He looks really tense, his weight is right over the front wheel and he’s looking about 1ft in front of his wheel. Hopefully he wasn’t too badly hurt.

Edit: He starts off looking ahead then his attention draws closer. I imagine he was focussing in on that little drop half way down.

The slab isn’t that steep and it does roll nicely, but once you’re at the top looking down it’s intimidating, exposed and committing. I’m a little surprised that people will tell the OP to mtfu. It does require some skill and technique which someone new (or even experienced) to MTB may not possess.

To the OP, I would suggest that if you are unsure about riding it then seek out some similar or smaller non committing obstacles to practice on. You need to start back from the initial drop so you can get a few pedal strokes in and get your positioning right. Adopt an attack position (off the saddle, knees and arms bent, looking ahead) and keep your weight between the wheels, i.e. not right off the back but probably just off the back of your saddle. Importantly drop your saddle right down. As you’re rolling down don’t tense up, stay loose and look ahead.

Does anyone know whether Cadon bank is closed? The web site is unhelpfully vague.

Thanks

Whereas in the peak there are loads of militant ramblers.

Peaks walkers do have a reputation for being a bit militant.

And 9 times out of 10 said knobber happens to be walking a dog, IME experience anyway.

Most horse riders seem to be very courteous but there are sometimes tensions around speed difference. Generally anyone holding a map is courteous.

EDIT: 1st rule of sharing trails, get in there first with a cheery ‘hello’. It helps to break down tensions and is quite disarming.

Used them once, similar experience.

Seems to be the same with Rutland cycles too.

It depends on your existing bike really. I’m not convinced full suspension is an upgrade as such, but more a different type of bike and something that probably defines your riding style more so than a hardtail. I guess where I’m coming from is that until you’ve established what your style is it might be difficult to choose the right bike, and you risk being left disappointed after spending a lot of money. They also require more maintenance and inevitably money spent.

If you’re new to MTB then I’d recommend sticking with the hardtail a while longer and maybe think about spending some money on a skills day or two rather than hardware.
I wouldn’t say red runs are something that would justify a medium to long travel full bouncer, and I’ve ridden red and black runs plenty of times on my hardtail.

So in summary, if your current bike is pretty good aside from forks then upgrade them. If there are a few things that need attention consider a better hardtail. There is a school of thought that says you learn to ride on a hardtail and moving to a full suspension bike too soon means you don’t learn technique so well.

If you’re dead set on full suspension next then something that’s a good all rounder might be best, e.g. specialized stump jumper.

Just watch for pinch flats when running low pressure. It’s quite annoying and expensive to put a hole in the sidewall of a brand new UST tyre.

You should get away with just swapping the chain. It might be worth checking for burring on the chain ring and file them off.

+1 shortening the chain if you can.

Personally I’d get the bike fully assessed for damage and claim directly with his insurer for new rather than repairs. There may the other damage you’ve not noticed. I did this after being hit a few years ago and it worked out well. I’d only get solicitors involved if I had any problems with the insurer, or if there was more involved such as personal injury. If nothing else happens at least you’ve bumped up his premium by a few hundred pounds and you don’t end up out of pocket.

I’d also ask the police to press charges as by the sound of it he’s stopped, considered his options and then decided to leave the scene.

For me, if he’d got out and apologised I’d take a very different stance.

Hope it works out well for you.

You may already know this, but…

There are loads of adjustments you can make before spending more on kit. First of all have you tried rotating the bars forwards/backwards, just a little at a time. You could try a shorter (first) or longer stem or maybe adjust its height – usual solution is to borrow different sizes from other people before spending. You could also get some benefit from adjusting your saddle position, i.e. moving it forward/backwards.

Importantly, just try one thing at a time.

I have some Hussefelt bars which are the same shape as Easton EA50 mid rise. I find both very comfortable once adjusted to suit me.

Lastly if you are going to get new bars then give wide a go as the Hussefelt bars aren’t that wide by todays standards. You might want to try with a slightly shorter stem.

