The good Dirt School technique DVD which I have doesn’t tell you how to ride rocky descents. It’s mostly smooth forest tracks (and is good for this, especially how to go fast). Hardly any rocks!!

Where I live in Sardinia such smooth trails are a rarity (there’s a wee bit in the middle of this vid, but this is an exception. Mostly it’s rocky like at the start of the vid). Or rocky turns like this.

Any suggestions? If not technique vids, good riders doing things like this.

Ta Peter

Fundamentals” http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0006OQYZK/ref=oss_product

Hi Peter, agreed, the Dirt School disc is great, the above is a good disc, quite dh focussed, but something for everyone there really. There’s tons of little things on the disc – I bought it after a recommendation off here. Maybe someone else will remember if it has loose rocky stuff in it – I’m sure it must. I don’t have it to hand as I’m at work (and should be working :-)) but I do remember it has a good section on rooty descents, lots of young and not so young stars giving advice, it’s worth every penny.

Sardinia? Looking at your site it looks great. I spent a week there a few years back, very unspoiled in the north.

Hi, thanks for the tip. One for the Missus’s Xmas present list I had a quick look at the trailer on YouTube, the terrain on this vid (dry, loose, Here there are always rocks!) is more like what we get here than a forest in Scotland (definitely damper than here, smooth trails). Here wet rocks, berms and roots are virtually absent. There are smooth trails, then when it rains hard, you get flash flooding and the tracks get washed-out

or old muletracks like this

or rocky switchbacks like these


On the Dirt School DVD, the rocky sections that are short exceptions on otherwise smooth tracks are the norm here, and often here the rocks are loose. You use techniques like staying wide entering the switchback, cutting apex with front wheel and deliberately locking back wheel to skid it round, before realeasing brakes and having enough momentum to roll out. This isn’t mentioned at all on the Dirt School DVD. If the turn is too rocky, you have to do a Front Pivot (which I can’t begin to do).
Peter

There is never a need to do a front pivot other than for showboating purposes.

“Point, hang on, hop the stuff that’s too big to batter through” is a technique that works well in the Peaks.

There is never a need to do a front pivot other than for showboating purposes

B*ll*cks. Depends on the kind of trails you like riding. I’ll admit I use it more than I need to at times, but there’s also plenty of bits of trail out there (usually alpine or cheeky) that need a hop/pivot/stoppie to be rideable.

I’ve never seen a trail that needs anything even close to that to get round.

Surrounded By Zulus

I’ve never seen a trail that needs anything even close to that to get round.

I’ve never seen a giant squid. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

alpine steep switchbacks i ride on my front wheel 🙂

peter – wow – looks very like the riding I’ve done in Croatia and in Slovenija, dry and rocky, with lots of run off when it rains. I take it you run fat tubeless tyres?

Steep, dry and (not loose) rocky riding in the Bavarian Alps:

http://vimeo.com/13942586

humm loose rocky techniques, im sure jedi would do this better but:

MOST IMPORTANT: stay relaxed on the bike, it should be free to move underneath you, that means no death grip on the bars or clamping the saddle between your legs

if you expect the bike to move, start to lean into corners before you think you need to, that way when the bike takes time to settle in the turn you are still on target

Really important to look through corners where you want to go

Speed really is your friend, you will be amazed at the stuff a modern MTB will go straight over at speed

outside foot down through corners (flat pedals might build confidence)

in terms of tight switch backs ideal is a rolling endo thing as mentioned but you can get round 99% by slowing right down, drop the outside foot, swing out wide, turn in tight, use the rear brake to help the back round if required, look up and pedal out

bike setup ideas include: wide bars, heavier wheels/tyres/tubes

hope that gives some help and ideas

@scotbike: though the stuff here is nowhere as hard as the very nice steep, dry and (not loose) rocky riding in the Bavarian Alps video you posted, this is MUCH more similar to what we have here than smooth trails, berms, bumps etc. It is also dry here 😆 not that Scottish rain 🙁 I just upgraded to a Canyon Nerve AM 7.0 2,4″ Fat Albert/Nobby Nic, tubed I’m afraid and have been out on it 5 or so times. I used to keep my tyres pretty soft, easy to push in with max thumb pressure. Pinch flat yesterday, blew them up harder today and nowhere near as much grip. So have to keep them soft KEEP THE VIDS COMING

@titusrider “you can get round 99% by slowing right down, drop the outside foot, swing out wide, turn in tight, use the rear brake to help the back round if required, look up and pedal out” Yes I do this and was a bit surprised such an obvious technique wasn’t covered in the Dirt School DVD. However, this works less well (and I walk, so far) when the corner is rocky so you can’t skid round the back wheel. And certainly you can’t do them at speed. But I also am the first to admit that I have to learn to have a bit more confidence to go a bit faster, relax as you say and let the suspension and my legs soak up the bumps.

