First uplift day at Snowdon

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:

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

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

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..

There's a hell of a difference.

Think I'll get saving then!

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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?

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 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.