I just thought I’d add that scar house was overflowing by at least 10 tonnes of water per second when I was up there a couple of weeks ago. Some of the other reservoirs in Yorkshire are not so full as they’re not quite overflowing, just brimming.

Tbh you’d be best sticking West of Leeds and beyond as it gets a bit flat to the east. It depends what you’re after really, how fit you are and how much time you want to spend at it.

I’ve only done bits of that route so can’t really say how it’d hang together as a whole.

There are many very good routes in West Yorkshire, but this sounds like something specific. Do you have a link?

Sancho, did you go up by Sharp haw? What’s the ground like up there at the moment?

It’s one of those things where you don’t actually need to drop your saddle for descents or technical stuff, but if you do you can move about more and ride faster. Also landing on your saddle off a 4ft drop is fairly unpleasant.

With a dropper you don’t have to keep your saddle at that compromised height that’s no good for climbing or descending.

Fork Travel: 80 – 100 mm

Can’t find reference to the head angle but my preference is toward long travel slack angles.

That said I wouldn’t be so averse to dipping my toe in to the short-travel XC style hardtail waters at some point in the future. It would be good to see this kind of solution appear on more bikes, that is of course providing that it actually works in practice.

Anyway Salsa’s solution has proven that my original ‘request’ was not so ‘moon on a stick’ as I had first presumed.

If you wanted to be really ‘hard’ you could get a big plate cog, like a 36 tooth or something, and grind off all but 2 opposing teeth. You could tell your mates that you run 32/2. The downsides are that you would need to pedal really carefully and your new ring wouldn’t be very durable.

Lots of interesting solutions…

Say you’re running 32:18 and want a higher gear, simply grind a couple of teeth off the cog to give a 32:16 ratio

Hmmm, I’m thinking it might not be quite so simple.

I guess there might be some merit in standardising the chainstay length, or possibly a little simpler would be for manufacturers to measure and publish the magic ratio’s for their frames. With this I’m sure I wouldn’t mind replacing the chain a little earlier each time. I don’t expect this from specialized etc, but maybe on-one and the other more grass roots builders could consider it…?

Anyway, I think for now I have a reliable and tidy solution (456 SS SS with chain guide as tensioner) so am not too concerned.

That salsa solution does look good, can I get it on a 26″ frame?

Not seen those 5 track end thingies – will do some googling…

In the meantime, maybe a belt drive that uses a special kind of belt made from material similar to the d3o stuff or cornflower. I.e. you can stretch it by applying a gentle force, but as soon as you apply a large amount of force, e.g. pedalling, then all the stretchyness instantaneously disappears and you get 100% power transfer like with a chain.

You’d be able to stretch it over your choice of cogs and it would naturally contract to form a good tension. With it stretching you couldn’t use a toothed belt, but maybe a multi-v type belt as used in cars could work…?

How it would cope with mud and grit is questionable.

For my next challenge I will be attempting to acquire a moon on a stick…

The trouble with singlespeed frames is they are still compromised. As I see it there are 4 solutions to singlespeeding a bike:

1 vertical dropouts with a tensioner – more weight, ugly, extra kit to go wrong
2 horizontal dropouts – apparently a bit of a nightmare for brake alignment plus they’re ugly. Wheel needs to be aligned.
3 sliding dropouts – look fiddly and ugly. Again, wheel needs to be aligned.
4 vertical dropouts with magic ratio – limited life of chain, limited choice of gears

I think there are probably other solutions too (ebb?), but they’re expensive or maybe just heavy so go against the whole principle of singlespeeding. Ultimately though my main frustration is lack of choice if I don’t want vertical dropouts or a 29er.

What we need here is something really innovative to combat the above and provide the ultimate singlespeeding frame solution. The frame would also need to be gearable with the same ease as vertical dropouts so that all frames could adopt the standard leaving is singlespeeders with the full range of choice. It could be like one of those engineering challenges like the $10 million (or whatever the exact amount) prize for launching a private rocket in to space. In this case we could be more modest, maybe just a tin of biscuits…?

The art of the possible, or maybe I’m just talking rubbish…?