So, we can make a vid called “Sun and Rock School”? What does the editorial staff of STW think?
thanks Peter
PS on Sat we ride down to Europe’s deepest gorge, Gorroppu, on the singletrack shown in this photo. Yet more rocks, but worth it!

School of Sun and Rock – is that a call for volunteers I’m hearing? I’m in!

Sounds like you would be an ideal candidate for tubless – I’m shortly to do the same myself, just to see how I get on.

I’ve done a fair bit of sport climbing in the Bavarian alps, never ridden, tho it does look good and a good series of refuges and trails, to be honest I don’t think I’ve got the b@alls (or skills) to ride there. I think I have to pencil in another riding trip to Sardinia tho – trails look good, maybe similar to Spain? and the food is way better than the German fayre 🙂

<nerd mode on> Do you know what kind of rock that is in your (insprining) pics? I remember being surprised at coming across Tempio Pausania a granite town in the north of the island. <nerd mode off>

Have you ever ridden in Corsica? It looks good, wilder than Sardinia and depending where you are in Sardinia, it can’t be that far? Are they still running the Giro di Sardegna road race?

School of Sun and Rock – is that a call for volunteers I’m hearing? I’m in!

Fine!

I think I have to pencil in another riding trip to Sardinia tho – trails look good, maybe similar to Spain?

I only started MTBing two years ago, when living here, and so one of my main problems is comparing the riding here to elsewhere. I’ve not ridden elsewhere. I would imagine it’s similar to Spain since the weather and terrain are similar, but can’t draw on direct comparisons from my own experience. Here the coastline is much less touristy than some parts of Spain, more restrictive planning laws.

the food is way better than the German fayre

You’re not kidding!

Do you know what kind of rock that is in your (insprining) pics? I remember being surprised at coming across Tempio Pausania a granite town in the north of the island.

Round here there is a mix of granite, schisty granite and limestone. Look closely at the top photos and you can see that it’s crumbly granite, good white limestone, granite/schist, limestone. The riding on each is different, and having the different rock types makes for more interest.

I’ve done a fair bit of sport climbing in the Bavarian alps

Sardinia is very well known for sports climbing. There are 4000 single-pitch routes in the 5th edition of the Pietra di Luna guidebook coming out in the spring, I’m doing the translation. I climb a lot and bolt new routes. Bouldering, multi-pitch routes as well, here I am with my mountainbike Ogliastra T-shirt which comes out well in photos

and some of our MTB rides go down to sea like this.

Have you ever ridden in Corsica? It looks good, wilder than Sardinia and depending where you are in Sardinia, it can’t be that far?

We road cycle toured in Corsica 20 years ago. Sardinia is bigger than Wales, with higher mountains, and we are busy running our B&B and developing the climbing, walking and now MTBing here, The missus goes sea kayaking a lot. So we don’t often get to other parts of the island, let along Corsica, now that we live here. These days when we have hols we go to a city, London or Rome, and hang out, it’s what we can’t do here.

Are they still running the Giro di Sardegna road race?

Yes, we manage the English speaking group, see the web site in English (flag at side)

Andy from Dirtschool riding a switchback with us – no back end skidding! 😉

This is quite an easy one and the line Andy’s riding is more about maximising your exit speed than just making it round the corner. We have plenty of very tight ones, but locking up still shouldn’t be necessary – a bit of sideways drift is sometimes helpful/unavoidable. Our French guide rides them on the front wheel as Jedi says!

Andy from Dirtschool riding a switchback with us – no back end skidding!This is quite an easy one and the line Andy’s riding is more about maximising your exit speed than just making it round the corner. We have plenty of very tight ones, but locking up still shouldn’t be necessary – a bit of sideways drift is sometimes helpful/unavoidable. Our French guide rides them on the front wheel as Jedi says!

