Rampage Diary 4: Location Location Location

Red Bull Rampage owes everything to its location. If it were anywhere else in the world it would a different event. The Rampage sites, just outside Vi …

By stwhannah

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Rampage Diary 4: Location Location Location

As I said on the other thread, I thought the idea was to ride the landscape rather than destroy it. Those huge boulders might be a pain in the arse for riding round but what exactly do people think is binding the place together?

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The more I see of Rampage the less I like.

@squirrelking I agree with you, this is destruction of habitat to “stoke” some egos and boost the profits of a drink’s company. Whilst it may look like a barren landscape with poor quality “dirt” (that word, used in the context of habitat says a lot about attitudes), there will be a whole ecosystem built up over thousands of years that is being destroyed or altered. I always remember watching a film about the Kalahri when I was little (on a double bill with Mary Poppins) and the animals and insects that lived there were both numerous and incredible where at first sight there was just sand. I am constantly amazed by the stupidity and arrogance of humans with regard to our planet!

What a place.
The nearest comparison in the UK is behind Nationwide in Swindon I hear.

Loving the geology of Rampage write up @stwhannah

Fascinating stuff. I love that you actually filled a jam jar with dirt and tested it! 🙂

I’ve always wondered how they are actually allowed to alter the landscape like they do.

I mean, I suppose in the UK we don’t have a sense of the pure scale of the place and that in that vast landscape you might consider the odd mountain as ‘spare’. But yeah, how they are allowed to break up boulders and send big rocks cascading down the hill sits uncomfortably with me I must say. I don’t like it at all.

It’s not something you’d expect these days but then I suppose America generally sings from a different hymn sheet to the rest of us!

Great stuff. Really interesting. Weirdly I always enjoy the build up, the vlogs, the articles and the testing so much more than the event itself, with their standing desk and Britney headsets…

So how much of the site are you allowed to wander around Hannah? You mentioned a press exclusion zone I think? Do they stop you from going right up to the top lines during building?

 

I must be one of the only people who finds it perfectly ok to dig and build there, I mean there’s millions upon millions of miles of these areas, digging out 20, 50 or even 100 racks, does that even compare to what we as humans allow on this planet in terms of destruction? Tropical rain forests, mining, natural resources etc, this is like 1 drop in a bucket sitting in an ocean.

That’s the thing though. Of course that actual hill and the digging they are doing is a drop in an ocean but I think it’s a symbolic thing.

If you look at what they are doing and you only see what THEY are doing in isolation, directly there in that spot, but you don’t consider the potentially wider implications, the message it sends out, then I don’t think you would ever see what the issue could be

You have to see the wider picture and what things like this put out symbolically to us as humans.

All sounds a bit serious I agree, but I suppose it’s just noticeably at odds with the growing trend of perhaps trying not to look like you’re destroying the planet.

Just surprises me that it’s sanctioned and in front of such a huge audience these days I guess.

Yeah I see you words, but I don’t get it. It’s like saying the jumps my lads mates built in the woods are destroying the ecosystem.

What about the 200 houses they’re starting to build 80m away. Or the factory 1 mile away they knocked down a woodland to build.

In 10 years, 20 years the Rampage desert will still be the same, sure a few rocks may have moved, but I do t get what the actual impact is.

Using the logic the surely we should never ride an MTB on any track/path/trail as it wasn’t there 200, 500 or 1000 years ago. Maybe?

If instead of digging by hand these narrow lines once a year that are practically weathered away in the space of a winter, they drove construction plant out to the desert and tarmac’d a square mile and put a children’s playground on it, would that be worse or perhaps more acceptable?

just reframing the argument.

I see you words, but I don’t get it

No. That’s fine.

Let’s leave it at that 🙂

just reframing the argument

I don’t think so. You’re introducing an irrelevant, invented scenario and asking for a scale of acceptability on how much humans should be able to ‘leave their mark’ on the landscape 😉

Anyway, I’m not arguing any point for or against. I’m glued to the coverage and I really enjoy it. All I’m saying is that it surprises me that a global drinks company sanctions this kind of ‘alteration’ at any level to the landscape for a competition.

