Paradise winter hibernation

So this weekend my paradise closes for the winter. Nearly 5 weeks ago marked my last Winterberg visit for 2007 and I've been really pleased with my progression since I fell in love in April this year. Every visit I've stepped up my game and tried a new line, bigger or faster challenge but my last visit was not quite as valiant an effort.



I met Tanja there again who brought along a Winterberg virgin - Lars, a hardcore marathon XC rider keen to try out a bigger bike and see what all the fuss is about. I arrived a little earlier and managed a few warm up runs but as soon as Lars was charging I found myself working hard to keep up. That dented my pride a bit and I was a little off my game.

We soon hit the more challenging downhill run and I was avoiding many of the more technical lines that I had taken before. Probably something to do with watching Tanja slam in front of me but I just wasn't feeling it. The park was also too busy for me to build myself up into my zone so I felt a little off for the rest of the day. It's always a pleasure to ride with Tanja tho, she's got some good skills, patience for others and not too crazy that I'd break a leg trying to follow her.

I felt a little better once the camera came out for a photo session in the afternoon. The Karousel was one piece of shore that got my heart pounding the first few times I rode it. But it's surprisingly easy and Tanja snapped the following photo of me whizzing around:

It was great to big up Lars and watch him rail the Karousel too. As a reward I created the following sequence shot of him all the way round:

Just around the corner there is a nice step down and much more shore. Here's Tanja tweaking it out and myself launching:

I was feeling it a bit more by now and my confidence was pumped so I attacked the large seesaw for the first time. It's pretty tall but also quite wide so not really too bad. Tanja snapped me making it look easy poking my tongue out:

Finally we sessioned the bottom drops, sending Lars off too. I'm fully confident with these drops now and have been running them blind for the last couple of visits. Something I enjoy running early to get ready for bigger things later in the day.

I walked the road gap next to the above drops and have to say it'll be a long time before I'm running that. Never say never but wow do you have to hit it with speed. I watched the following group of lads hit it pretty hard and Tanja spotted they were all on rental bikes. Nutters!

Then it was time for the last run, with the cameras back in the cars it was time to unleash the fury. We hit the downhill run hard and I don't know what clicked but something had or someone put a firework up my jacksie! I had my best run down the track ever and was loving it. So much so that I stormed past the halfway point where we normally catch a breather and nailed the next line that I normally take the chicken shoot. It's a fairly nerving drop into a left hand berm that I've struggled having the courage for. I normally go wide of the kicker and plop into the berm like a lemming. But this time I held the front wheel up and went for the kicker. Whilst in the air you have to tweak the bike out a tad sidewards to enter the berm at a safe angle to rail rather than shoot off the back. My line felt

spot on and gave me a real buzz. I had so much speed out of the berm that I glided over the next rock garden. I'm always too slow through that section and often have to steer my front wheel precisely between two unforgiving boulders. This time I was nowhere near and it felt like I was floating. Well OK maybe some exageration there but it did feel awesome!



My heart was pounding and my lungs were bursting but I tried a different line on the penulitmate corner hoping to be setup faster for the last berm. It worked and I was able to get an extra pedal stroke for the final table top. Exhausted but over the moon, we loaded on the chair lift anxiously wondering if there was time for "one more run". It was borderline and by the time we were at the top of the lift, our hearts had returned to a normal pace and our brains were engaged - best to end on the high we had than a low that could've been.



Thanks to Tanja for the photos and Lars for the company. The rest of my photos can be found here or in slideshow format here

Professional riders only

Just a quickie to say that although this weekend has been a quiet one, mainly due to a 6am Friday night out here, but I have still be out and about recently.

This week the weather has taken a turn for the worst. After 7 weeks of glorius sunshine, it's been a wet and windy week. However, that has meant the surf has been up. So I was out for a session in my kayak after work on Weds with a local club. I never thought I'd ever be able to say "Last night I went surfing" after moving to Amsterdam! Nowt special but enough for a bounce and a blunt plus I got a good backstab. The water was surprisingly warm so I'll be out again once the waves come back up. I've been missing the boating but for next year I've spotted a Corsica trip with the Europagaai guys or maybe I'll get lucky with a Grand Canyon lottery application if I can be bothered to follow the long registration process.

But I am loving the biking as of late. Last weekend I made a trip back to Winterberg and had a great time pushing myself. I didn't nail the wall like last time as it was a bit erroded. There was a gap between the top of the berm and the bottom of the wall which I didn't fancy negotiating!

