We all know that photographs never really give you a good idea about just how steep the terrain can be. Helmet Cam footage is particularly guilty of this.

Here are two photographs of the same section of the new track for the first round of the World Cup DH in South Africa. One taken looking straight down, the other from the side.

Perfectly illustrates the point I think!

Looks steep in both to me.

That’s definitely downhill.

Have you got any pics of the dropoff landing in the pic? Looks like quite a drop too?

[edit] I would walk that, too mental for me 😉

looks about the same in both to me weird

If the person wasn’t in the first one it would look flatter.

I think that course would take me a few hours.

I think I’ll stick to XC marathons.

ski – the pics are from the Dirt website. It’s the Pietermaritzburg World Cup DH track that they’re reworking a bit.

http://dirt.mpora.com/news/pietermaritzburg-world-cup-track-photos.html

bloody well is

where is my crampons

Couldn’t work out the first pic until I’d seen the second, so that probably proves your point.

Hope they get a camera there for the coverage.

Cheers Rickos, this one looks more like a ski jump!

Piece of peace. Cannock Chase is steeper.

Doesn’t look ‘that’ steep, most certainly not in the comparable to Champery kind of steep.

This is the track they all moaned about being flat & pedally. Last time it was there it was pretty boring as far as World Cup DH goes to watch.

I think they only moaned about that when at race pace, it was supposedly a good course if you didn’t bust a gut on the pedally bits. They are taking that stuff on board this year though. It’s good to cover all aspects of dh over a season IMO, pedalling included.

Looks like this is the bottom of the drop off

Looks like the NW Alps but drier

It doesn’t look steep.

edit – but that jump looks sick

Ponce 😉

You all need to man up! 8) I’d ride it. That dude aint stood with his bike ‘cos he’s got off and decided to walk the track, it’s ‘cos he was just about to go and weigh up that drop..

LOL @ RD

DH skiiers have glide sections, so what’s wrong with DH bikers having pedally sections?

To be fair the point wasn’t meant to be that it was mind bendingly steep, just that the camera will often lie about how steep the gradient is.

Champery is steep.

Champery is steep.

With a capital ‘S’
I went down it. (On my ar$e & pushed the bike down in front of me)

I rode slid doon on my arse on the Champery cousre. I can also confirm that it was steep.

Rode the llangollen nps dh track on sunday…wetter than an otter pockets and too steep to walk up the middle section.Basically freefall down the fall line and hope the berm catches you and spits you out the other side…and repeat until arm pump takes over.
Made a change from 100k on the ss!

…wetter than an otter pockets

🙂

The first two pictures show a course that is too steep to ride fast IMO.

ski’s picture shows more what I’d expect from a world DH course,that jump can be taken flat out!