This video is nice of a smooth fast switchback but the technique I doubt would work with the switchbacks I am asking about

1. no bank to climb up to widen turn
2. MUCH tighter at apex
3. loose
4. this one isn’t rocky, lots are (meaning you can’t skid back wheel round)

1. the wall stops you widening too much…
2. this one though is flat
Video of descent
1. you see the first rocky part (I can’t do)
2. 00:30 you see an easier corner and skidding technique
3. on the rockier corners you can’t use this skidding technique ‘cos your wheel simply won’t slide round…hence the Front Pivot
I did email Chris and Andy from DirtSchool, they replied “The DVD was designed to cover as many basics of riding UK style ‘Trail Centres’ as possible. The type of terrain you mention isn’t very common around us”.
Can you post a video of your French guide? Clicking on jedi and steveomcd you guys should have some good skills for the sort of terrain we have here??? thanks Peter

Hi Peter, I know those things never show up well in photos, but at the risk of coming across a bit arrogant, I’d just roll round that one, nothing fancy required. The trail is pretty wide and there’s no major obstacles on it. It’s tight in that there’s no real radius on the corner, just a sharp cut-back. Can’t see in your photo obviously, but it does hint that there’s a wee bit of a bank to use as well.

I would:

Enter wide (unless trying to use the bank, then enter tight and go wide late) – really wide, ridiculously wide.

Look for the exit as soon as possible, get your head right round – your shoulders and hips should rotate with it.

When you start to turn, do it like you mean it! About the point where your cranks are level with the apex is usually about right.

Outside foot down, push the pedal outwards as well as downwards (back end would slide on that terrain, no problem, although not really necessary).

Pressure the inside grip of your bars (our French guide, Yvan, teaches this by saying “straighten your inside arm and bend the outside one” which is a nice way to visualise it) – this helps to get the bike leant over, giving you some help from the shape of the tyres.

I don’t have a video of Yvan unfortunately. Photo below – the switchback in question has death-fall potential! Note that he’s NOT stopping, jamming the front brake on and then hopping the back-end round. He’s rolling it smoothly on the front wheel.

Great, just the sort of thing I was looking for. The inside arm straight tip is one I read for road biking, no-one ever mentioned for MTB. Have copied and pasted to keep, will try to remember tomorrow during our 800 m descent. You have won a place in the film “Sun and Rock School” 😆

Here’s the video of yesterday’s 6 hour 1200 m height change 30 km ride to the Gola su Gorroppu, Europe’s deepest gorge, with a descent including both loamy switchbacks (good video footage of technique, NOT the one suggested above) as well as a spectacular but inconsequential crash. And great Alpine scenery, even though we are close to the Mediterranean’s best beaches. I though did try to apply the tips above, although when you are charging down the trail it’s not easy to try new technique points. cheers Peter

Peterherolds going to tell us about a guiding holiday next 😉

http://vimeo.com/13942586

anyone recognise the shoes? seen at 1:39.

fanks.

Peterherolds going to tell us about a guiding holiday next

No I’m not ‘cos I’m not a guide. I considered becoming a climbing guide aged 21 but one course in the Alps with a guide was enough to convince me I never wanted to be a guide. If you want a mountain bike school in Italy, there is the list of FCI-registered schools here. We run a B&B for walkers, climbers and cyclists (road and mountainbike) and promote these activities where we live, developing and documenting new routes and making these available to people who visit the area, independent of whether or not they stay with us. If there was a section on STW when I could put the English translations of the routes round here, I would, just like I do for the rock climbs.

Hi Peter, … I’d just roll round that one, nothing fancy required. The trail is pretty wide and there’s no major obstacles on it. It’s tight in that there’s no real radius on the corner, just a sharp cut-back.
I would:

Enter wide (unless trying to use the bank, then enter tight and go wide late) – really wide, ridiculously wide.

Look for the exit as soon as possible, get your head right round – your shoulders and hips should rotate with it.

When you start to turn, do it like you mean it! About the point where your cranks are level with the apex is usually about right.

Outside foot down, push the pedal outwards as well as downwards (back end would slide on that terrain, no problem, although not really necessary).

Pressure the inside grip of your bars (our French guide, Yvan, teaches this by saying “straighten your inside arm and bend the outside one” which is a nice way to visualise it) – this helps to get the bike leant over, giving you some help from the shape of the tyres.
Well I tried this and I couldn’t do it. We made some video to illustrate the point. The trail is (loose) rocky and so (unlike the smoother switcbacks later in the vid, which go fine using my technique) I go slowly to maintain control…and reach lowest speed 3/4 of way round turn…and then on the smooth corners I can just roll out. On the rockier corners, my speed is just that bit low to bounce over the rocks and several times I put a foot down. When the corners are smoother, it’s much easier to “just roll round”.

So, what should I do differently?

thanks Peter
PS see route description in English with GPS file

i couldn’t get round the switchback in stevo’s photo 🙁

Not watched the whole vid but:-

1) Drop your saddles. Gives you more space to move around on the bike.

2) You’re looking into the corners not round them. It starts off OK, but you never seem to actually look at the exit. You get through 90° then get transfixed by the edge. LOOK where you want to go. As your head turns, your shoulders turn, and the bars follow.

