty mellow where you can take it easy and congratulate yourself on destroying the upper section before making a complete pig's ear out of the lower section

miss notax

Ok, I know what you mean DodgeT / .blitz. Will probably give it a go when we are next up that way!

(Sorry to hijack the OP thread!)

DodgeT

@ blitz, I got what you meant, but didn't want Jo Bloggs doing it, breaking his arm then saying "blitz said it was easy, I want my compo" blah blah blah

It's definately somewhere you should try / practice. The way I look at it is, even if your not wanting to get into downhilling, if you can get to grips with going down even the red run comfortably, its pretty safe to say there's nothing on a UK trail centre what is going to cause you any bother, so you can hit the runs much more confidently.

.blitz

DodgeT wrote:

blitz said it was easy

It wouldn't be the first time - I have 'watch this' written on the back of my crash helmet

DodgeT wrote:

It's definitely somewhere you should try / practice. The way I look at it is, even if your not wanting to get into downhilling, if you can get to grips with going down even the red run comfortably, its pretty safe to say there's nothing on a UK trail centre what is going to cause you any bother, so you can hit the runs much more confidently.

Yup +1

angry_bird

It's massive fun there, red is very easily rideable like people have said providing you're fairly competent and can cope with drops of 2ft or so, there might be one nearer the start which is closer to 3ft, but even then, thats hardly massive really and there's an easier lower option to the side of it. You just need to remember that speed is your friend on them.

But as blitz says it's quite easy to get carried away...

Roostoids

Really looking forward to it. We have some 'black graded' stuff near me but only labelled so because the dropoff/jumps are unavoidable, they're 1.5feet and no trouble at all so i'm looking forward to some new challenges....im sure 3foot will look mountainous in comparison but as has been said, a bit of speed smooths most things out.

We have some tame downhill nearby too, started to get confident on that at about 3feet off the ground so it'll all progress the learning curve nicely.

Been steadily improving for the 2.5yrs i've been doing mtb-ing and my nearby stuff has stopped being a challenge now...really looking forward to seeing what else is out there, thx so much for the constructive replies 8)