The weekend of 6/9/11 – 6/11/11 Bikes n Beers took a kick-ass trip to Snowshoe WV to enjoy some downhill/freeride riding.  Snowshoe WV mountain resort sits in east central WV in the Monongahela National Forest.  It has long been a Mecca for winter sports enthusiast and now for a number of years been developing a network of world class downhill and freeride runs that are sure to thrill even the most avid riders.  Being virtual beginners at downhill we decided it would prudent to take some instruction to avoid the arterial squirting and compound fractures.  This turned out to be a wise decision.  The terrain is much more technical that any YouTube video can express and some downhill specific skills training made the weekend enjoyable and more importantly, injury free.  This will be the first of a 3-part blog to include our Training, Western Territory riding, and Basin riding.

Training

We decided to take 2 half day lessons that encompassed beginner and advanced skills.  We started our first day with an intro course on basic skills; balance, body position, cornering, braking, and bike control.  Our instructor was Trevyn Newpher, a professional downhiller and lead of the Mountain Adventure bike shop in Snowshoe Village.  We spent the first hour or so working in the skills training area before heading out to the trails.  Trevyn worked with us on some basic skills that would later serve to save our asses from certain injury.

Balance and Body Position:

Our first task was to find the “Neutral” position on the bike.  Trevyn had us slow roll the skills area while trying to compress our suspension evenly.  This drill served to find that balance point on the bike which would later be key in navigating the challenging terrain to come.  Foot position was another important aspect of body position since it is distinctly different from x-country.  Commonly when you ride clipless pedals the pedal is positioned over the ball of you foot.  When riding downhill platform pedals the foot is moved forward on the pedal so the spindle is in-line with your skeletal system.  This became important when absorbing the impacts and hits associated with downhilling. Additionally, understanding which foot is dominant in order to keep that foot forward in a even stance on the bike.  I discovered that I prefer to use my right foot to initiate pedaling, but my left foot was my dominant foot and hence was the foot I preferred to keep forward when rolling.  Trevyn explained that this was fairly common for right handed people.  In fact, depending on the dominant hand people commonly use the opposite foot as their dominant.  Next was a discussion of keeping connected to the bike, specifically when using platform pedals.  The technique was to slightly angle your dominant foot backwards and your other foot forward.  This creates an opposing force between the two pedals and better connection with the bike.

Cornering

The balance and body position skill fed right into cornering skills.  The variables included a neutral position, even weight distribution on the pedals, leaning the seat horn into the inside thigh, and turning the head and upper body in the direction of the turn.  At first there seemed to be a lot of variables to coordinate, and keeping traction while in a standing position seemed a little daunting at first.  But with proper pressure on the pedals it soon became evident that coordinating the variables provided plenty of traction, even in off-camber turns.  Similar to motorcycling, looking through the turn was also important.  However, turning your upper body in the direction of the turn was a new skill to me and took a bit of getting use to.  As the weekend progressed we would soon learn how important that is to flow through turns and maintain traction.

Braking

As with any vehicle, the front brake provides the lion share of stopping power, up to 70%.  We spent a few moments understanding how a little front brake feathering makes a huge difference in speed and control.  Downhilling on machine groomed trails with high berms requires frequent brake feathering to provide the optimal control throughout the run.  The majority of your braking occurs before you enter the turn.  This was dissimilar to my experiences with motocross since I would commonly brake until the apex of the turn and then power out.  In the end the lesson was this: Control requires the wheels to be turning, not skidding.  Locking up your wheels = out of control.

Bike Control

The final last skill we worked on was a little bit on bike control.  We worked on lifting our rear wheels without engaging the front brake and keep our feet gripped to the pedals.  This maneuver was executed by rotating your toes down, putting pressure on the rear of the bike and lifting.  This seemed similar to endo but without applying the brake or attempting to do a stoppie.  This helped reinforce the importance of keep your feet connected to the pedals in rough terrain when you don’t have the benefit of clipless pedals.

This concluded the skills section of day one.  We next traveled to the Western Territory for some on the slope instruction (See Part II)

Western Territory – Day 1

After our basic skills training we ventured over to the Western Territory.  Western Territory is the set of trails west of snowshoe village and is primarily composed of downhill trails both natural and machined.  While we did not run every trail in Western Territory we did not see any man-made freeride style features in this part of the part.  The exception was one small skinny on Short Bus (See discussion below).