No doubt it’s incredible human endeavour though.

Let’s leave it at that 🙂

Sure, but it’s ok to discuss things with them going all crazy

I guess those against the digging have never and will never visit a trail centre or purpose built MTB trail in the UK?

I’ll stop trying to explain what I mean. Clearly it’s difficult to convey and seemingly the wrong end of the stick is being gotten.

Also, never said I was for or against it. Just said it surprised me.

I thought the whole point of rampage was free ride on natural terrain. Now they need a week to build a slopestyle course with more sandbags than they have in Florida

@stwhannah. Can we have the same level of effort and content for the edr series next year please.

I thought the whole point of rampage was free ride on natural terrain. Now they need a week to build a slopestyle course with more sandbags than they have in Florida

I think it’s called progression. You can’t land a 70′ canyon onto a completely random surface, you can’t take off on something that isn’t correct either.

The sport evolved, changes, moves, like DH tracks, like XC tracks, everything moves a little over time. Look at some of the track features the XC guys ride now, no way they’d have ridden them 15 years ago.

Same with Rampage, as the bikes get better, tyres get better the features get bigger, but do need work. I agree it’s different than it first started out as, but that doesn’t make it wrong.

@kayak23 as further info: this land is for sale – in terms of rights to use it for ‘stuff’. Whether that’s grazing (hugely damaging when done intensively, as it arguably is), mining, or bike events. Other areas – like the National Parks and Wilderness areas – are protected. BLM land is a bit like Forestry England or Natural Resources Wales land, held for the people but also a revenue generating operation.

I was walking down a beach with about fifteen 14 and 15 year old boys the other week. Beautiful location on the Moray coast. Above the beach were loose pebble cliffs/banks. I’m no geographer but you could see the dark stripes running through it showing the different eras and times where the land must have been very different. As a 52 year old I’m just in awe when I go to places like that with the weight of history. The boys…….wanted to kick the living shit out of it and dig holes, make a mega slide…or just trash it because they could. Until the fun sponge middle aged bloke told them they couldn’t. Given a few winters the section they were hell bent on trashing might well be wiped away by nature and a big winter storm – so maybe it should be ok to ‘enjoy’ nature as you like. Didn’t sit well with me though.

Rampage is very much like a teenage boy. Me, I like journeying through places like that rather than feeling the need to bend it to my short term wants and then walking away. Feels a bit like a bolt/no bolt debate in climbing 30 odd years ago.

must be one of the only people who finds it perfectly ok to dig and build there, I mean there’s millions upon millions of miles of these areas, digging out 20, 50 or even 100 racks, does that even compare to what we as humans allow on this planet in terms of destruction? Tropical rain forests, mining, natural resources etc, this is like 1 drop in a bucket sitting in an ocean.

Totally agree.

I think it’s weird when people pick up on the visible, and yet utterly insignificant, trail hacking going on here. But they  ignore the vastly more important trashing of the planet that goes on with Le Tour or DH World cup or any other event that involves flying or driving huge squads of people about the world.  So superficial…

BTW I totally get that Rampage does similar.  Which sort of re-enforces my point.

I think it’s weird when people pick up on the visible, and yet utterly insignificant, trail hacking going on here. But they ignore the vastly more important trashing of the planet that goes on with Le Tour or DH World cup or any other event that involves flying or driving huge squads of people about the world. So superficial…

Can you point to where I did that?

@matt_outandabout do trail centres in the UK typically involve people hacking away at hillsides, tipping boulders down willy nilly and generally tearing apart the fabric of the landscape? I was under the impression there were various agencies that would take a rather dim view of that, try putting a gravel parking patch on a field without SEPA permission and see how you get on.

@mark with whataboutery like that I can see how the likes of Ernie get a free pass. That’s not even worth responding to it’s so daft.

For all those defending this as a “drop in the ocean” where’s the line? I could see this argument if it was a small group of folk quietly doing it as a one off but this is heavily publicised and as such likely to encourage folk to do the same. Remember those woods where everyone was kicking off about kids that had been hacking down trees for trails? Where do you think they learn that behaviour?

