The Bike Park is open with uplift running. You can ask on the Facebook group about Christmas opening. There is some singletrack near the park, but its not hugely easy to find and doesn’t link up that well, however if you are up for exploring I can point you in the general direction.

http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#6/-120.90000/38.36000/blue/bike

Is also a good help.

If you have a car then you can also head over to Puddletown or Wareham as there is lots of easy to find trails there.

Yeah no racing at Triscombe in 2017 according to that Triscombe Riders Facebook group. :(

Have to agree, old Skyline descent being more enjoyable than the final Blade descent.

Don’t forget Blade has a choice of 2 final final descents after The Rock, Happy Life and Jetlag.

I much prefer Happy Life

Needs a lot of work now the MX bikes have given it a pasting especially

I rode Blade soon after it opened (I think) and liked Ghosttrain. I rode Blade a few months back and LOVED Ghosttrain! Didn’t realise all the ruts were from mxers, thought they’d just intentionally just left it natural.

Maybe I’m just weird but Ghosttrain in its current state is my favourite trail at Afan.

The Rock straight into Happy Life at the end is also great, but I’d agree the start of Blade isn’t much to shout about.

I had it happen to one after about 10 months. Was told it was dirt under the seal so took it on the chin and replaced it with another one. Happened again within 3 months of meticulous cleaning and servicing.

Sent it off to SRAM who claimed I’d serviced it using the wrong products. Sent them a photo of the SRAM branded grease and butter which were exactly what it says in the service guide. About 4 weeks later got a brand new shock back.

making them more shorter and more technical, mainly for the benefit of the cameras/spectators I would say. I think everyone can agree that this approach to course design has also filtered down to our national and regional races. This has resulted in races becoming more and more dangerous, with even experienced racers having bad offs and getting injured (the big drop off at Wasing being an example…).

Personally I feel that the course technicality is a solved issue with A/B/C lines. A lines can be crazy technical as long as there is an alternative.

I also do see any reason why BC races can’t feature non-ranking races, like hot-lap, pairs, singlespeed, plus bike, etc..

Pairs or team relay would be great!

On the way there will be plenty of mini-battles with other riders

I think this is the key point, and the crux of the issue. I reckon too many people turn up to a race, enter in the easiest category, watch as the entire pack disappear off into the distance after 5mins, slog around for another hour in solitary no mans land then go home never to return.

Without enough other beginners/casual racers, they never get the taste of the actual racing. Its chicken and egg and I think there needs to be a real marketing push to these kind of riders. A big thing needs to be made to make first time racers feel warmly welcomed and have a good time.

The Wiggle mtb sportive things are well attended as I understand.

I’ve seen (and been) a total beginner with no idea what I’m doing and been dropped within 300m and spent the last 2/3 of races on my own. When only 2 or 3 beginners turn up it’s likely they don’t really get to race, as said already, the pace of an XC race is eye opening. The fun of XC is the close racing with people of similar fitness/skill. You remember the battles not your overall position.

I think one solution would be to run a total beginner race at every xc event, but make it a single lap or very short time, but make entry free. That way you’d get more people just giving it a go and hopefully sticking with it.

Really good race today. Stages were loose and slippy but not too boggy, slidy fun!

Taping and organization was spot on. Hope the person who took a tumble on the rocky chute mends up ok.

Stevet1
WTF is jibbing?

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Cant wait to get back on my 5010 and do silly stuff – old clip but this one fired me up

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Yep I’m in for this one. Looking forward to it.

Do you have a bike already? If so maybe just spend it on that with whatever you need doing?

I’d of thought any £500 160mm bike would be pretty long in the tooth now and don’t think youll find any of the ‘modern’ geo bikes for that price that aren’t a bag of spanners.

Would it matter if the coil shock has a piggyback reservoir?

This seems to depend on the shock design and frame size.there is a long thread on Pinkbike with lots of photos.

Most fit it seems, but some are tight or touch the frame when bottomed out.

Excellent news, just been browsing the bay and found some reasonably priced coil shocks on there.

Please let me know what you end up with and how you get on. :-)

Kiksy, did it go on ok or did you have to file bits out of the way, use offfset bearings etc?
Please please tell me it just bolted straight on !?!?

Yeah the 200×57 was just a straight swap out. Didn’t have to modify anything.that’s on a small frame too.

The difference for me in weight was only 220g with the coil which didn’t bother me. Cane Creek make a few coils in 200×51 if you’re worried about clearance but many people have fitted 200×57 with piggy back (have a Google) especially on the larger frame sizes.

I bought that coil purely as an experiment and for a bit of a laugh. At £20 I knew I could sell it again if I didn’t like it. I really recommend giving a cheap coil a go, I promise you won’t regret it. :-)

I bashed on a £20 10 year old Fox Van RL in 200×57 on my small Trance.

Went from a Monarch Plus, and the Van coil is just light years ahead of the Monarch Plus in terms of downhill performance. The small bump is just insane. I really think the Trance frame suits a coil exceptionally well.

The Monarch pedals better, and is lighter, but I’ll take that hit as the coil is just so much better descending its silly.

