First uplift day at Snowdon

ilovedirt

Sweet, I really fancy a Tue 2.0, not got the funds though...

Northwind

DodgeT wrote:

@ northwind - Agree with that, but the comparison your making is of modern XC / AM bikes to older (don't know how long ago your first was) DH bikes. A modern DH bike will surely be even more awesome

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I go to Snowdon, England to ride the uplift there I'll take my Herb, because it's better at this stuff! But if I didn't have it I'd take my Hemlock and still be happy.

I guess what I'm really saying is, people shouldn't feel like they can't do this stuff just because they don't have the "right" bike.

You may not want to follow this guy's example though:

cat_with_no_tail

Northwind wrote:

Cat With No Tail wrote:

But lets be honest most people won't enjoy doing DH trails on an XC bike. Just like most people wouldn't enjoy doing XC trails on a DH bike. And if you've got zero DH experience, you may well find yourself well out of your depth pretty quickly if you're using a bike not designed to take that kind of punishment.

Other types of bike are available though. Benpinnick is spot on. My everyday bike- a 160mm, 30lb full suss- is just as good on downhill trails as my first downhill bike was (a 200mm, 45lb full suss). It's got the angles, the strength, and better suspension to boot. All your Fives, Zesties, Metas, Stumpies etc are much more than XC bikes.

Yes, and I agree with you if you're referring to that kind of bike, I wasn't talking about a 160mm full sus bike though, I was referring to the bikes the OP has in his sig. a 110mm cube FS and a 100mm Spesh HT.

Northwind

I'd happily take either one of those tbh. First time i went to Nevis Range was on a Cotic hardtail You'd give a bit more consideration to the harder trails, though, but it'll still be worth the visit if this sort of thing interests him.

T

YeehaaMcgee

Didn't you ride your rigid round inners red at Ben Nevis? You're a bit of a mentalist

cat_with_no_tail

Northwind wrote:

I'd happily take either one of those tbh. First time i went to Nevis Range was on a Cotic hardtail You'd give a bit more consideration to the harder trails, though, but it'll still be worth the visit if this sort of thing interests him.

T

Yes, but you're an uncompromising extremist.

I meant for normal people

Northwind

YeehaaMcgee wrote:

Didn't you ride your rigid round inners red at Ben Nevis? You're a bit of a mentalist

Took the mighty Carrera rigid round inners red and black and then down some of the easier dh trails... Bit slower than usual but great fun Haven't been able to get it to nevis yet or even done full world cup route on the hardtail, only did the lower half. (Glentress on a cross bike is miles harder than Innerleithen on a rigid mtb, fwiw- I was gutted, had to get off and walk a bit)

That pic just up the page is of Jesse Wigman, who is proper mad- not content with blitzing the hardtail class in the endurance downhill race at fort william every year (and I think taking 4th overall last year on a hardtail), this year he raced it on that rigid... 13 runs in 6 hours. I was on my Herb DH and I beat him by exactly one place Ridiculously good.

DodgeT

On about strange bikes... there was a guy with one of these on saturday at Antur http://www.brooklynmachineworks.com/ the race special.
Never seen one of them before..

Woody80

How big a difference is there between a 160mm AM bike vs a full on DH, does the 3 degree head angle and 40mm of travel make a dramatic difference for an average/competent rider?

Think I'm in a similar situation to you Dodge of just getting into DH and wondering if it's worth the investment in a second bike. I've never had the opportunity to have a go on one as none of my mates are that into DH and would rather do a trail centre loop.

YeehaaMcgee

There's a hell of a difference.

ilovedirt

There's a huge difference.

Woody80

Think I'll get saving then!

paul.skibum

A DH oriented bike is better at riding DH oriented trails - a 160mm all mountain bike even if it is described as a mini DH rig like a Mega often gets touted as is going to be compromised.

At the end of the day you can (as I have said before) ride anything on anything with a little bit of skill and a little bit of compromise. Like Northwind says I'd have a go at those Antur thingummy trails on a hardtail or short travel xc bike if that was what I had - I have ridden some of the blue trails here on a friends jump bike while lending my Big Hit to a beginner - it was fun and so light it floated over the braking bumps and jumped so easily compared to the bigger heavier bike. I have ridden my 2001 Heckler on some of the black trails, if I get too carried away it flexes rather a lot in the berms but it's still a fun ride!

Woody80

paul.skibum wrote:

A DH oriented bike is better at riding DH oriented trails - a 160mm all mountain bike even if it is described as a mini DH rig like a Mega often gets touted as is going to be compromised.

At the end of the day you can (as I have said before) ride anything on anything with a little bit of skill and a little bit of compromise. Like Northwind says I'd have a go at those Antur thingummy trails on a hardtail or short travel xc bike if that was what I had - I have ridden some of the blue trails here on a friends jump bike while lending my Big Hit to a beginner - it was fun and so light it floated over the braking bumps and jumped so easily compared to the bigger heavier bike. I have ridden my 2001 Heckler on some of the black trails, if I get too carried away it flexes rather a lot in the berms but it's still a fun ride!