Surface mine Hambacher Forest, Germany, is 26 square miles currently, with the designated area for mining over 50 square miles. Was ancient forest until the mid 70s.

involve people hacking away at hillsides, tipping boulders down willy nilly and generally tearing apart the fabric of the landscape?

This is hyperbolic nonsense. None of that has happened at Rampage. Hannah’s excellent series of articles on this has surely demonstrated that. By comparison trail centre development involves plant machinery and other landscaping processes that dwarf the pick axe and hand building methods taking place in Utah for two weeks each year. My point was not whataboutery but perspective. My advice would be to pick our environmental battles better. There are a great many more environmentally damaging activities taking place around the world right now that would appreciate this level of attention. The insignificant singletrack being temporarily dug into a remote part of an inhospitable desert is not worthy of this level of indignation and environmental contempt.

It remnds me of the legendary arguments of Mike Vanderman.

This is nonsense. None of that has happened at Rampage.

@mark did you watch the reel I posted? That’s exactly what is happening.

I’m actually not against trail centres for the reasons I already alluded to, the digging is managed and has to comply with environmental regs otherwise you would be risking erosion. It’s all done with consideration for the environmental impact.

My problem with Rampage is the optics of that sort of behaviour. It just gives an impression that hacking away at stuff with no consideration is fine. It’s the same as folk shralping through loam for the Insta shot. Yes there are bigger environmental problems but that’s just making excuses. I know exactly what sort of response I’d get on here if I started dailying an RX8 and used the excuse that it’s only one car. It’s not sustainable just as a trail centre that didn’t have armoured trails wouldn’t last a season.

And FFS don’t mention his name he’s like Beetlejuice!

I disagree. It’s not what is happening.

‘willy nilly’? ‘hacking away’? ‘tearing apart the fabric of the landscape’? This is hyperbole. I one of Hannah’s reels from the event the trails are so insignificant from the base of operations that she needed to point out with her finger where the actual trails were as they were so insignificant within the landscape.

As I sit here I’m looking out at the several square miles of fields behind my house where cows are grazing. That should be forest but instead agriculture has hacked at the landscape, deforested it, dug up thousands of tons of stone and piled it all up in long walls in order to keep livestock specifically bred away from their original genetics in order to serve our strictly unnesseccary human demands.

And all of that is fine btw. At least by me. Humans are part of the landsacpe and have the right to shape it to suit our requirements. We are now learning that we need to do that in a better way than we have done in the past and time may have already run out on that score. But moving rocks around in the desert is NOT one of our existential challenges we should be getting pissed off about.

That’s not whataboutery – that’s perspective.

In the scheme of things I’m not that bothered about a few boulders being moved or a load of sandbags being plonked on the dirt. Compared to some of the stuff that goes on in the US and everywhere else really, it’s nothing; was watching some event on YT a while back where huge crowds watch cars, buses and various vehicles being sent off some huge hillside to crumple in a heap several hundred feet below in what looked like a pretty nice mountain forest area. And the average MX track (gotta be hundreds of those) probably does way more lasting damage; sports stadiums and motor racing venues are going to be a whole next level of destruction, all for some people to enjoy their sport, so although Rampage isn’t perfect I’m not that fussed personally. 

I’m slightly bored of it though, can’t really get that excited about yet another backflip over a huge sculpted gap anymore. The more creative lines though are still good to watch, Brendan’s battleship thing was good; the exposure was nuts and I’d prefer to watch riders do more of those kind of lines, more creativity and exposure and less amplitude. Maybe the judging doesn’t reward that kind of thing, idk. I guess it’s not as visually impressive to the average viewer but to me it’s more exciting. 

Can you point to where I did that?

Crikey. This may come as a shock to you, but not every reply is directed solely at you.

It is and on an individual basis I agree it’s going to be insignificant. But that can be applied to a lot of things until you end up back at the BuT CHINA!!!1! argument.

Like I said it’s the optics and the message it sends. It’s not good.

Going back to an earlier point, if a bunch of folk did what Brendan did in that reel in their local woods would they get the same response? I’m pretty sure at least one person defending this would have very different views in that scenario. There have been more than a few topics where rogue builders have been completely castigated so how is this any different?