3) Don’t hang so far back off the bike – you’ve got absolutely no weight on the front wheel, so funny old world – it’ll skitter over the rocks in a straight line, rather than biting and turning. Unless it’s truly, truly bastard steep (hands lower than feet kinda thing), you can stay far more centered on the bike than you would think.

4) Carry just a little bit more speed – you need to have enough momentum to roll over your chosen line.

5) BELIEVE YOU CAN DO IT!

🙂

Stevo – Looks like Lavarda…?

edit – watched the whole thing now – you’re better on the smoother less steep ones, but still lack confidence and are snatchy with the brakes. Overall, you’re riding very XC biased setups. Big tyres, big bars, big forks, short stems and slack angles make that kind of stuff a lot easier (although it does make getting up the hill harder, sadly). Bike setup won’t magically give you the ability to ride tight stuff, but it does give you a bit more confidence/control. Personally I’m an advocate of a bit of armour as well for that kind of riding, but each to their own.

Keep practising – it’ll come. I’m not sure how long you’ve been riding for, but that’s pretty serious terrain and there’s an awful lot of people who frequent this forum who would struggle worse than you do.

Peter:

Had a quick look – I’d agree with pretty-much everything Jon said.

On quite a few of the corners you’ve filmed, the rider’s entrance line is way too narrow, with the front wheel clipping the apex of the corner very early. You need to keep that front wheel wide and roll it right around the outside of the available trail. The back wheel will naturally cut a tighter line than the front so if the front wheel is too tight to the inside, you’ve had it. A bit of a flick (the outward pressure on the pedal I mentioned above) helps keep the back end a bit wider. Do ANYTHING to stay wide on the entrance, even if it means riding over boulders, roots, cabbages, whatever.

The rider in the yellow shorts at 0:30 in your vid has his inside foot down on the right-hand switchback! Definitely doesn’t help!

Keeping a little bit of momentum does help, but on really tight, technical ones I’ll occasionally even come to a complete stop and trackstand for a second half-way round – you can add the speed back in once you’ve mastered it!

I’d also echo Jon’s comments on bike setup and further add that flat pedals can be great for learning this kind of thing. Just gives you a bit more freedom – you can even dangle a leg for a bit of balance!

You might find Brian Lopes/Lee McCormack’s book “Mastering Mountain Bike Skills” to be useful – like yourself, I’ve struggled to find a book or DVD that really covers alpine-style switchbacks, but the Lopes book at least has some good advice on lines, etc.

Jon/Thom:

Aye, La Varda. It’s tighter than it looks that corner, not many people clean it first-time. The pucker-factor doesn’t help either… 😈

Just for fun, I’ve grabbed some photos from a few weeks ago and very clumsily put 2 sequences together (would have used Thom as the “not like this example” since he’s already admitted not making it, but I didn’t have a great set of photos of him! 😉 ).

You can see in photo 1 that the rider has entered really, really wide, giving himself the most space to work with. His shoulders are also tipped inwards and his head is looking right round the corner.

The rider in photo 2 (name withheld to protect the guilty!) hasn’t used all the space – on the entrance, he’s almost in the middle of the trail. His shoulders are also tipped slightly outwards and his eyes are fixed on the outside of the corner (not unreasonable as that’s where the big scary drop is – but he’s not fully commited to the corner). End result is that he goes where he’s looking – into the wall at the outside of the corner.

no steveo the photos of me are – riding in & riding out. no evidence 😆

those photos show it well though.

stevomcd: those pictures very clearly show what is going on. In the top pic, the guy is almost riding up the wall to create turning space.

I very recently used this idea of creating turning space to overcome a long standing problem – steepish left turn, right turn into a short but steep roll-down between a large rock and the trail edge. I could never make the right turn. Then I realised I could make the left turn finish fractionally earlier by turning slowly, and right on the trail edge. That created just enough space to make the right turn for the roll-down.

There’s a much harder example in the Quantocks, dropping down some rocks into Holford Green car park with dire consequences if you get it wrong. I was looking hard at it yesterday and thinking: “I’ve got a way to go before I attempt that!” I think some of the locals (on here) do it.

Looking at those pics of Stevo’s –

Firstly the first guy on exit from the corner – he’s still got bucket loads of space on the outside of him. Loads of safety factor there. Secondly – Look where he’s looking – head up, and looking right down the trail. Mentally, not only has he already ridden out the corner, he’s past the next few rocks and halfway down to the next corner.