Ah perfect cheers, I did give it a quick tap with a socket drift but didn’t want to go full nuts incase it was integral.

Yep, don’t wait until next year, just find a regional race near you and have a crack! You’ll learn a lot about what you need to work on and be able to meet other people into racing.

Yeah potentiality this looks really interesting! Need to wait to hear some reviews on performance/reliability though.

I’m signed up for this too, not done a mini Enduro before.

In the practice time can you loop the stages multiple times individually or do you have to complete the entire race route?

Put one on the front and an Ikon on the back for a XC race. As people have said, lots of XC race tyres have even less tread, and the side knobs on the RR are pretty big. I liked it, didn’t feel sketchy at all on fast rooty singletrack. Wouldn’t want to do anything steep on it, but it’s definitely not a widow maker.

I think the reason it’s not so common is that there are lighter choices better suited to the job.

Signposting I suppose could be better, but all the DH trails are so close together its pretty easy to see them all when you pedal up.

Demo’d one 2 weeks ago as a bit of a laugh, not in the market for a new bike at all, ended up being one of the best bikes I’ve ridden. Not just hardtail, but all bikes. Attacked steep DH stuff so well, and yet pedalled great back up despite being “only” 10 speed.

Keep thinking out buying one.

I’ve worn a snowboard helmet before on a flight.

Right, We’re back!

Had a great trip, raining on the first day, which was great fun, otherwise it was sunny and hot.

In the rush to get ready I only brought DH tyres, and coupled with the lack of buy in from the others in the group, didn’t end up doing Col Du Coux after all the fuss!

However, we did do lot of the other suggestions including Porridge, which was absolutely brilliant fun, so loose and steep!

Found some other off piste between Canyon and the Golf Course which was also very good. A couple of the lines there were being forested literally as we rode down so keep an eye out on those.

Took a couple detours on Pleney and found some other lines too which were good. The one suggested to keep going straight where the track comes out into the open on the black and continues left had a big ‘Privee’ sign on it so we didn’t do that one.

Did the Linderets stuff which we didn’t do last year and was by a far and away the best official stuff we found so far in the PDS, natural, rocking and long runs. Loved it.

Thanks for all the help, made the trip pretty much perfect in terms of the style of stuff we rode, was great to do more than the standard ‘berm-jump-berm-jump’ stuff :D

Was the reach ok but the leg length an issue I have 29 inch inside leg.

My Inside leg is 76cm , arms 60cm if that helps.

The oem stem is 70 mm, to keep up with the Jones’s I now have a 50’m.

It was back in 2014 I had the demo medium so it’s hard to remember exactly what it was like, I just remember as soon as I got the small I knew I’d made the right choice. I do think it’s down to personal opinion and fit rather than a hard and fast rule. I was quite happy riding around on the medium and as you say you can get a shorter stem.

Oh the small came with 170mm cranks and I think the medium is 175mm.

As for dropper I had an issue getting a 125 mm reverb low enough on the small, which I solved by removing the Connectamagik thing:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/reverb-stealth-the-black-connector-bit-what-does-it-do

From memory I think I worked it out Thomson posts would never work for me as they are too long, but most others would. On a medium I reckon you’ll be fine.

I’m 5.6 and a bit and ride a small. I demod a medium for 2 weeks before I got the small. Totally rideable but I prefered the small.

I do have fairly short legs.

That said….

https://www.facebook.com/groups/morzinecrew/permalink/997603820279545/

8O

Probably give Porridge a miss then.

Porridge, Hattock, ROTM ect… whatever tracks you know down there that are not marked trails then forget it

Based on Strava people have been riding it up to a few days ago.

Hmmm, can I just buy a digital copy of this issue without subscribing?

http://singletrackworld.com/shop/product/issue-91/

Says out of stock and when I click on the pdf I get redirected to

http://singletrackworld.com/premier/account/

Is it not worth a few quid for back issue access ? It’s like saying buy me a pint and I’ll send you tye gpx

Yep! Didn’t realise I could buy it instantly online :oops:

The Col du Coux route in STW issue 91 is better

Anyone kind enough to share this route? Even if it’s just the start and end so I can work it out. Most of the gpx stuff I’ve found online has started or ended miles away from Morzine

If you’re off travelling I would go & find drum & bass in champery too.

Any clues to location of this? Google search only shows a few Strava segments in the UK and a thread on here where you mention it! :D

are you averse to a bit of climbing or not?

Zero issues with climbing. Happy to pedal a fair way if it means getting to good stuff!

Cheers for the suggestions so far!

If conditions stay as they are, I’d go Wetscream Super Tacky then cover it in super glue and velcro.

Then velcro all the roots.

Designed to work well in the wet in my opinion. I rode it in the snow back in Jan and most of it was still fine (in some places even better!) Only issue I’ve had is with high winds rather than rain.

I have to say the middle trail on Blade (forget the name) was a slushy eroded mess

That’s Ghostrain. A highlight of the loop for me! but then maybe I’m just weird.

maybe it’s updated now but the strava iphone & android app always used to record at 3-4 second intervals and then match nearest points to the start/finish of segments.

It’s possible its dependent on phone hardware. If the GPS only updates every 2000ms, thats what the app has to use.