Western Territory - GPS Tracks - Click to Enlarge

Cup Cake

We started by traversing down a trail called Cup Cake which is more or less an access road (See GPS track & Video).  Cup Cake is a beginners run (Green) and while being a fast run provided no technical challenge and only provided 2 cornering opportunities.  I believe it did give our instructor Trevyn the opportunity to assess our tolerance for speed and view our newly learned (or at least half learned) cornering skills.

GPS Track - Click to Enlarge

Ninja Bob

Ninja Bob is an intermediate run (Blue) and was the first opportunity to test out our newly learned skills and apply them to navigating berms (See GPS track & Video).  And while leaning into those berms seemed a little nerving at first the techniques Trevyn taught us were spot on.  Keep a neutral position on the bike, the seat planted on the inner thigh, and turning your upper body into the turn gave us plenty of bite in those turns.  The next trick was to keep that flowing through the next berm, then the next, easier said than done, but did create some exciting moments.  Ninja Bob is a fairly easy technical run with a low slope angle and only a few rocks and one 16” drop.  The drop could probably easily be jumped with a little more speed or technique than we were carrying through that section.

GPS Track - Click to Enlarge

Ball-n-Jack

From Ninja Bob we entered Ball-N-Jack, a black diamond run and another machined groomed trail with bigger berms and a brake smoking downhill (See GPS track and Video).  The first half of Ball-N-Jack is composed of small to medium berms with a few small to medium table tops (10’-15’).  It a very fun flowing section that begs to carry some speed and challenge those newly learned skills.  The second half of Ball-N-Jack has much larger berms, higher speeds, a few exciting tabletops (landing in corners), and finishes with a romping straight downhill that kept the brakes smoking hot.  This section is fairly smooth with a small boulder section in the middle that was easily carried with some speed.  The section is long enough that some hand fatigue did set in by the end of the run.  The next intersection give you the opportunity to challenge yourself with more black diamond machined trails (Powerline) or jump down a black diamond natural downhill called Sweet Dreams.

GPS Track - Click to Enlarge

Powerline

Powerline was another black diamond machined trail with medium sized berms, table tops, and a few sphincter clenching jumps (See GPS Track and Video).  Powerline starts with some beautiful flowing turns punctuated with tabletops.   The upper portion seemed to be a little shallower in slope and have more turns whiles the lower portion had a few more straight-aways and was a little bit rockier.  Powerline finishes at the base of the ski lift which was not operating the days we were there.

GPS Track - Click to Enlarge

Sweet Dreams

Sweet dreams is a black diamond natural downhill with 2 features sure to get the adrenaline pumping (See GPS Track and Video).  The first feature is an 8 foot natural rock drop with the landing zone littered with loose rocks and immediately entering the next feature.  Fortunately there is a bail out around this drop for those of us that do have the cojones to attempt (I think mine shrunk just looking at it).  The next feature immediately following the drop in a fairly steep right hand turn.  Trevyn demonstrated the turn and made it look fairly easy.  Our attempts were not so smooth.  I ended up not entering to shallow and needed to tail slide to complete the turn.  Following that the trail has a couple of fairly steep sections but nothing too difficult to pick your way through.  The trail ends up joining with Magic Jack near the bottom and close to the aforementioned ski lift.

GPS Track - Click to Enlarge

Short Bus

Short bus is the last section of trail that leads out to the shuttle (Which is in fact a Short Bus)(See GPS Track and Video).  Short Bus is a fairly smooth flat trail with one dry rocky stream crossing and one skinny wood bridge over a mud hole.  The skinny is probably only 20’ long but did seem to give us a few fits throughout the day (See Video).  The run ends at the shuttle pick up area where cold water and some nice shade awaits.  It was also a nice area to meet other riders and exchange stories and a few jabs.

GPS Track - Click to Enlarge

The first day ended with an increased confidence and a new appreciation for the challenges of downhill mountain biking.  We heading back to Snowshoe village to replenish the food stores and enjoy some frosty beverages (one of my favorite parts of mountain biking).  We spent the evening reviewing the days video haul and chuckling at each others technique.  Tomorrow – Jumping!

Basin and Jumping – Day 2 & 3

Day 2 instruction began with some warm up runs down the Basin side of the mountain to warm up and refresh our skills training from yesterday.  We began by running down another access road called Hootenanny and turn left on to Flume.  This led us to the first of the days runs called Lucid.

Basin Trails - GPS tracks - Click to Zoom

Lucid

Lucid is an intermediate machined trail that is fairly short but has some fun flowing turns, a small wood walled chicane, and a couple of rollers that you can get some air off if you have the steam (See GPS track and Video). The trail dumps back out on to Flume for the next short run down to Raging Bull.