The second pic – the guy has no commitment. He’s not even got as far as looking at the drop – he’s looking at the wall in front of him. He’s looking where the bike is going, not where he wants to go, so the bike is controlling him, not vice versa.

You can practise/refine a lot of the skills for stuff like that off the hill – being able to trackstand is always useful – gives you time to think about a manouver without actually ahving to put a foot down and breaking the flow. Just weaving slow figure of eights around a couple of closely spaced poles will help with slow speed cornering & balance – you can get the feel of pushing the bike over harder and harder. Then you can start to think about hopping wheels about if you want to learn that.

Lavarda is a **** awesome trail though – ridden it 5 times now. Can clear the whole lot, but haven’t managed it in a oner, feet up yet – there’s always something to catch you out. And the landscape is Just. Stunning.

Surrounded By Zulus

I’ve never seen a trail that needs anything even close to that to get round.

you need to get out more…..

i built 2 alpine style switchbacks at herts skills area 🙂

i built 2 alpine style switchbacks at herts skills area

Good idea that, we’ve played around with laying them out with cones so that people can have a go in a “safe” environment on our skills weeks. Obviously we have the real thing close at hand, but it’s easier for people to get their heads round it if it’s not a make-it-round-or-die situation! 😉

Thanks for useful comments, will go to try and report back. Thanks! Peter

OK! So I have tested the suggestions here and they work!
1. When trying the switchbacks today, I devloped a mantra “Keep wide, turn and look round corner, roll out” which helped a lot. It’s actually looking right round the corner to the exit that helps the most, and if you keep wide, you have a better view round the corner, as well as being able to advance your apex-clipping point far enough round the corner so that your front wheel (OK, at times on the limit of a trackstand when you chink it round to just pass inside the outside edge of the turn) rolls out of the corner.
2. I rode all of the switchbacks I couldn’t manage on the video, twice…after in some cases 10-15 attempts, gentle falls, swearing,…
3. In May I could manage only 1/38 switchbacks, this came down to 7/38 in the summer when the trail was smooth…and then I started having big problems after the heavy rain washed out many of the curves. Today I managed all except 6 (so did 32/38), a big improvement. The really rocky/loose/tight/steep ones (often one after the other…) still elude me, but a group of us are going Saturday so I’ll be able to watch the others
4. Cutting the corners / going straight down doesn’t count 🙄
5. The only comment I’d make is that most of the harder corners (including the ones I managed for the first time today) I tackle very slowly, like my friend Mauro at 5:08-5:10 on this video of switchbacks pedals horizontal, bum right off the back.
cheers Peter

Awesome stuff Peter! It’s always great to feel that progression. Switchbacks were something I was weak on when I moved out here as it’s something you just don’t find in the UK (except at Jedi’s training ground!) and I’ve really felt the improvement myself.

Don’t worry about having pedals level on the really technical ones – that would actually be my advice. Outside foot forward is best. As a wee bit of a more advanced technique, you can come into a technical switchback with your pedals level and outside foot forward then, as you pass the apex, make a quarter-stroke with your pedals. This returns you to the classic “outside foot down” position, it gives you wee bit of a momentum boost just when you need it and it can help break the back wheel loose if you need to.

So here I am at 1:14 of this video using the “pedals level and outside foot forward” technique.Stefan does turns with and without front pivots.
Now on Saturday 16 of us are going to ride both the upper (more rocky) and lower section, for a total of about 10 km / 1000 vertical m of descent, with about 60 switchbacks. I’ll let the others concentrate on videos and photos and just ride. Whoever can ride all the rocky steps without putting a foot down gets free beer.

The 1st thread I’ve read on STW for ages that actually makes me want to ride – well done Peter, progression is a sweet drug isn’t it!

ps: some of the switchbacks in the Sierra Nevada’s are equally fierce and rocky – I remember one from our trip with ciclomontana called the nemesis that caused a few pucker moments!

Hi there Peter. Looks like the training is paying dividends and you’ve clearly caught the MTB bug!

I bet you’ll find things easier to roll on the new bike than you did on the hardtail. If nothing else you’ll get less battered and remain in control without feeling as though your arms are about to drop off! That Canyon is ‘more bike’ than we took out there two years ago but there are certainly trails to warrant it. From the videos it looks like you’re uncovering more and more routes each week, I’m very jealous of the playground you have on your doorstep!
Roger

“The 1st thread I’ve read on STW for ages that actually makes me want to ride.” If it wasn’t for the encouragement from all you guys I don’t think I’d be going there twice a week to try these rides, so THANKS. Yes, I have definitely caught the MTB bug: technical rides 3x/week to Xmas! Company is always welcome, if anyone wants to come out here!
cheers Peter