However, I was much faster down the downhill and nailed a few lines I hadn't done before. I was also racing off the smaller drops so went to the freeride park to step it up a bit more. Remember these drops?


Well, this time I noticed there is a sign before them that states "Professional Riders Only". Not sure why it is in English but then perhaps it is ony the stupid English that bust themselves. So being the stupid Englishman that I am I decided to give them a go.

I naturally started at the bottom on the smallest drop but was soon to find that the run out slope was perfectly designed - it was smooth as. So I nailed the smallest one 3 times to get the confidence going then stepped up to the next size which had a slight downwards slant to it. This helped adding more speed to my nervous attempts. 3 goes at that one got my heart pumping and I was walking up and down the next size up trying to muster up some bottle.

A few skips on my shuffle found a suitable track and I attacked the head height drop with everything I had. Which wasn't quite enough, I landed less than perfect but survived to ride it out. Unhappy with my attempt I gave it some more wellie and hucked another go. Much better. To prove that wasn't just luck I gave it a third go and was stoked with another clean line. No pics or video of me but here's a guy from the last time I went:


I knew that was my limit for that day. The 4th drop is a good couple of feet higher and I think it will take some abusive friends wanting to see me crash to get me fired up for that one. But I'm not ruling it out for the future...

We may all be getting older and with the thirties around the corner it's a nice feeling that I can still scare myself but then push myself to overcome those fears in order to progress.

Well 3 day week this week at work and I have a Weds evening ferry booked to get me back to the UK to see Emma for a long weekend. It can't come quick enough plus I also get to pick up my new toy :-)

Winterberg

So as shown in my last post I went biking last weekend. A Dutch rider, Tanja, left me a comment on this blog after I posted about Megavalanche and I emailed her asking where to go ride anything other than flat cycle paths here in the Netherlands. The short answer was to join her in a trip to the nearest bike park with a chair lift in Germany called Winterberg - just 3.5hrs drive away.

It was cracking weather and I had an awesome time. Tanja showed me around and generally proved a fun challenge to keep up with. She's sponsored by a local shop in the Netherlands so had all the gear including a brand spanking new Switch. It was great to follow her line and get a few tips about better cornering. I avoided some of the gnarlier lines she took but wasn't too far behind in the long run. I think she was holding back though, recovering from a dislocated shoulder last October!

There's one 2 man chairlift and basically 4 defined tracks down. 1 dedicated downhill track, 1 north shore run, a fun run and a 6X track. The 6X ended with a freeride park and joined either the fun run or the north shore run to the bottom. There was also a separate dirt jump section but I never made it over there.

The 6X was nuts but ridable. Full credit to anyone who completely clears the tabletops, let alone amongst 5 other people. I was tanking it and still only made it over halfway! Below is a little helmet cam footage of the 6X:



The downhill was what I rode the most, there were some tough drops on it, a harsh rock garden section and a steep slippy tree section. I rode this track a good few times and kept adding a new drop to each run but there were still 3 or 4 drops and 2 doubles where I took the chicken run instead. Something to improve on next time :-)

The north shore was tough, I only rode this a couple of times because I had to walk a fair bit! Although I did take on some drops larger than my comfort zone and I also rode a seesaw. At first I thought the seesaw was a drop so hit it too fast and pulled up on the bars to take off but as my back wheel dropped with the seesaw I manualled off the plank. Probably looked quite cool but scared the hell out of me and I nearly binned it.

The fun run was exactly that - fun. Just like one track I rode with the lads in Morzine, nearer the Les Gets side. Berm after berm after berm with the odd jump thrown in - fantastic. Here is some more helmet cam footage and I'm the guy in red right in front of the camera:



Later, I stopped to take a few shots in the freeride park. I've created animated GIFs of the best sequences shown below but Blogger is not showing them animated so click on the photos to show them animated on their own. Here's a sweet line one guy took:


Here's one wall ride:


Then Tanja showed me how to style it:


I had a go at that wall and that's how I got the photo on the previous post. But there was a bigger wall:


And a HUGE fun box:


The drops at the top of the run were pretty crazy too:



Here's a little helmet cam action of the whole freeride park including the comedy wonky bridge thing at the end:



In browsing You Tube I also found this video from someone that gives a good overview of the whole place:



So thanks to Tanja and friends for a great session. I'll be back for sure and here's all the photos:

Flash Slideshow