ATBA Downhill - Race Day

Coming live from the track after the 2nd timed run.

I can say right now that someone is winning. Don't know who...

Fun and games after Beiran decided to singlehandedly destroy the start gate on the very first run. But mountainboarders prevail!!!

Live from Dave! Night 1.

I am a pilgrim in an unholy land!

Coming to you live from Llanwty...Lannwy...lynwtrr... Wales! I can tell you now that it's rainy and the campsite is a little muddy...but the outlook for tomorrow seems better.

Apparently the track is running nicely and everyone here is looking forward to getting racing.

More in about 12 hours!

Remolition Roadtrip Roundup (well - my bit at least)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Remolition guys are having a roadtrip from Lands End to John O’Groats and are trying to get in as much riding as they can on the way. Even better – they are doing it for charity!

I really wanted to meet up with them when they got to the Lakes, but unfortunately I was stuck in work – so managed to take last Friday off and joined them on the first part of their Scottish adventure.

The plan was to meet up at Livingston skatepark “nice and early before the mini-scooters and crackheads come out” on Friday morning. After a brief delay and drive around Livingston, I met up with BFC freestyler Martyn, who was doing more jumpy stuff on a board than I have ever seen in real life before...craziness!

Soon enough Roger, Smilie, Wil and Daz rolled up and quickly got riding...with someone who shall not be named pulling a surprising amount of freestyle skillz out of the bag...

I had no intention of riding the skatepark; I had brought my NoSno brakeboard with 9’s/8’s and snowboard boots (I had bought some bits to give me a full 8 inch setup that I could easily swap in and out – but apparently they were delivered at home just as I arrived at Livingston...typical). But no one ever rides a skatepark on a downhill NoSno and the Rem guys thought it would be funny – so after padding up and some tinkering, I rolled in and managed to make it all the way to the other side of the park in one go before I ran out of speed. I rolled in again to the same effect – in the time it took to get out of my bindings, Martyn had pulled off about a half a dozen 3’s...

 

A bit of classy vandalism and a sweet photoshoot later and we headed to Edinburgh Bings. I had no idea what Bings were...I tried googling them but found nothing...I thought they were maybe a Scottish way of saying “pleasant little hill”.

I was wrong. Edinburgh Bings are essentially big red slag heaps with 60% gradients that make you cling on for dear life as you try to avoid extra’s from Dr Who and UPVC windows. They were insane!

Martyn showed us some good runs and we watched him and Roger nail some sweet rock drops before me and Wil tried riding what was essentially a bobsleigh run. I faceplanted at the bottom next to quite a nice peach coloured corner bath.

After our urban exploits we said goodbye to Daz (going home) and Martyn (nipping to Glasgow to “get some”) and drove up north into the Scottish lowlands and camped at an awesome campsite.

Saturday we met up with Dave and Al, who showed us a track that they had spotted going up a mountain named after spanish sausage or something. It was a nice walk up, but at halfway it was obvious it was going to be a b*tch to ride; rough and rocky in places and you would constantly be avoiding hanging your axles. Group consensus was that we would try and ride our way back down in stages to the smoother lower sections. I didn’t like the rocky parts – but the bottom section was a gorgeous track running through a beautiful valley.

Fom there, Al drove us to another track he had checked out – kind of like the Welsh competition track “Dave”; it was a great twisty turny firetrack that was a peach to ride.

Back to the campsite for fire and food overlooking a stunning Scottish valley.

Sunday was an early start (for mountainboarders...) and we drove up to Dunkeld to meet with Martyn, Dave and Al to ride at the Hermitage. This was more my style of riding – big firetracks though a pine forest. Al was good enough to be the uplift and drove us around the forest so we got loads of riding in; we rode one of the Scottish Downhill competition tracks (I’m going to need a ton of practice to get a half-decent time on that one – it was really slidy in the wet with loads of corners that you had to take “just right” or you would lose your speed) and a few contenders for the second competition track (a fantastic 1mile+ track which had unfortunately been ruined by recent logging and another which was the fastest firetrack I’ve ridden with two challenging 90 degree corners).

By early afternoon it was time for Al, Martyn and me to head off home and leave the Remolitious explorers to venture further north into wolf country...

If you’ve ever ridden for two days back-to-back you will know how knackering it is. After three days I was shattered. These guys have ridden every day straight for nearly two weeks solid! If you haven’t already – please support their charity efforts.

Remolition Roadtrip - Friday Morning

Early start, empty M6 and mountainboarders without a sat nav means that I've got time to kill...

Soon heading off to Livingston skatepark where my NoSno on 9's, brake and snowboard boots will obviously do me well! Luckily freeriding to follow.