GPS track - Click to Zoom

Raging Bull

Raging Bull is another intermediate machined trail with nice flowing berms, some expert doubles, walls, and steep wood ramp drop at the end (See GPS track and Video).  In terms of the trails we rode on Basin side (and we did not ride them all) this was the funnest run we rode.  We did not attempt the expert jumps but did have some fun traversing the walls and challenging each other to get higher on the walls.  The run ends with a steep wood ramp drop and dumps right there at the ski lift.

GPS Track - Click to Enlarge

Advanced Skills – Day 2

Following our warm up runs Trevyn began some instructions on jumping techniques.  As with everything we learn it was a progression.  We first started out by working a wood feature in the skills area that rose about 2 feet.  Our goal was to display proper body position as the bike rolled over the feature at slow speeds.  Again, the first day skills came into play.  Next we practiced pulling the front end of the bike up as a progression to begin to bunny hop.  The technique as explained to us was that we were going to learn to bunny hop the bike and then apply that to jumping.  We practiced for about 45 minutes and then head back out to the Western Territory where the flying fun began.

Jumping

We ended up back at the entrance to Ball-n-Jack where are 15’ table top jump was to be our training ground.  Our Instructor Trevyn explained the technique this way.  We enter the face of the jump and preload the suspension.  As we hit the apex of the take-off we would bunny hop, pull the bike into attack position while in flight and then extend the front end as we approached the landing only extending the rear as contact was nearly made, simple, right?  Well, we took many runs at this before we even began to come close.  We obviously videoed this session looking for both successes and failures (See Video).  Our 2^nd day session was coming to an end but we had one more thrill to enjoy.  Trevyn took us down a trail we had not ridden before called Magic Link.  Holy shit, this was the funnest run yet with lots of Yee Haw moments (See GPS track and Video).  Missing Link had huge berms, big table tops, step up jumps and huge elevation drops.

GPS Track - Click to Enlarge

Day 2 instruction was complete and Trevyn was kind enough to indulge us with a little wrap up video:

Following lunch we ventured back to Western Territory to practice our new found skills.  We must have run down Magic Link at least two more times increasing our speed and potential for massive yard sales each time.

Day two ended with a bit of exhaustion but the adrenaline was still pumping.  We ended up back in Snowshoe village for desert and more frosty beverages (do you see a pattern here?).  We finished out the evening review the game tape and laughing about how pathetic our jumps looked compared to Trevyn’s. Next up, day 3 – were on our own…..

Day 3

Day three began with me needing to have my front brake bled.  It was feeling quite spongy and in fact the mechanic said the fluid that came out was nearly black (not good).  While waiting mi amigos decided to have some fun on the drop park.  They actual had some great launches off of the various tiers.  I joined them for one drop and then we were off to explore some new trails.  We head back into Basin to find a black diamond run named “Trail C”.  The trail was challenging to say the least.  Near the top was a section with two consecutive 24” drops with a 45 degree turn between them.  We had a fairly good rainstorm the night before so the trail conditions were slick to say the least.  But we had two confidence building days previous and we were ready, or so we thought (see Video).  The trail definitely humbled us a little as well as the wet conditions.   Next we traversed down flume to the entrance to Trail H, another black diamond where the crashing began.  Zack was first with a spectacular crash coming off of a 6 foot jump and smacking the bike head on into a tree.  I was next with a pathetic looking crash down a wood banked chicane but it definitely rattled the noggin and left a nice strawberry that traversed my entire right arm.  We ended up on “Trail I” an Expert only trail which has an impressive looking skinny running through a boulder garden and finishing with a 20’ roll down a 4×4.  Following that was a nice long skinny and out a three and five foot jump. Following this run a fairly fast moving storm rolled over the mountain and made conditions every slicker.  The following video should show some of the more exciting portions of these runs.

Trail C

Trail H

Trail I

We walked away from our Snowshoe weekend injury free and will some great video and memories.  We finished up the weekend enjoying some of the local microbrews at the Fox Den, met some fellow enthusiast, swapped some stories, and took some video.  We have a new appreciation for the downhill/freeride sport and hope to continue to develop our skills at the local area in Eastern TN called Windrock.  We have developed a fun video of the weekend which can be seen here.  Until next time, keep the rubber side down and always remember to replenish those vital nutrients after your ride with the mother of all sports drinks, Beer!!!!