I've got a slack 160 bike (Canyon Strive) which is superb and gets me down DH runs but it's whether it'd be more fun or quicker on an actual DH bike.

felix.london

More fun and quicker yes. In fact more fun because you can go quicker (and bigger) I guess. Just depends how much use it will get and if you think the amount of use it will get is value for money.

I had no qualms about dropping €2K on a bike I know will only be used for a maximum of 11 weeks per year (when the lifts are open) because I live 10mins ride from my nearest lifts so the DH bike will be the only bike I use for those 11wks

DodgeT

Well straight off (i'm hoping) you'd be able to tackle more on the DH bike as you've got the proper geo and more travel, so without having to necessarily be an expert rider, should be able to blast over stuff = lots of fun.

But, the big point for me is, I could keep doing DH on my enduro, but how long is it going to last and its always going to be a compromise.
So, get the DH for DH stuff and keep the enduro for everything else.

felix.london

Yep - if you can (or can just about ) afford it - it's always better to use the proper kit for a certain job. Last season I had a great time skittering down the DH trails on my Rockhopper... exhilarating stuff but this year on the big bike has been just a ridiculous amount of fun. Can't wait for the lifts to open next June..but there's big mountains to be ridden on bike & snowboard before then

ilovedirt

Woody80 wrote:

paul.skibum wrote:

A DH oriented bike is better at riding DH oriented trails - a 160mm all mountain bike even if it is described as a mini DH rig like a Mega often gets touted as is going to be compromised.

At the end of the day you can (as I have said before) ride anything on anything with a little bit of skill and a little bit of compromise. Like Northwind says I'd have a go at those Antur thingummy trails on a hardtail or short travel xc bike if that was what I had - I have ridden some of the blue trails here on a friends jump bike while lending my Big Hit to a beginner - it was fun and so light it floated over the braking bumps and jumped so easily compared to the bigger heavier bike. I have ridden my 2001 Heckler on some of the black trails, if I get too carried away it flexes rather a lot in the berms but it's still a fun ride!

I've got a slack 160 bike (Canyon Strive) which is superb and gets me down DH runs but it's whether it'd be more fun or quicker on an actual DH bike.

Quicker - yes. More fun? depends on your definition of fun i guess.

grl

Thanks to everyone for the advice, it was a great day, weather was kind to us and I have regained the use of my hands and knees.

What's the best website for finding other locations like this one?

YeehaaMcgee

grl wrote:

Thanks to everyone for the advice, it was a great day, weather was kind to us and I have regained the use of my hands and knees.

What's the best website for finding other locations like this one?

well you could ask here.
You'll have to be a little bit more accurate than "Snowdon" though.

Northwind

grl wrote:

What's the best website for finding other locations like this one?

Well... What do you like about it? If it's the uplifts, there's not many of those. Innerleithen, Glencoe, Nevis Range are great. (Glencoe has only 2 trails though and one of them will **** up the average rider in about 5 different ways, scary stuff) The Lecht and Glenshee are supposedly pish- haven't been.

UK Bike Park, Cwymcarn (which is also in Snowdon, England) and I think Llangollen, which sounds like it's in snowdonish too. Flyup in the Forest of Dean. Er, Laggan, but not really.

You know what? This country's **** for uplifts. There were as many uplift facilities within 30 minutes drive of our chalet in france than there are in the entire UK, and I think every one had more trails than you can find at any of the UK ones. That's it, I'm turning frog.

YeehaaMcgee

Dunno, dude, there's a few uplifts popping up all over the counties to the far west of Englandland.

grl

Northwind wrote:

grl wrote:

What's the best website for finding other locations like this one?

Well... What do you like about it? If it's the uplifts, there's not many of those. Innerleithen, Glencoe, Nevis Range are great. (Glencoe has only 2 trails though and one of them will **** up the average rider in about 5 different ways, scary stuff) The Lecht and Glenshee are supposedly pish- haven't been.

UK Bike Park, Cwymcarn (which is also in Snowdon, England) and I think Llangollen, which sounds like it's in snowdonish too. Flyup in the Forest of Dean. Er, Laggan, but not really.

You know what? This country's **** for uplifts. There were as many uplift facilities within 30 minutes drive of our chalet in france than there are in the entire UK, and I think every one had more trails than you can find at any of the UK ones. That's it, I'm turning frog.

Is this because the UK is not particularly hilly?

Steady on, don't turn frog, it's not that serious.