Mullets and Road Trips

At this very moment the Remolition guys are shredding their way North on a two-week road trip from Lands End to John O’ Groats. If you haven’t already, please feel free to sponsor them (the money is going to the Midlands Air Ambulance Service – a great cause for us riders who like to do stupid things in the middle of nowhere).

 You can track their progress on Remolition Extra and arrange to meet up with them on their travels (due to lack of showers, I would probably suggest meeting up with them sooner rather than later).

I’m hoping to find them when they are around the Lakes towards the end of this week and will probably be sticking around and heading up to Scotland for a couple of days riding (if Scotland hasn’t been flooded by that point).

Whilst up there, I thought it would be a good opportunity to have a go at riding with 9’s on the front and 8’s on the back; what I like to call the Mullet (business up front and party in the back)...although that name doesn’t seem to be sticking for some reason. It’s a technique that’s been pioneered by freeriding guru Roger and it seems to be one of his better ideas, so I thought I’d give it a try. The idea behind it is that the 9’s on the front get you over any rocky/muddy ground but the 8’s on the back retain their manoeuvrability and reduce weight.

 So up front will be the normal 9 inch Primo Strikers on Primo Composite hubs and on the back are my lovely 8 inch GI Maks on some MBS Rockstar Pro’s. This does mean that my freestyle board currently has no wheels...but the idea of me doing anything that remotely resembles freestyle is quite frankly...absurd.

I’ve also got a set of Maks mounted on a spare NoSno Alloy Axle, so if I get the whim to ride brakeless (it’s not happened yet, but you never know...), I can easily swap out the front axles without having to mess around with the brakes.

BTW: if you or anyone you know of is selling a NoSno Custom 12*790 deck – please let me know.

ATBA Downhill Series 1 - Write-up

A slightly late follow-up to last weekends posts live from the Downhill Comp in Whinlatter.

The final results and a great vid can be found here.

I was surprised by how packed the Masters was and it was a battle to end up 8th in the class - but I was pretty happy with my time. Typically...I only had one bail on the day; the final corner of what would have been my fastest run (it was about 3.31 with the bail)...but thats life.

A massive shout-out to Roger for organising the day and to Allan for helping out and building a roll-in that didn't terrify anyone or break. Also congrats to Travis and Brennig for tearing up the Seniors class.

I managed to get in some filming with varying results...I had attached a camera mount to my front axle...but unfortunately the mount was aiming too far up and only caught the sky.

I managed to film the entire run:

 
I also managed to get some decent footage on the final corner of the track and had my first attempt at trying to edit to music - its pretty basic but let me know what you think.

Now I cant wait for the 2nd comp in Wales at Dave and have added a 12x790 custom NoSno deck (the 10x770 is just way too flexi for me and is killing alot of speed) and maybe a GoPro to the shopping list...  

ATBA Downhill Series 1 - More from Whinlatter

So after a long but great days riding, JC has been downhill king of all he surveys.

It really has been a great competition - with a bit of snow, mountainboarders being packed like sardines, feral NoSno's and some epic shreddage at the final corner of the course.

Lots to come soon!

ATBA Downhill Series 1 Coming at you Live!

FreerideNW's roving reporter is at Whinlatter Forest in the heart of the Lake District.

It's nice and sunny here and we've just come back from testing out the competition track with Al and the guys from KentATB and can report that it's s'all good!

Now where's my beer?

Downhill Series 1; Whinlatter – stuff you might find useful.

The first ATBA event of the 2012 season is this weekend and it’s also the first ever ATBA Downhill Series (I think...), following the success of the ‘Dave’ competition in Wales last year. I’ll obviously be there, seeing how it’s relatively local to me, although I am planning on going to all three Downhill events this year.

I’ve been up to Whinlatter a few times now, so I thought I’d share some of my non-mountainboard related knowledge (...as if I have any mountainboard related knowledge...lol).

For a start, the plan is to camp at Lanefoot Farm campsite. Camping is £6.50 per person a night if you quote “mountainboarding” when you turn up. You dont always need to book, but you can call them to reserve a spot. The Royal Oak pub is a 10mins walk from the campsite and has decent food and diet-coke alternatives. The nearest shops seem to be in Keswick (which you have to drive to), so it’s a good idea to bring everything you need.

Whinlatter Forest is a couple of miles up the road from the campsite. Feel free to try and find a parking spot so you don’t have to pay the £6+ parking fee’s, but they had put double-yellows up everywhere when I visited last month. The visitors centre has food and toilets, but it’s a good idea to bring your own (food that is...).

If I can, I will be in the Lakes from about lunchtime on Friday and I think the KentATB guys are also planning on coming up early – so get in touch if you fancy having a test run of the competiton track.

