So, we’re heading up for a Glencoe / Nevis uplift double whammy next weekend both for the first time.

Glencoe seems fairly straightforward, bring as much travel/suspension, body armour and brassy bollocks as you can find, and get on with it.

Nevis – the World Cup Downhill course is shut for the SDA (hadn’t realised when we’d booked it, but I can’t pretend I was going to be tackling very much of it anyway), so it’s whatever else is there.

So erm… what else IS there?! I see there’s a variety of Red/Blue/Green XC courses – are these more like your common O’ garden trail centre trails (i.e. do I chuck the trail bike in the van too) or is it DH orientated?

I’m happy to go and ride it whatever, just don’t fancy taking the 120mm’er down something that looks like the Matterhorn, likewise don’t fancy peddling up much on the downhiller.

Any insider tips or pointers gladly received!

Cheers
JM

Unless they’ve been improved in the last couple of years I found the trails in Leanachan (sp?) forest to be disappointing and very uneven in character. Laggan Wolftrax is much better.

Note I haven’t done the red downhill so unable to comment on that.

The red run of the Nevis uplift is very good if its open , I went up last year and spent more time on that than the World Cup run.

If you’re allowed on the nevis red (sometimes uplifts for the races mean it’s impractical) then it’s really good imo. Kind of runs out 2/3ds down but that’s OK since you didn’t have to ride up in the first place 🙂 The public version of the worldcup- without the woods and big doon- is actually not that much harder, it’s just more relentless. It’s a pretty good sign that lots of riders alternate between the two, the red’s interesting enough for full on downhillers and the downhill’s accessible enough for anyone that’s comfortable on the red.

The really important thing you need to know for the rest of the nevis trails is DON’T RIDE THE WAYMARKED 10UTB ROUTE, it’s appalling. You can ride the first mile or so to get 9/10ths of the good bits,then loop back to the centre. And you can do most of the other bits by adding them to the world champs. The rest is basically fire road, and not even nice fire road. Total pisstake.

I really like the world champs’ course, it’s not the best trailcentre in the world but it has character and charm that most lack.

There’s a bunch of new stuff that I’ve not ridden at all, with the van uplift- which seemed completely weird, but I dunno.

There’s tons of offpiste too but it’s not the easiest to negotiate… there’s random trails going off anywhere, some of it is really nice, some of it’s lethal, some of it ends in bottomless swamps. Maybe a google/strava of the blue crane descent would find you soemthing interesting

What’s glencoe like these days? Last time i was there, the red was fun but a bit limited, and the dh was pretty smashed up- still open but very unpredictable, and it’s not like it’s easy normally, I found it all pretty hair-raising if I’m honest. IIRC the SDA ended up moving a race there to the red to avoid it but I’m outof touch now.

Just down the road is kinlochleven, the riding there is probably my favourite in Scotland…

You can do an awesome 80km loop around the Ben (and a whole lot more). Or ride the Ciaran Path from Kinlochleven?

Give me a yell if you want GPXs – email on profile

Cool, thanks chaps – so the consensus for Fort Bill then is to take the big bouncy bike, jah?

The red run is ace,and not as make-a-mistake-and-die as the WC course.

the red’s interesting enough for full on downhillers

but not if they’re on DH bikes – pretty shit on a big bike imo

Pretty much as Northwind says. The new green and blue trails are only a few minutes long each, but they’re fun enough for a quick blast down as a warm up for the longer stuff.

Aye, wouldn’t fancy a full on dh bike on the red. I really like the red, as NW says though, it does peter out a bit.

What I’d really like to see them doing is a blue dh – Imagine the last blue at GT, but dropping over 500m? It’d be miles long, and awesome fun!.

😀

Gt blue has just been trumped by Comrie Croft – amazingly fun trail!

Agreed, but more people on here will know what I mean if I say GT Legend!

I’ve done the red a few times on dh bikes, thought it worked well tbh, but it’s over a bit faster 😆 Rides pretty differently though

pfft, **** ’em 😉

Northwind – Member

I’ve done the red a few times on dh bikes

likewise, but thought it was gash. First section – too tame, boardwalks – rubbish, fat and uphill bits – pish, steeper bits – ok but slow and twisty for the big bike, section after steep bits – ok but dodgy boulders at edge of trail waiting for you to get too enthusiastic.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good trail but I’d be having much more fun and down it much faster on the #ENDURO bike*

*would be awesome if the SES used it I reckon, even if just from the end of the boardwalks

Ah yeah, my dh bikes always had pedalling gears- mtb cassettes- because I hate pushing. So that probably made the wee climbs a bit better 😆 There’s a video somewhere of joe barnes just hovering up the main climb, but I lack antigrav.

The extra speed definitely puts the price of failure up pretty damn high though. All in all I think I prefer the dh on a trailbike than the red on a dh bike but I think they’re all decent.

Always wanted them to run the enduro down the dh and red, it’d be ace. Not many passing places though. Is that new boardwalk bit still in place by the bit that the hanging trees closed?

The new trails at the bottom of the red/black make a worthwhile finish to the red DH track, especially if the main track has the SDA on it. We rode it the other weekend, after sacking off the SES at Glenlivet, and as we were all on non-DH bikes, enjoyed the red more than the black (which just felt like an exercise in braking technique). Once you find the traverse track 2/3 way down, head right for 50m, then drop down the easy jump track, or keep going another 50m and head down the slightly bigger jump track.

When are you heading up? I’m heading up on thursday until tuesday (for the sda) but taking both bikes (Polygon and meta) so if you fancy it we could ride the red or some other bits as i’m just heading up on my own. Have ridden the dh track numerous times but only ridden the red a couple of times. My email is:
biking259 @hotmail.co,uk if you’re free

Had my first uplift day at fort bill a couple of weeks ago.

As brutal as expected but a rewarding track to learn and try to ride with some flow.

I don’t think I’d bother going if the main dh run was shut. The red is OK but the boardwalk is a bit overkill.

I’m told Glencoe is significantly harder than the fort bill black run BTW.

+1 to chapaking

As you go up the chairlift at Glencoe, you pass over a sign stuck in the ground that reads “Danger Bike Track”.

I think it is intended to warn pedestrians, and read “Danger: Bike Track”, but given what I’ve seen of the track, it really is a track for Danger Bikes. I laugh every time I ride the chairlift – with my skis, if I had the bike I’d be sh!t!ng it.

The World cup XC course is my favourite trail by far, it just rides so much more fluently than anywhere else I’ve ridden. The blue and green downhill runs are much funner than the “suitable for trailers” signs make out, you’d be nuts to take a trailer down either!

Ok,so I’m gonna chuck both bikes into the back of the van and just play it by ear then. It looks like there’s a proper big mix of trails up at Nevis, which sounds ace.

I wasn’t sure if it was a Downhill mecca (e.g. Innerleithen) or if it had a mix of DH and 7 Stanes-ey/trail centre type trails too – which appears to be the case.

Cheers for the pointers chaps, looks like a good weekend lined up!

I have ridden both locations a number of times. I would suggest not bothering with the Nevis range uplift this weekend if the SDA is on. Even if the red run is open, it isn’t really worth it on it’s own and the lift might be busy.

I wouldn’t ride Glencoe DH if you’re having an off day. It is a lot more technical than fort bill even in the dry. If it’s wet then it’s way harder. If you enjoy steep and techy, you’ll love it.

I haven’t ridden the red run at Glencoe for 2 years. It was pretty dull then but it hadn’t been open long, I believe it has had a lot of work since but can’t comment.