Northwind

We're a bit precious about our mountains tbh... if you go to an alpine resort, they've pretty much trashed the mountains. I guess if you've got like 5000 alps, it's OK to ruin a few. We don't have enough big mountains to smash any of them up (and they're mostly in scotland anyway, miles away from anywhere apart from sheep and their respective shaggers)

But I do think we're a wee bit basically crap at it. There's a fire road that runs all the way to the top of Glentress red, frinstance, so why do we not have a van going up and down that fire road all day?

YeehaaMcgee

I actually have a picture of the alps that I took whilst I was on hiliday on my desktop right now. There's really nothing "trashed" about it.
I think the scale of the mountains makes a difference though. Despite your likely protestations, Scottish mountains aren;t really much taller than our Welsh ones, and they'd barely register as undulations in the Alps!

Northwind

Ah come on now Yeehaa, you can't pretend I said "The alps are trashed". I said "a few" are trashed. Big resorts with bulldozed pistes etc are a total eyesore in summer.

Can you imagine being allowed to do this in the cairngorms?


Sheep Stop by 21reasons, on Flickr

That's just off the summit of one of the peaks at Tignes. The top of the mountain's flattened and graded for the lift station, there's huge scars of access roads and pistes all over the mountain, resort debris everywhere, etc. Never mind the butt-ugly resort with its manmade lake. We have a hairy if someone just wants to walk up a mountain.

As for scotland vs wales, there's only 9 mountains in Wales and England that would qualify as Munros, compared to 282 in Scotland... But that's a little beside the point, because a mountain (or even a hill) doesn't have to be massive to be worth uplifting obviously.

Aonach Mor only gives you a little over 600 metres of vertical drop even though the mountain's twice as tall, and that's more than enough. I don't know how much vertical Antur Stiniog has but it's sufficient... Sainte Foy's van uplift can't be substantially taller than that but it's absolutely brilliant and well worth replicating.

Hell, what's the vertical drop at the Forest of Dean uplift? There's nothing stopping us from having better uplifts, we've just not done it.

YeehaaMcgee

Northwind wrote:

Ah come on now Yeehaa, you can't pretend I said "The alps are trashed". I said "a few" are trashed. Big resorts with bulldozed pistes etc are a total eyesore in summer.

It's a picture of the three valleys area I was looking at, admittedly in winter, but it's stunningly beautiful and is one of the huge hyper-resorts.

Can you imagine being allowed to do this in the cairngorms?

Sure, why not? The top of a few mountains round here look like that anyway (albeit not with an obviously much larger mountain right in front )

As for scotland vs wales, there's only 9 mountains in Wales and England that would qualify as Munros, compared to 282 in Scotland... But that's a little beside the point, because a mountain (or even a hill) doesn't have to be massive to be worth uplifting obviously.

There's 15 peaks in Wales above 3,000 feet. I believe that would class them as a munro, if they were in Scotland.
But still, I don't care how many there are, the very biggest mountains in Scotland still aren't much bigger than here in Snowdonia. And they're still mere pimples compared to the alps, which have absolutely vast ranges, and more opportunity to mess about with them.

Hell, what's the vertical drop at the Forest of Dean uplift? There's nothing stopping us from having better uplifts, we've just not done it.

Fair enough, I agree that there's no reason to have more uplifts, I was just contesting your earlier points, is all.

Northwind

YeehaaMcgee wrote:

There's 15 peaks in Wales above 3,000 feet

Only 6 would qualify as Munros- the others would be Munro Tops as they're subsidiary peaks. (IIRC Snowdon is the biggest and second biggest mountain in Wales, and about 10th as well? )

YeehaaMcgee wrote:

and more opportunity to mess about with them.

This is exactly the point I was making though! We could start a fight in an empty room eh.

Uplifts don't have to be up big mountains but obviously the taller the better... But there's no real chance of getting anything cool built on any of those here.

But also it's a fashion/cultural thing. I mean, when we were down at Sainte Foy we uplifted every day, and everyone just got on with it. But I don't think any of the other guests had ever done a UK uplift, apart from me, because they're mostly seen as being downhill (as if that was something different from riding bikes) whereas in France it's just VTT.

It's a bit weird. I loved it up at Tignes, which has a totally free bike park sponsored by Canyon, so all manner of random knobbers are up on the lifts, on 20 year old mtbs and... uh... velo de Carrefour? Or folks who've not ridden a bike since they were kids hiring downhill bikes and full faces. Fantastic! So different from here.

YeehaaMcgee

I know what you mean, surely there can be some sensible middle ground between the completely lacksey daisey approach of the French, and the "only attempt it if you're a hard ore nutter" of the Brits.
I think a lot of DH riders amplify the danger aspect to present a braver image of themselves to others. Either that, or we're generally a nation of plebs who can't ride who'll kill themselves at the first obstacle.

One serious problem with building anything in Wales is the excessive "conservation" shite that goes on, well, everywhere, here. You can't fart outdoors without some sanctimonious prick declaring that you're harming some fungus!