The plan is to meet at 10am on Saturday in the Whinlatter visitors centre carpark and there will be an uplift ferrying folks to the start line. The track is slightly out of the way of most of the public (yellow line on the map is the competition track) The uplift is going to take a slightly different route (the green line on the map), so there will probably be people milling around between the finish line and uplift pick-up point if you turn up late.

Friday/Saturday night could be a chance to get some night-riding in at the infamous Osprey run that’s nearby. On Sunday there is talk of riding Skiddaw again (I thought it was a hellish nightmare when I did it...but there might be a different route to try and it is good to say you’ve ridden an actual mountain...) or just going back up into Whinlatter and hitting up some of the other firetracks.

If you’ve not already; check out the Facebook event and ATBA site and see you there!

Oh...and don’t forget your board/pads and ATBA membership & entry form (you don’t have to be an ATBA member – but it just makes sense).

Freeride NW does something (with a camera)!!!

There haven’t been many updates on here for a while...sorry about that... I’ve been ill recently, so I’ve done nothing but scouting since the Macclesfield meetup really.

A couple of weeks ago I started feeling better though, so I popped up to Whinlatter to check out the condition of the competition track and to try out a new video camera I’ve picked up.

Whinlatter was wet. And cold. And you can get really demotivated riding solo in those conditions (especially with the 45min walk to the top of all the trails). Still – I managed to get a few good runs in before calling it a day.

The camera I picked up is an Action Cam 3: VGA – I’ll say right now, dont expect it to be anywhere near GoPro quality; it’s a £40 camera after all...but someone at work had one they didn’t want and for £20 I thought I would give filming a go. My thinking is at that price its pretty disposable if I dont like it or it doesn’t work.

The camera is really easy to use – it has a single button and uses a micro USB to record on. It’s a solid metal construction, similar to the Ultrafire torches I use for nightriding and comes with a range of mounting possibilites. The video quality is ok but the audio is crap – but it pretty much always is when it’s only picking up the wind rushing by. If anyone is looking for an uber cheap camera to throw in a bag and capture some riding footage with, then this is definately an option – but dont expect to be the next One5Media.

You’ll notice there are no vids up from Whinlatter...that’s because I didn’t realise what sort of angle you need to mount the camera on your helmet at, if you want to record anything other than your front wheels and the floor. Pretty dull stuff...

I eventually worked out how to mount it properly and went out yesterday evening to Longride Fell to give it another go.

I will say in advance this is supposed to be a first test and me just messing around – I was shooting the trail that lead back to the car (so slow and not very interesting) and I did the “editing” in literally 3mins last night. I think the music works though J

Oh and the ending...the idea was to stop at the gates and try and crouch underneath and roll down the road to my car. I didn’t realise the gate wasn’t locked...

Scouting – Anglezarke Moor

Back to the Anglezarke area and this time I was looking around the area north of Anglezarke Quarry.

The OS map showed a few paths that appeared to be fire tracks/private roads that appear to be going down the hill, as well as some patches of woodland that I hoped would have potential.

There is an obvious car park near the area, so I parked up and went for a wander.

Despite having Winter Hill looming in the background, the area was less appealing than the maps had led me to believe – the area was pretty much a plateau with valleys caused by quarrying. I followed the paths for a couple of miles, but on the most part they were short steep (30%) sections and then the paths flatten off. There were two which had technical corners in the steep sections, but the whole run can’t be more than 300m.

The wooded areas were pretty much flat and didn’t have any obvious paths that I could find.

The best part of the area is the road running from the car park down to the reservoir at the base of Anglezarke Moor. Whilst not in Lake District pass territory – it is about 1km of smooth tarmac at what I would guess is a 10% gradient – so not stupidly fast, although you would probably want a brake, because there are two blind corners – one of which is a hairpin.

View Freeride NW in a larger map

Overall, not a great spot, but if you were trying to spend a day in the Anglezarke/Winter Hill area, it is somewhere you could include.

On another note - I don’t know if its spots like Whinlatter or Dave spoiling me, or that I am focusing more on Downhill riding – but I seem to be disregarding more and more trails recently if they aren’t a 1 mile+ firetrack. Saying that, I loved a short singletrack through some woods that we rode in Macclesfield Forest, so perhaps I should start searching out more of those locally…

Scouting – Rivington Terraced Gardens

Last weekend, plans to get the NoSno up into the local hills and test out some new snowboard boots & bindings (more on that later), were scuppered by blizzard-like conditions on the hill.

But I had packed for bad weather, so whilst I might not be doing any riding, I made the most of the situation and went out on a trail scouting expedition.

