Following on from the ‘The Qualifier’ thread what is the most difficult/extreme feature at a UK trail centre? Pics and video would be good 😀

Not done many trail centres, but the boardwalk on Fort Bill Red scares the crap out of me.

Laggan Black must have some contenders? Lactic Ladder at golspie for a climb?

TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsSTR trail centre stuff maybe a bit limited due to peoples riding preferences I guess, how about the whole of the UK?.

Ton’s ”sweary northerners’, could you ride this?’ posts, usually seem to be riding some interesting stuff

Werewolf Drop, Cannock Chase (judging by sheer volume of refusals) 😛

Define trail?

One mans trail is another mans “You’r f****** nuts, I’m not riding that!”

In terms of just out of my comfort zone, there’s the drop offs into Swinleys Jump Gulley and the ditch-gap heading down the hill opposite.

The logdrop, followed by 3 rock drops, followed by the log sections at Brechfa seem to catch quite a few people out.

Define trail?

One mans trail is another mans “You’r f****** nuts, I’m not riding that!”

This! What makes a tricky feature also? Is it something that’s hard to ride or just something mental that people probably could do but don’t have the balls to?

Trail centers deffinately Laggan’s Black, and non trail center then most probably Glencoe.

One paticular dropoff at Mabie coming on the return loop usually has me quivering.. christ knows why.

Golspie descent seemed harder than laggan but that could have been my cut up knee.
Golspie lactic ladder climb is damn good.

But i’d definitely say you have to get away from trail centres to find anything proper technical.
For me the most technical thing i’ve ridden is the top 100m of Cadair Idris. Brilliant fun, can’t wait to ride it again.

The Kona Dark side in MAbie gave me the willies. Was just starting out on MTB, and just starting out on SPDs too.

trail centres in the UK don’t really have tricky features…. in case mr weekend warrior falls off, breaks his nail, and tries to sue.

The last corner on this cheeky descent I found off hope cross last weekend. Spat me into a stream

there’s a ~25′ gap jump/step down/hip in the top half of the cwm carn dh course. I’ve only seen a couple of folk do it

If you’re talking trail centres… I found the big tree/boardwalk/northshore thing at the bottom of Golspie’s black bloody difficult. But I guess that’s a sort of riding I’m not great at.

I think Laggan’s bark is worse than its bite… I’m relatively good at rocks, so I guess that helped, but I think there were only 2 bits on it I didn’t just right straight through first time. I found Golspie a fair bit harder, lots of stuff there I wanted to check out before I rode it.

Hah. I reckon it’s possibly that short steep rightangled uphill corner at Kielder, think it’s called For Pete’s Sake? There’s no other trail centre feature that’s seen me take as many tries before I cleared it. What a b*****d it is.

The hardest trail centre feature I’ve ever tried to ride was the dark side at Mabie. Twice I’ve had a go and twice I’ve failed miserably. Good fun though 😀

5lab You mean the ‘quarry jump’? followed by the jump between the trees. 😀
Yes there’s only a few that can land that, and not me I might add 😳

McMoab at Kirroughtree has to be a contender too, no dabbing, and not one but two chutes!

Yeah CC’s quarry section is pretty mental, you don’t see many people trying that (me included). Some of the bits on the “graveyard” at Afan can be pretty tough, I can’t remember seeing many people clean that bit between the trees with the rock slabs.

LoCo – yeah its one of them. The quarry jump name appears to be applied to both the jumps I think you’re talking about. I’ve not hit it either, but mostly because I don’t feel comfortable getting the speed for the run-in – its a bit uphill towards the end which I don’t like very much.

theres a rock step on the first decent at Nanty always does for me, did first time. Since then it’s always ended in an embarrassing mess 😳

randomjeremy, Graveyard, that’s on The Wall right?

Yup just before the derelict church at the top of the final descent.

There’s a bit on Redlands that I have a 100% crash rate on. Over the bars, off the back, high side, low side and on Saturday, down the hillside. It’s not that hard, I just do stupid shit every single time I go down it and it’s set as the “falling off bit” in my head now.

+1 for the Kona Dark Side at Mabie and the Hovis corner at Stainburn is very difficult,

Nessie at Fort Bill for trail centre.

The scary bits of Falkland/East Lomond for non-trail centre.

I’ve ridden the first but not the second!

randomjeremy – Member

Yeah CC’s quarry section is pretty mental, you don’t see many people trying that (me included). Some of the bits on the “graveyard” at Afan can be pretty tough, I can’t remember seeing many people clean that bit between the trees with the rock slabs.

About 4:15 into this?
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvoYwXUNyZM[/video]

That youtube video is mental, it’s totally off road with no tarmac or fire road in it.

Much respect, didn’t know bikes could do that sort of stuff. I’ve got to go to somewhere like that and try it.

For me, it’s got the be the waterbars on Ben Nevis.

By the time I reached the ones around the halfway loch, my arms were completely pumped and I was unable to brake properly or control the front end with any sort of confidence.

Some of the waterbars are absolute monsters. Your concentration levels are already are breaking point after a mile, so it’s sometimes hard to look far enough ahead to deal with them properly.

I took some absolutely monumental hits, getting ragdolled all over the place.

Actually, one of the scariest crashes I’ve ever had was hitting a waterbar on Ben Lomond at about 8pm one summers evening. I was on a motorway section and had good visibility, I was absolutely flat out, must have been close to 35mph, and then I lost the front wheel in a broken waterbar that I was sure I had already cleared (i saw it on the way up and made a mental note to avoid it!).

Sent me absolutely flying and landed really awkwardly on my back. Didn’t break anything (for a change!), but it scared me senseless. Never really had a big stack flat out before.

trail centres or non?

either or both 😀

Are we defining ‘trail centre’ as being free to ride in?

…only lots of pay-to-ride or members-only dh trail centres have well mad stuff… and I have no idea if there exists a trials trail centre setup like some in europe but i would imagine lots of that can only be hopped over rather than ridden conventionally.

jedi’s back garden?

There’s some proper tricky stuff at Gawton, Egypt is well techy, and the second gap on super tavi is proper scary, never seen anyone do it except on video.

Peaty’s Drop in Wharncliffe is scary, but not that difficult (provided you have big balls and a healthy dose of commitment).

I’ve attempted it once, landed it. Probably won’t do it again. 😀

Discounting big jumps and big drops, can’t ever see me doing Hovis Corner @ Stainburn. It’s kind of like the Qualifier, but round a sharp corner and you approach at 90 degrees.

After the weekend, got to say the first log at Cannock Chase, second attempt, came off to the side and dislocated my shoulder. That hurt. A lot. Hurt a bit more when I rolled on the ground to get the bugger back in.
Carried on round and did monkey after that though, that was all pretty tricky with one arm….

Climbing up Jacob’s Ladder. 😉

trail centres in the UK don’t really have tricky features…. in case mr weekend warrior falls off, breaks his nail, and tries to sue

Have you done the red graded trail at Laggan?