Seriously you’re all old.

24 is considered old?

I’d second chicksands as a great place to build your confidence with drops and jumps. The place has both in a range of sizes and all within a not enormous are, really encouraging you to session features.

Dangerously close to 40 here, and even after copious application of the Jedi (twice!) i still can’t jump for toffee…….. 😉

Riding within a group of 30 somethings who are all learning dh and getting faster each month. It’s great having people to encourage you on features. 4ft drops will come once you get over the worry of nosediving. Doubles you have to focus on the landing and ignore the gap and it seems much easier. Lower matador at inners has a couple of nice doubles and all you have to do is carry your speed.

Another ex-bmxer here so all too familiar with drops to flat. Doubles aren’t really an issue either as long as they’re not silly big.

To the chaps who are keen to learn but don’t have the facilities – have a go at building your own? I made a little wooden kicker with a separate flat top (pallet) and landing for my eldest and his two cousins to play on out the front of the house. As they got the hang of it, i’d move the landing and pallet back a few inches. After an hour or two they were clearing over 6′ (very sketchily though 😀 ) and loving it.

I dont particularly like drops to flat, they can hurt. So I would think twice about 4ft to flat. Would depend on speed too, the faster the better generally.
Recently been liking my doubles, more so since clearing the river gap at Chatel a couple of times. I would say thats about 25ft

After that I was hitting all the gaps I could find in Winterfold/Pitch inc. Fly Tipper (15-20ft)

This is on my FS. Its a skills compensator. I wouldnt attempt that distance on my HT, but would try 6ft. I really seem to go offline on my HT and land wonky.

40yo with 1 kid BTW 😀

Seen a few vids of that Chatel gap. Looks really nice. Fair play man.

Here’s a wee multi jump i built you might like. Big fun!

43 with two and casing jumps like a bastid 😀

40 with two kids here
Love a bit of air and riding more drops and jumps than ever
Went to Chatel and didn’t do the river gap though; it worried me seeing it from the chair lift and the amount of riders braking last minute on the run in
Good work superfli did you check out the drop on Air Voltage? Ridiculous

thanks all, some great advice… let the journey to big air and potentially big pain begin!

The stream gap in Chatel is a bit like the the Flytipper one, in that it’s flat as a pancake, so it doesn’t require anything other than speed to get over it.

Once you get your head round the mental aspect, it’s fine, you can overshoot that by almost double the distance and get away with it 🙂

In terms of gaps on trails, i’ll hit most stuff, a lot of the guys I ride with are happy to hit doubles and gaps blind, but that’s where I draw the line, if I can’t see the lander, I have to check it out.

Drops to flat arn’t fun at all. I thought those days had gone!

This is my mate Ste, on his own DIY frame. (I think he was the only hardtail at this race to hit the drop, but I may be wrong)

http://www.pinkbike.com/photo/10064972/

yes, no, maybe

spent a good few sessions earlier this year hammering the lower jump section on GBU at FoD, to get some confidence in the air, built up to clearing the road gap – great fun

since then, I have ridden almost zero trails with features like that (house move, new job, zero free time :(, only been riding with some new work buddies on natural trails) – so any mojo I accumulated has now vanished and the big bike has hardly been out of the shed, sob.

BTW, kudos to the skills on display in the photos here

I went to woburn and bottled the BIG double the 30ft+ one

This one has escaped me for so long 🙁 I’ve done the smaller ones next to it which are about the same length, maybe even a bit longer, but the gap looks so much bigger and scarier on the big 30 footer haha. Assuming you’re on about the double that’s over near the bottom of DT line and skyline that is..

phildaws – Member
thanks all, some great advice… let the journey to big air and potentially big pain begin!

I think the your best bet would be to find (or build) a nice little table top (like those in the Glentress freeride park for example) with a good run in and run out.

And then just practice jumping it again and again.

Once you’ve mastered the technique that dean referred to, you’ll be away. That’s the key. For example, here’s a pic of someone at hamsterley who probably hasn’t mastered the technique, and although they probably cleared the jump (due to their speed), they’ve got no where near the height they could have got.