Rivington/Winter Hill is a big hill that is visible behind Horwich, Lancs (the Bolton Reebok Stadium on the M61) that I have been meaning to explore for ages. The problem is that it’s massive and mainly moorland up top – so not great riding. However, on an OS map it looks like there could be some really long trails (4km) – it just needs exploring and a bit of a hike to get to them…

Rivington Terraced Gardens are a series of foot paths, cobbled tracks and wooded sections that rise 450m up to the summit of Winter Hill.

Even on a -5C Saturday morning, there were a good handful of people braving the elements and walking/riding/running (nutters) up from the convenient carpark at the bottom – so I expect this place is busy in summer.

It became immediately apparent that although the wider cobbled tracks would be ridable (with 10’s on), they will be ankle and knee jarring – the cobbles are the size of footballs and irregular, so you would have to constantly be hopping around the sides of the paths where it is smoother.

The footpaths are completely different however – the spot is popular with mountainbikers, who have carved some interesting trails down the hill. There are also some steep wooded sections and if they were cleaned up, there would be some fun lines to ride – especially as some have drop-offs/cross footpaths and descend through old ornamental gardens.

Towards the summit, it opens up into moor land and a number of paths lead off in different directions. Checking out a couple of these, they appear “ridable” and more paths head off the back of the hill into moorland that might be promising.

I think the most exciting thing about this place is the potential to ride from the summit and hit up a variation of paths, tracks and woodland descents, right the way down to the carpark at the bottom – true freeriding. It could be a great spot to have a race on – you start at the top, finish at the bottom and get down the fastest way you can…

More to come when I’ve managed to get some riding in.

Macclesfield Freeride

The Macclesfield Freeride meet was last Saturday and it was a great day with a phenomenal turnout (for mountainboarders...).

I’m not sure if it was because it is now an annual thing, a great way to get in the first ride of the new year or if freeriding is getting more popular…but there was a definate buzz about this meetup that we need to keep throughout the year.

Ade has a write up on his blog that I couldn't possibly top, so I would suggest you check out if you haven’t already (which has links to Remolitions pics and Rogers write-up).

Highlights for me:

• I got to ride my NoSno for the first time in decent conditions and I am a convert!
• Getting to meet a few new riders and catch up with some regulars.
• Finally getting a decent pic of me riding (it’s tough when you mainly ride solo…)

Macclesfield Forest Meetup

If you’ve not already been out for a ride this year – the Macclesfield Forest meetup this weekend looks like a perfect opportunity to blow away the xmas cobwebs and get in a new years freeride!

Lovely image borrowed from Remolition.com

It’s in the middle of the country as well – so no excuse about too far to travel!

Feel free to come along and check out the event on Facebook, Surfing Dirt and Rem’s write up of the last Macclesfield Forest meetup.

I’ll be there testing out the new NoSno and will be bringing my spare brake board (the ABS/comp 26x setup) if anyone wants to find out what brake-boarding is about firsthand.

On a side note, I was out last weekend trying some snowboard boots I’ve picked up. I managed to get them to fit in NoSno soft bindings, but found that without the back plate of a real set of snowboard bindings, heelsides were a nightmare…they were also a barsteward to walk up the hill in.

Anyone else managed to ride in snowboard boots without snowboard bindings?

Happy New Year from Freeride NW

Happy New Years guys!

In true New Years fashion I thought I would have a quick look back at Mountainboarding in 2011 and what I think/hope 2012 has in store for us.

2011 has been a good year for me – I haven’t been out riding half as much as I wanted to, but it was the year I started brake boarding and my confidence levels went up as well as my ability to ride more of the local terrain.

Placing 2^nd in the Novice Class at Dave has shown me that I’m possibly not the slowest rider out there…although I now need to prove that in the Masters Class in the 2012 comps.

2011 was obviously the year I started this blog, but here are some other things I’ve been checking out online this year: the Dirt Box, OneDayMedia, Project Doc, Kent ATB, Mountainboarding.uk.com, Remolition, Mountainboarding.info, Leapb4ulook and obviously Surfing Dirt.

2011 was what I hope will be the start of a Downhill revival and if last years competition at Dave and the talk about this years upcoming ATBA Downhill Series is anything to go by – it’s looking good for 2012.

After the Five Pass Challenge was completed successfully, the 2012 Challenge needs to be BIG!!! Or at least long (oooh errrr…).

What are my 2012 Mountainboarding resolutions?

1. To get rid of Santa Claus’ tummy-tum & get out riding a lot more
2. To enter four competitions this year. This should be an interesting as there are only three Downhill comps planned so far…and as the idea of me doing Freestyle is laughable (and physically impossible) it looks like I better get some Bordercross practice in.
3. To find at least one new riding spot in the NW each month.
4. To convert at least one new rider.