@thegeneralist given it was only a 1:3 chance I thought I was in with a decent shout TBF. So who was it you were addressing?

There have been more than a few topics where rogue builders have been completely castigated so how is this any different?

Because they have permission from the landowners?

@weeksy not really a decent benchmark and I’m sure we can both think of examples where you could take that to an extreme.

As an aside I miss the old rampage where riders rode what they saw and didn’t engineer everything to the nth degree. I’ve not seen anyone present an argument as to why that couldn’t still be the case. Sure, move some dirt about or smooth a boulder with sandbags but use the terrain in front of you otherwise it’s just a slopestyle event. Meh.

not really a decent benchmark

How is it not, it’s in direct correlation to your comment before it of ‘what if people did it in their local woods’ well they don’t have permission in their local woods, so it’s not allowed. Clearly they do at Rampage, hence it being allowed.

I can’t see how that’s not a benchmark?

I think it’s called progression. You can’t land a 70′ canyon onto a completely random surface, you can’t take off on something that isn’t correct either.

Im sure that’s what they call it but it’s not really. If they need to build take offs and landings then it’s not about progressing riding natural lines it’s about making a spectacle called slopestyle.  I completely agree you probably can’t jump a 70’ canyon without ramps and landings. But imho your not riding freeride so not progressing that discipline

There have been a few nerves jangled here and some whataboutery too. Yes, there are larger issues but it shouldn’t mean that smaller ones should be ignored, I’ve used a trail centre once some years ago and I encourage their use by others as it keeps pressure off the bridleways, however, when they are constructed they are subject to environmental surveys and mitigating measures put in place if necessary. The hacking about of hillsides by groups of folk “willy-nilly” will cause damage to the ecosystem, whether it’s the physical structure of the ground where animals and invertebrates live and hide from the heat and predators or the resultant change to water run off when it rains. To call a place “inhospitable” is wrong, perhaps from a human perspective it looks sterile but it will have plenty of flora and fauna if you look hard enough. To do damage to “stoke” a few egos (yes I know that I’m repeating myself) and increase a dodgy drink companies profits is wrong. The mountain bike industry could do better!

It’s predominantly water that has changed the style of the event. Without water, you can’t build, because everything is soft loose dirt. That gave the early days a raw feel, as did the fact it was only the riders digging. But the riders are clear that water makes things safer, because it makes the surface more predictable. Without water, it’s more like just riding downhill and hoping that you land the drops. I think a ‘dry’ rampage would be possible (and very different to look at), but unless it was accompanied by a bunch of rules aimed at stopping you doing certain types/sizes of moves, it would lead to a lot of nasty injuries as people tried to land flips on loose terrain etc.

View from the rampage site, just for kicks.

Excellent write up! There really are some incredible riders at this event; watching Brendan tick off features methodologically that you genuinely wonder if anyone else could do?!? And Tom, working through his fear, out of his comfort zone and having multiple big crashes as he figures out his line of bonkers features. The skill, commitment and determination levels are something else 🙂

How is it not, it’s in direct correlation to your comment before it of ‘what if people did it in their local woods’ well they don’t have permission in their local woods, so it’s not allowed. Clearly they do at Rampage, hence it being allowed.

My point being that landowner permission isn’t what I’m talking about. The land owner could give them permission or he might decide to allow folk to dump waste oil. Extreme example but the appropriate environment agency would have something to say about both those examples.

As another example mind when a lot of the same people that are advocating for Rampage were losing their shit over that stupid ultra marathon spraying some chalk paint around Arran?

@stwhannah but water at least has a means of draining and doesn’t leave a particularly permanent mark, I have no problem with that. Smashing or digging out boulders and flinging them down the hill does.

HOW THE F*** DO YOU LEARN THAT IN CORNWALL?!!!….  has got to be the quote of the year from Ollie Wilkins in Deaks latest video here, said about Tom Isted testing a run.

🙂

I’m loving these videos of Bren slowly ticking off his lines. Just incredible. What a legend 🙂

I just discovered Tom did the BFC before T-Mac. ‘YOLO’ he said. Cripes.