After a few years of avoiding the Dollywaggon steps, i’m thinking of having a look, as every bod raves about the Grisedale singletrack, will it spoil my ride or should I just man up and bite…, opinions please.

Coming down you can ride quite a lot of the Dollywaggon steps. It’s just the odd drainage ditch on corners that breaks it up.

Well worth it.

Defo worth it and the whole of Dollywagon is rideable, although not necessarily massively fun depending on your bike choice/riding preferences. One of the UK’s classic rides.

I rode it all on a Bullit. 🙂

I rode it all on a hardtail, it was awesome!

I rode it
I was happy to get down unscathed personally and cannot say I enjoyed it
If you like riding steps with tight switchbacks and water bars the size of your wheel you will love it.

Personally I wont ever ride it again but i dont like steps in general as nature provides very few opportunities to practice them.

Clearly YMMV

just ride the **** thing or push the bits that you can’t do. advice over!

Dolly wagon is ace, rode about 90% of it, knack erred at the bottom. Grisedale is something else though. One of the best I reckon.

Hate riding steps, have a real anal fixation with riding natural stuff, steps are just to much like urban riding for me and my time in the mountains is precious, I wouldn’t want to spit out my dummy.

But you are right, procrastinating won’t help.

PS. i’m going to see how the mood takes me, tag the summit, then L or R

I managed some of it but my mojo was elsewhere that day 😆

The trail after the steppy bits is ace.

my time in the mountain is precious

Then just take the steps one at a time and enjoy being in the mountains.

Not sure why a few steps on the way to some of the finest singletrack in the country would cause you to spit the dummy.

I thought it was a thousand or more feet of steps, not that trivial, I will try and get over my phobia, fix the fells can still go and **** themselves 🙂 besides my dilemma is based on the fact, that I know Sticks is so good.

It’s one of those rides you HAVE to do, if only once. I’ve no intention of doing it again!

Sure, there’s quite a lot of steps but it’s not a massive proportion of the whole ride.

I know, that’s why i’m considering it, mtb S&M.

One mans wine and all that. Used to do a lot of motorbike trials when I was younger so really enjoyed the slow and technical, balance while you work out where you go next type of riding it encourages. Got to the bottom and turned round to my nephew who rode it with me and said what a great descent that was and we should do it again sometime. ” you’ll be doing it on your own then” was his reply.

Yeah rode it years ago, loads of front tyre pinch flats, but all forgiven once you hit grisedale, simply mesmerising.

Yep great ride, don’t expect to clean in on your first visit but be happy if you do. There is so much good stuff on the loop that walking a couple of bits won’t spoil your day.

Take some spare tubes though

It’s a full sus trail, I had to keep walking bits hoping that I’d get to the ‘sweet’ bit soon, shite it was all shite. I had no reward that day.

It’s fine on the right hardtail if your legs are strong. Full sus is less punishing tho.

The dollywagon to Grisedale tarn descent is not a route i really enjoy, but the trail from the tarn into Patterdale is brilliant,like a lot of routes in the lakes they work much better if you ride them a couple of times or with a few locals as its easy to take the wrong lines resulting in stoppers or bits you can’t ride,A full sus with dual ply on the back is always a good idea to ride it fast,enjoy..

Sticks pass off Helvellyn is amazing at the moment,theres a quick line all the way down with no mahoosive stones in the single track and “someone” has kindly adjusted the drainage gully halfway down where you could guarantee a pinch puncture.. 😉

I did sticks pass a couple of weeks back, really enjoyed that one 😀

Max Cousin on Dollywagon, Nicolai bike

Sorry to let the side down, but I rode Low man and Sticks as I had ridden it a few years ago and wanted to do the biz on my full sus, it was truly outstanding 8), still buzzing, great to get a weather window, the hill was heaving, but no problems where it mattered.

Dolly will have to wait.

nice one fergal,its an amazing descent and one i love to do as an evening ride, finishing with a pint at the Travellers rest, awesome

Stcks pass descent..