weirdest surface you've ridden on?

for me it was dry ski slope moguls….very odd to ride on and not fully in control…

yours?

Half a story there. How come you came to find yourself riding on dry ski slop moguls?

Moab slickrock

2 inch deep gravel in a dried out Spanish meltwater riverbed

Hardpack, dusty singletrack in the UK.

A snowy footpath which had partially melted and then frozen hard leaving a glassy rippled surface with almost no friction. I couldn’t walk on it but could jus cycle slowly, half inflated tyres helped.

Goyb, he said weirdest, not rarest

Sorry.

Same again soon Chris?

Moab slickrock. Really weird to be able to climb/descend/traverse 30% gradients without the wheels just sliding away.

We have some very odd shaped and slippy “north shore” style bridges on one of my fave trails. Put there by the local forestry bods to help folks walk over gaps and small gorges through the woods.
They are cut down trees, round with branches cut off, not sliced through to create a flat surface, noooo that would be too easy, they’ve left them log shaped and they are both very odd to walk over and ride.
When wet they’re a nightmare.

I’ve yet to understand the logic, so too the folks that have so far broken ankles and twisted knees on them. 🙄

BIG volcanic ash slopes on La Palma.

Steer with you arse/hips…

weirdest stuff deep bark chippings in binley woods brandon cov the chippings were fresh cut and laid about 5 inch deep so strenght sapping and tricky to hold a line.

Moab slickrock +1

Alta Lake in Whistler in February.. from our chalet across to rainbow park. Almost 1.5km of frozen lake.. hilarious yet painful!

podge – yep, but less mincing this time

Volcano shale in lanzarote, sliding everywhere but with loads of grip!

The top of the mega route, snow was mega slippy yet the ice on the glacier was quite grippy

The Sarenne Glacier on the 2011 Mega. All the snow had gone, and it was an odd mix of ice, rock, stones & grit.

One second it was super grippy, next I was flat on my arse sliding down the slope.

Field of spuds, where the foot deep furrows match the distance between wheels, up, down, up, down, up, down. Very difficult to ride!

Synthetic leather. I rode over me mates foot… 😀

Top of the Mega course actually. Slightly melted snow with hard-iced ruts… funny as.

Catton Park when parts of the course was sodden underneath but hard pack on top as the sun had quickly dried the top surface.

They had a magnetic grass field one year to!

2 inch deep gravel in a dried out Spanish meltwater riverbed

I’ve done that, it kind of felt like skiing.

I used to ride over the racecourse at Epsom quite regularly and they used to put huge – sort of – door mats across the course. It was squirmy, hard to ride in a straight line and momentum sapping. Weird.

A wet halfpipe.

Something you only do once though

Volcanic stones/pebbles in gran Canaria… As said above, steer with you hips. A lot like riding in deep snow. Good fun, but takes a while to get used to.

Near perfect sheet ice. I stayed upright for a few hundred feet and then the inevitable happened and my foot ended up pointing in a very unnatural direction…

The scariest and least forgiving I encounter is the “wet clay under leaves” , found at Epping and quite a bit in Herts. You can be riding along with good traction on a nice autumnal bed of leaves and whoosh you go sideways when the under surface suddenly changes to clay. Riding on roots compared to that are a doodle. The only way of preventing a bail out is always being ready and properly balanced. Even then there is no chance of holding a camber when you are traversing a slope as the tyres may grip the leaves, but the leaves certainly don’t grip clay!

A strange rutted (8″ deep laterally across the path) bridleway somewhere on the Southdowns, which was hard packed mud, with an inch of wet slippery mud on top, where i think horses had effectively pounded the track into perfect evenly spaced “waves”, where these waves were spaced almost perfectly a bike wheelbase apart. As mentioned above really dam hard to ride, and after about 100 yards i felt really quite queasy! 😉

Sun baked mud over gravel/pebbles.

I decided whilst riding a bit of local coast path, to nip off the path and ride across what looked like dry mud, it was crazed in such a manner that each piece had baked like dinner plates. It was basically clay silt from high tides, that had covered a bed of golf ball sized pebbles.
As i rode over it, they rocked, pivoted and generally moved around in a bizarre way. Strange sensation and interesting sound too.
Even more odd as it seemed to be the last time i recall such conditions on a British summer ride.

I found the cobblestone bit after the fast descent through the woods at Mountain Mayhem surprisingly difficult.

My brother’s head. Mountain biking’s gone down the tubes since the 90s.

Thick volcanic ash in Iceland and thin crusts over near boiling sulphur springs

The donkey track down to Portman in Murcia. Like riding over baby’s heads. Repeatedly.

The steps at Butterley Reservoir

Ice rink in Finland, wasn’t to bad just no sudden movements

Clay with small pebbles in ploughed field, grippy but slippy and slimy even with tyres bunged up and frame with the clag until bike just got to heavy to even lift and carry. I always avoid that local field now if it been ploughed or is any way wet.

Huge coconut mats on Epsom race course. They don’t look like they will cause problems but could have a less skilled or good looking rider off.

Two spring to mind. The damp slatey surface at Whinlatter through the woods. Kept thinking my rear axle/bearings were gone the back end was so squirmy, but not completely all over the place.

Second, the Grey Earth section of the Trans Provence. Looks like it should be loose and drifty, but its super grippy and great fun to hammer natural bermy, jumpy, gullies and bankings without worrying about washing out.

In 2012 – dry singletrack. I had forgotten what it felt like. Weird!!!