Hi all,

Title says it all really – planning to ride the XC trail Friday and have an uplift day booked for Saturday. I’ve never ridden a downhill course before; the most gnarr I’ve done has been the black bit of Whites at Afan. So… do I need more than the knee pads, 661 subgear pads and fox flux helmet I’ve got? Slightly concerned I may need more but equally don’t want to be an all the gear no idea Storm Trooper on a bike!

please help Obi Wan….!!

Depends how confident you feel really. I haven’t ridden Cwmcarn, either trail, for about 18 months since I moved away from the area, so I don’t know if much has changed. Back then, I used to ride my Enduro around either xc or dh with just my normal helmet on. Could just have been that I didn’t go fast enough :p

Depends how fast you want to go 😉 I took the enduro and rode up the red trail a few times to hit the dh run. I did it with knee pads, compression top and my xc helmet and it was fine, but would take a ff helmet and some upper body armour for a days uplift.

if you want to hit the jumps fast and do all the drops then ff helmet is required imo.

think I am unlikely to do big drops on the grounds that I no longer bounce well!!

Only you can decide about the body armour. I wear it when I go to Cwmcarn, first time I went I didn’t wear it and had a few crashes, ached badly the next day. Last time I went in body armour went over the bars once and was fine.

It depends how gnar you’re going to get as most of the track can be done slowly there aren’t really any steep bit’s were the only way down is fast.

there’s only one drop of note, the rest of the course is one which gets harder by virtue of the speed you ride it and the lines you take.
I always wear full face and armour because it’s a course I know fairly well and tend to push myself hard.
if you are just going to mince down it, make sure you go towards the back of the uplift group so you’re not slowing people down.

brakes – TBH I usually do regardles of what speed I think I’m going to go at. I don’t like the feeling that there may be someone faster behind me whose ride I may be ruining – ruins my ride!!!

I’ve hit the dh a couple of times in knee pads and my Xen, in the wet i did have a decent crash on one run and wished i’d had more armour/full face on. If your using the uplift i’d definately pad up and wear a full face just to give you a bit of extra confidence and get your moneys worth out of the uplift.
Also worth noting is that you can push up and session the bottom half of the dh as well as the final descent of the xc trail which is well worth a couple of runs on, push up to the side of the dh and then at the fireroad the dh is immediately left (you’ll see it pushing up) and the final descent of the xc is about 500 yards down on the right. The bottom of the dh providing your not hitting the big jumps is all achievable with a normal lid on.

the bits where you need full face and body armour are the fast slab drop sections and the fast tight section that winds through the trees as if you come off in either of those places you’re going to hit sharp rocks or trees – these are the places that you need body armour in my opinion

I would wear at least a FF on the uplift day, it can be pretty scary if you’ve not ridden DH much.

Often you see people going on the uplift with no armour and a standard trail lid on their trail bikes but what often happens is they **** themselves after one or two runs and do the XC instead. It’s ok though you can get dropped off just below the freeride carpark or by the totem pole so you can enjoy the best parts of the XC a number of times.

Just enjoy it and go with the flow!

As already said wearing a full face helmet is a good idea. the more protection you wear the the faster you will ride. Although armour will only really stop the sharp stones eating your skin. Mate of mine came of on the first of the 3 stone steps and cracked his arm and broke his shoulder while fully armoured.