A belief that wearing pyjamas on a bike is cool, plus all the aforementioned stuff about fitness, skill etc.

Mine took 6 weeks which I thought was unacceptable and I still ended up out of pocket. You have every right to be annoyed.

My meta is a great bike but I’m with you in that I wouldn’t buy another one. It’s a shame that they let themselves down in this way as I got the impression that a couple of years ago they were showing a lot of promise.

Given the choice again I’d probably buy a 5.

Chris, it might be best to wait until May or June, just in case. There may still be some risk of rain which you should be warned might make your experience marginally less enjoyable.

Thinking about it, best to stay in or stick to the skate park. 😉

Edit: thinking about it the skate park might be icy…

here you are

After seeing that skillful French bloke on something similar I think it might just be the latest ‘must have’ format. I wonder if I can get one with the top tube re-enforcement already added?

Or, Just by a singlespeed specific frame??

It’s that going around in circles feeling when you want something but no one product quite meets all your requirements.

Here’s hoping manufacturers will wake up and realise that not all singlespeeders have a beard and want a steep bike with 100mm forks.

I had the same question some months ago but found the choice of singlespeed specific frames (i.e. horizontal dropout and sliding brake mount) to be too limiting so reverted to a tensioner solution.

I’ve since learned (from another thread) that you can get away with vertical drop outs and no tensioner if you calculate appropriate cog sizes.

Well I’ve learnt that ice tyres and snow tyres are not the same thing. I presumed they were one and the same thing.

If snow tyres are rubbish on ice then what’s the point of them? Snow seems to be fairly grippy stuff.

I bought a length of Goodridge hose and re-used the hope fittings.

@njee, he said he wanted to make the bike lighter. No other criteria given. 😉

Swap the frame for a carbon 456, and maybe singlespeed it. Some carbon forks would save a load of weight but might not be a good match for the bike.

My own personal answer to myself when this question arises is lose more weight and get fitter. This still carries even though I’m not overweight and I’m reasonably fit.

Actually I think this is a good opportunity to tip my hat to the volunteers and thank them for all their hard work over the years. You’ve done a great job with Gisburn.

My bike had all this grey muck on it when I got back. Can we do something to sort that out? Maybe a team of trail sweeps? Can we have a travellator up to whelpstone because my legs got a little tired.

Whilst we’re at it can we employ Steve Peat or someone with similar skills to permanently man the freeride trail to give hints, tips and advice?

I’m sure gritting would be ineffective, even when applied by tank, but…

Maybe we could set up a lobby group campaigning for under trail heating for Gisburn. I reckon with about 100mil* investment and an annual fuel bill of just 10mil it might just be a goer. We could raise some private investment by asking for the dog & partridge to pay half. They might need to charge a little more for flapjacks though.

I recon with this we’d be able to prevent inconvenience annually for at least 30 people.

*Figure may be completely made up, post may contain sarcasm.

i think you told me it was fine but hully gully was pretty bad and you said the hope line was ok

Yep, that’s about right.

Maybe one persons ridable is another persons no go. Sorry you had a wasted day Chris. It sounds to have deteriorated a little during the week.

I don’t think there’s anything that could be done other than keeping an eye on the weather, e.g. thawing and freezing and to just accept that when you head out in conditions as they are now to be prepared to have a different experience to when the trails are dry.

Regarding gritting, it’s just not going to happen given that maintenance is largely volunteer based and grit isn’t going to be effective anyway. Besides I had a laugh in the snow and ice. I like the variety.

some people said it wad fine?talking out ur ars

Apologies, obviously I wasn’t there and it wasn’t ridable. I distinctly remember being there so I must be going mad. I did point out that it may have got a bit more icy since Tuesday.

Not sure if it’s been said but I find lock ons essential.

@wallop, it’s because when one is pushing up a steep incline one must pull up on the bars to maximize force applied to the pedals. The OP also mentioned rigid so there will be a cushioning factor too.

The 456 has vertical dropouts so I’m not sure how you’d manage chain length without some form of tensioner.